Day 2: isn't terribly interesting, merely a long bus journey through the mountains south of Guiyang to the (somewhat) remote city of Libo near the provincial border. I'll skip that, only saying that arriving in Libo we almost immediately met a young Buyi boy who befriended us and offered to take us to his home village, out among the karst mountains ( Read more... )

I need to get back into the habit of writing. I did very well last year, but for whatever reason, this year I've been much more focused on face-to-face, rather than Web 2.0, communication. Can we blame my cute co-workers? Or perhaps the new difficulties of writing to a blog that has now been blocked by the Chinese censors? If I were as devoted to ( Read more... )

I know I've been very bad at updating this journal of late. I do beg apology, but things aren't entirely likely to get much better this next week either I'm afraid. Golden Week is upon us, and to all who live in China this means a week of trembling beneath the horde of tourists as all of China gets one of its few vacation times ( Read more... )

I'm not sure I wish to go into too much depth, but there are certain melodramatic elements that are slowly being teased from the Chongqing Aston song, much to my displeasure. Cliques, claques, clocks (I'll be teaching time to the youngsters tomorrow) are arranging themselves in most inauspicious angles. Angles, a favorite mispelled word here, I ( Read more... )

Tired to death today, because last night my co-workers and I hit up a duck restaurant, a bar, and finally my first experience of K-TV (Chinese Karaoke booths). I did some justice to Hotel California, Yellow Submarine, and--I'm embarassed to admit, let me say that the English-language choices were a bit limited--a few Backstreet Boys songs before ( Read more... )

Discovery Channel Asia was filming a documentary about soccer-playing monks, here in Chongqing. Their idea was to have a game between the foreigners who lived in the area and the monks of a nearby temple, and film it. So the Aston guys had been invited and when they asked if I wanted to play soccer with monks, who could resist that ( Read more... )

To facsimile the informational email I just sent out ( Read more... )

I've been having a rather terrible day, here in Shanghai. Trying to get subway tickets, I was mobbed by a mass of Chinese who had just disembarked from the central train station, and they literally tore the handle off my suitcase with the combined pressure of their bodies as they all tried to buy tickets. I think the crucial moment was when I ( Read more... )

I haven't posted in a while. Partly that may be due to the newfound difficulty of posting onto this website from China. *cough* goddamn government *cough*. There certainly won't be any pictures arising from the smoking, seething abyss of my censoring, not any time soon ( Read more... )

And if this works, it's just one more sabot (shoe) thrown into the mighty censorship engines of the People's Republic. I am sad, though, that probably none of my Chinese friends will be able to read my LJ again ( Read more... )