Archive for the ‘Asia’ Category
Beijing’s vanishing charm: for a buck, for better living conditions, and for a hefty price
Chicken coup, built atop a home inside a Beijing hutong It’s a bit mysterious to me how my fascination with China began; this far into it, I cant quite retrace the steps back to the beginning. But one of the first books I read about the country was journalist Ian Johnson’s Wild Grass: Three Portraits [...]
July 21st, 2010Snapshot Yangzhou: home
View from the moutaintop temple outside Yangzhou To end my series on Yangzhou, it is only right to leave you with my favorite image: a hut, full of character, perched on the side of a mountain, overlooking the valley and farms below. Above this humble and beautiful home was a temple that we visited, which [...]
July 20th, 2010Snapshot Yangzhou: future vision
On the outskirts of the city, the huge mall loomed as a vision of the future towards which China is aiming. On the outskirts of the bustling city lies some of the newest additions to the area, a modern development area that includes the enormous mall here, as well as the giant new museum that [...]
June 28th, 2010Snapshot Yangzhou: dorm room
Our desks, made our own We stayed in the international student dorms during our time in Yangzhou, and for a small monthly fee (around 5 dollars), a man would come by and hook up the internet for your computer. This was a huge relief after the horrors of the Zhengzhou computer labs with their limited [...]
June 26th, 2010Snapshot Yangzhou: eating up
My favorite meal A big steaming pot of freshly-made noodles with mushrooms and cabbage; add some cayenne pepper flakes and a soy-type sauce and you’ve got a delicious, satisfying dinner. That whole pot would cost me 8 yuan, about $1.14. Plus a few yuan for a cold water. YUM. Our group ate regularly with various [...]
June 24th, 2010Snapshot Yangzhou: shortcut
Don’t mind me… It was Team China versus Team USA one hot day, and we were the sideline cheerleaders. They had kept this rivalry up for a number of sports: basketball, table tennis, and most certainly, soccer. We, the girls, were not the most cheery crowd, but we tried to be present when we had [...]
June 23rd, 2010Snapshot Yangzhou: beautiful vandalism
It’s just the classic "I was here" inclination, but in Chinese characters, the result is so much more charming. I saw it on the Great Wall, I saw it on dusty temple walls, and I saw it in the concrete surrounding any oft-visited site throughout China; but the graffiti on the members of this lush [...]
June 21st, 2010Snapshot Yangzhou: crazy rickshaw driver
Something’s not right here… It was a regular afternoon, and Stacey and I were either sweaty or exhausted or (probably) both, and we decided to spring for the 3-yuan (42-cent) rickshaw ride back to campus. He was confused, rightly so, by our feeble Chinese language skills, and we had tried to tell him we wanted [...]
June 18th, 2010Snapshot Yangzhou: Shouxi Lake and its gardens
Winding pathways and misty gardens along Shouxi Lake The very first day that the whole group was together, we spent a disgustingly humid day at Shouxi Lake that almost made us forget the sticky heat. Little enclaves were built in random spots, with wide-open window frames and benches and tables; old Chinese men were playing [...]
June 16th, 2010Snapshot Yangzhou: art students’ retreat
Art majors’ studio As part of our “cultural education,” we spent weekday afternoons on little excursions to museums, paper-making studios, calligraphy lessons, table tennis games, and tai chi sessions–to name a few. One of my favorites was our trek to one of the Yangzhou University art buildings, and this studio in particular. I got the [...]
June 14th, 2010