Category: Chengdu, the middle of the Middle Kingdom

I decided to make use of slow bus rides to learn American history.

It’s embarrassing that my Chinese friends know more about American  history than I do, and to make it worse, that I also know almost   nothing about Chinese history.  Indeed, I didn’t know who Mao was  until I was well into college, and just learned since being here that   Japan actually occupied China substantially last century.  I really  don’t know how I missed that, but geez there’s a lot of history that’s   pretty darn relevant for what’s going on nowadays that I still don’t  know.    

But I’m not alone:  Americans tend to have a really short attention   span and a crappy sense of history. (Read Neil Postman’s Amusing  Ourselves to Death, seriously good book. And it’s short, in case your   attention span is also short.)  China seems to have a really long  attention span and they care a lot about their history.  But now the paradigm is changing, it seems.  Where stability and   continuity mattered before, progress and evolution seems to be  mattering now.  

(more…)

In a moment of weakness, I went to one of Chengdu’s 4 Starbucks for a latte.

One of the workers came over so my classmate and I spoke to her for an hour or so (in broken Chinese) about her life story. Basically, she was born in Sichuan, the province I live in. After high school she moved to work in a factory in Shenzhen. Shenzhen, the Chinese city opposite Hong Kong, has blossomed from (literally) a few hundred person fishing village to a major industrial center since the Hong Kong turned Chinese in 1997. She worked in the factory for just 1 month, living in a dorm provided by the company, and quit. Why?, I asked. “Bu hao,” she said, shaking her head and waving her hands. “Not good, not good.”

Then her friend introduced her to a job at Starbucks Shenzhen, which was better.

(more…)

Just a few short (ish) observations on contact solution, food, standardization, counting to 10….

(more…)

Quick quiz: Does time go up or down?

I generally think of time moving, well, clockwise. Or maybe forward. But not down.

But in China, the way you say “next” is basically to say “the lower one.” Next week = the down week. Last week = the up week. It’s like they are walking down some great mountain of antiquity. (more…)

First, let’s talk about how I was attacked from above by parachuting wine advertisers while I was cutting class to promote Virgin soda…

(more…)

Ni hao from Chengdu, the quite pretty tree-lined capital of Sichuan. I’m studying Mandarin starting on Monday at the Southwestern University of Finance and Economics. There’s a lot to learn, but I should be fluent in a few days 🙂

Since I have a tendency to drone on and on in emails, I’ll share some initial impressions Chinese style — in numbered outline form:

(1) It’s really smoggy here. You can never see (more…)