Learn Chinese with me! It’s easy and fun! Let’s start with the basics: Hello Nǐ hǎo 你好 Thank you Xièxiè 谢谢 This should get you through your first few weeks in China if all you’re doing is walking around with people who speak Chinese and talking to lunch ladies. That Read more…
Ever since I got here, people have been telling me I need to try hairy crab. Kunshan’s hairy crabs from Yangcheng Lake are famous all over China for being magically delicious, and it’s late autumn, which means they are in season, particularly the females. Today, my ship full of hairy Read more…
I’ve been trying really hard to deny it, even to myself, but I’m going to go ahead and say that I’m well and truly homesick. The two-week point is where this usually happens. So last night and this morning I was pitiful and weepy. I thought about staying in my Read more…
We had a team lunch today where we decided to head off-campus to a local farm-to-table restaurant. We had a bit of an adventure finding the place, but got to walk through a beautiful farm/park while we found our way. The restaurant was part of the Fairmont Yangcheng Lake resort, Read more…
My adventures have been small for the past few days, compared to Beijing, but there are still adjustments here. I did my laundry. It involved asking the campus convenience store for laundry coins. Jesse helped me figure that one out. You say something like, “she’e bee,” (I can’t find the Read more…
I think I earned some t-shirt slogans while I was in Beijing: I went to Beijing and only cried twice. #PioneerAward I climbed the Great Wall and all I got was this lousy t-shirt (and a lungful of pollution). HERO — “You are not a hero until you climb the Great Read more…
I got to Beijing last night on the train, and I have to say, I wasn’t impressed. (Sorry, Beijing.) The train and train station were crowded beyond belief, the toilets were the squat kind (the stuff of nightmares, believe me), and they ran out of taxis. (How the crap does Read more…
In the outskirts of a town like Kunshan on the campus of a university with academic freedom, it’s easy to forget where I am. I’m in China. Things are different here. I was inadvertently pulled into a discussion about voting while walking and talking the other morning. We were talking Read more…
I finally made it off campus today! We took a group field trip for lunch to Dayu Bay, a little shopping center in walking distance of campus. So I didn’t go far, but I went. We ate at a restaurant called Jim’s Bar and I had a chicken sandwich. It was Read more…
I haven’t been very adventurous yet. In fact, I haven’t left campus. But it turns out you don’t have to leave campus to sample the Weird Foods of China. This morning, I sampled a pumpkin cake. This is a pumpkin cake, approximately palm-sized. I assume the Chinese symbol is accusing Read more…