a year and some months ago, this was the view from our tiny 1 bedroom apartment – the first we rented in shanghai. :)
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claustrophobic?
Category: in china
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on writing about china
digital watch has a very entertaining piece filled with advice to foreign journalists coming to china. what puns to avoid and all the things that have already been reported to exhaustion. a snippet:
You’re not really surprised to see how many Starbucks, KFCs, and McDonalds there are here, are you? Your readers won’t be either. If you have any sense, you’ll take full advantage of your time in Beijing and try out lots of the city’s excellent restaurants. There will be plenty to write about your culinary adventures without resort to “those exotic Chinese – they’ll eat anything” clichés. Yes, there are restaurants here that specialize in donkey meat and in pig faces, and even – gasp! – dog. Whoop-de-do.
you can read the rest here.
perhaps the portuguese folks at jornal de notícias could learn something from it?
(photo by sonyasonya on flickr)
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suan nai… men kou.
this morning we were ejected out of bed by a phonecall.
to me, it sounded like the alarm was ringing and since it’s p.’s responsibility to turn it off, i muttered my plea for the extra snoozy time. he answered the phone, barely being able to speak, while a lady on the other side shoved chinese sentences on his ears. his “hello? do you speak english?” were met with more chinese, so he passed me the phone. confused and sleepy, i only got the words “suan nai” and “men kou” and it took me a while to shuffle my memory for those meanings.
errmm… wait… “yoghurt”… “doorway”? what?!
and then my brain must have jump-started. i jolted out of bed, dressed and ran to the door, where a smiling girl in a white lab coat was holding a box with 8 small yoghurt jars. our first yoghurt delivery had arrived and they sure came early!
we had breakfast as soon as i closed the door and the yoghurt (unsweetned, unflavored, plain and natural) was really yummy.
despite the rough wake call, what sticks out is all this spoiling convenience that characterizes our life in china. some days, it’s so surreal.
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small victories
yesterday the clerk at the postoffice gave up and spoke to me in chinese (which was better than his english) and a lady in the queue even told me my chinese was good :)
persistence seems to be paying off!
Everyone knows that literacy in Mandarin means hour after brutal hour of memorizing and practicing a script whose design clearly shows the influence of sadistic genius.
from Beijing sounds