It wasn’t until after I’d been in China a while that I started thinking about a culture’s “default social activities.” Friends like to get together, and there’s often no special occasion, so they tend to rely on the defaults. If you’re sports fans or gamers, you might have ritual activities, but most people I knew growing up in Suburbia, USA relied on a small number of default activities:
Yeah, I’ve had exactly two experiences whereby hair was removed from my head in Beijing, and both were less than satisfactory. So I feel complete confidence in making this huge generalization: no one in Beijing can cut hair.
The first time was when I was doing the tourist thing with my parents over the summer. I decided to try to get a shave from a barber shop rather than do it myself. Big mistake. I should have been clued …
I am just starting to get into Flickr. I’m a little slow to jump on that bandwagon, yes, I know. I’ve discovered that I’m too lazy to bother designing photo albums anymore, and somehow even something like Gallery doesn’t seem that appealing. I’m still exploring Flickr, but I may end up using it in the feature.
Right now, though, you can enjoy a great set of Beijing photos by Frank Yu. I’m not sure how to articulate the …
In the past week or so I’ve found myself drawn into a community of China bloggers (or “chloggers,” as Frank Yu of BrandRecon.com puts it). It’s sort of a strange community, “communication” often taking place in the form of blog posts or in e-mails that other members of the community are not aware of. Anyway, this community is becoming self-aware and interlinked. It was kind of cool that as soon as I put up my China Blog page, I …
In case you haven’t heard, China has blocked access to Google. Google, the search engine for the net. Not that I like it or agree with it, but it’s one thing for a government to block specific sites it considers dangerous. It’s another thing to block a frickin’ search engine!!! OK, I’ll try not to rant.
So this has taught me how much I use Google. Lately I’ve been using google.yahoo.com instead. It’s not quite as good, but it works. …
John has lived in China for
11.5
years. He is a linguist focused on SLA and tech.
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