Attending a funeral first thing on a sunny summer morning is an odd break in routine. The oddness just seems compounded because I didn't actually know the deceased, a clothing designer who lived in NY, but rather her Ithaca relatives, an extensive immigrant family who run Chinese and Vietnamese restaurants in town. Or more precisely, I am ( Read more... )

One of the pleasures/annoyances of travel is that often the ability to go or do is taken from you by the infrastructures that be and you end up with time to kill. (Very odd phrase that) Killing time puts me in a strange limbo frame of mind in which it is difficult to focus on work. Of course it's always difficult to focus on work for some reason ( Read more... )

This is the first morning in a very long time (I tried to calculate months, etc, and couldn't) that I've woken up alone (except for three demanding cats)in a house. It's rather odd, peaceful, and pleasant; I'm not really sure what to do with myself. Sure, I have a lot of work to do; I have even already started; I have even already been "connected ( Read more... )

My aunt wrote back to express how very impressed and proud she was of me for my international swimming prowess. Indeed she was going to copy the post to my cousins to inform them of my amazing natatory triumph. Somewhat consternated and worried that some extensive revision was in order, I was vividly reminded that all texts do indeed have ( Read more... )

hello friend and relations ( Read more... )

So riffing of a comment from pkdan, yes, people in China (or at least in Shantou) are VERY proud of their "investment" into passenger cars. And this indeed might be one of the reasons they are kept so shiny, but that's definitely not the whole story.

Here's the rub, passenger cars are not really investments in China because of the high cost to ( Read more... )

"Three kuai!" "Three kuai ( Read more... )

This weekend I've been almost completely offline because my Chinese little sister and her husband were visiting from Tibet where they own a bar and teach English. At one point during the weekend, we went out to Shantou University so that Helena (my little sister's English name) could show Zheng Biao (her husband) where she went to college. Plus he ( Read more... )

The Boy and I, after spending all day hermiting in our apartment, decided to walk to dinner to a new place we had "discovered" on a previous meander home. This "wheat restaurant" specializes in northern and northeastern cuisine which is differentiated from that of the south by its staple, wheat.
Noodles, pancakes, dumplings and steamed buns are the ( Read more... )

Nature, culture, market ( Read more... )