As someone who’s taken up residence in China long-term, I’ve had quite a few visitors over the years. One of the things I’ve learned is that you have to do a little “visitor profiling” if you want your guest to have a good time. Two of my own personal “case studies”:
My sister Grace visited me in Hangzhou in 2001. I hadn’t been in China long, and had spent a lot more time studying Chinese than trying to get comfortable.
This Sinosplice silence has gone on for too long! Time for a personal post.
Leading up to Christmas, I was preparing to make a trip back to the USA. This time that involved not only the usual gift-buying, but also getting a good lead in the recordings at ChinesePod, and also making sure that all of my AllSet Learning clients are properly taken care of the whole time as well.
What was meant to be a “short and sweet” …
Blogger Matthew Stinson recently asked Micah and me about what there is to do in Shanghai. I thought the conversation might be useful to some readers, so here it is, edited somewhat:
Matthew asked:
I’m heading down to Shanghai for National Day [October 1st]. I have rather bizarrely never actually been to Shanghai before, so I was wondering what places you’d recommend I visit and what places you’d recommend I avoid during my time there. I have about 3.5 days
…
Friends planning to visit China always ask me how much they should budget per day for food, and I always give them the same very helpful answer: “it depends.” It depends mostly on: (1) how you want to eat, and (2) where you’ll be.
“How you want to eat” includes not only price range, but also type of food. If you’re in Shanghai (expensive!) and you want to eat good Western food (expensive!), you’re going to end up paying a …
Late Monday, Beijing flashed the Pasden Signal into the dark night. So now I am on my way to the capital for a quick trip.
More blogging when I get back!…
Towards the end of September, on one particularly nice Friday afternoon, I suddenly came with a fever. I went home to get some more sleep.
Photo by DooogwoooD on Flickr
My wife got home and proceeded to freak out. To the Chinese, a fever is serious, much more so than a cold. Somewhere in the Chinese psyche there’s a line about “fevers kill people” and modern medicine has yet to edit that line. My wife wanted to …
My wife and I would like to go to Turkey soon. However, over the past few weeks I’ve been discovering that it’s kind of difficult for Chinese people to go to Turkey. Difficult… but not impossible.
Now that we’re sure we can both actually get in, we just need to buy plane tickets, but we want to go during–you guessed it–the October National Day holiday. Somehow we kind of forgot that there are a freaking bazillion* people in …
Some may view Shanghai as glamorous, but it’s got its share of expat whiners. So how does it compare with Dubai, one of the richest, most exotic expat destinations?
According to this analysis, it’s got a lot of the same issues.
I’ll leave the item-by-item comparisons to you, but Shanghai still seems pretty good to me.…
I found this brief review of China pretty amusing:
Pros
Lots to see, Beautiful historical buildingsCons
Run-down areas, CommunismThe Bottom Line
Definitely worth the trip!
No mention of the people… perhaps because the pros and cons of the people cancel each other out?…
My whole family is currently visiting me in Shanghai. I’ve got a list of great restaurants to take them to, and a few other fun places as well. We’ll also go to Beijing. I was just wondering if anyone out there can recommend things in Shanghai that appeals to 60ish parent-types?
Specific recommendations as well as links to relevant blog entries or whatever are all welcome. Thanks in advance!
Update: I’ve gotten some helpful suggestions, and I appreciate that. I’m …
John has lived in China for
11.5
years. He is a linguist focused on SLA and tech.
All Posts