Tag Archives: Chinese life
The Price of Tea in China
One of the most useful Chinese phrases is pronounced “can ee can”. It means “just looking” or in my case “Quit picking up merchandise and banging it against my glasses. I can be trusted to find any items in plain … Continue reading
Mei you! Ming tien!
Although I only know a few Chinese words, I already have some I don’t like. My least favorite word is ??, which is pronounced “ma-yo” and basically means “have no. I can recognize it in short sentences, like “We have … Continue reading
Scenes From a Chinese Restaurant
Meg: Fresca, you just asked for a dumpling that doesn’t eat meat!!! Fresca: Shut up, English mouse.
Three Months In China
On my three-month anniversary with China, it was time to renew my visa. This was complicated enough in the US, a system that doesn’t run entirely on bribes and connections. Dealing with UMass administration for five-and-a-half years of college was … Continue reading
Language Barriers
In the beginning of Pygmalion, George Bernard Shaw says that English dialects are so varied that an Englishman cannot open his mouth in public without another Englishman instantly hating him. He might have been writing about China in 2006, but … Continue reading
Qingdao Adventures
We decided to wander around Qingdao to find a good place to have dinner. Ok, that’s not exactly true. I remember saying something about finding a German place for dinner, because I remember thinking that a town that was a … Continue reading
Chinese Zoo
Today I brought in some colored clay and told my students to make animals. It seemed like a fun, easy identification lesson, made even easier by the fact that I was recently reprimanded for teaching “sage”, “turquoise” and “lavender” so … Continue reading
Dear Bethie
Dear Bethie, Thank you for the scarf. It was very useful on my trip to Beijing. You can put it across your pillow if the night train to Beijing is a little dirty. You can wet it from the train’s … Continue reading
What I Did On My May Vacation
Fresca came to class with me today. I was at the middle school (that paragon of all educational virtues that is Number Three) and I was asking everyone what they could do over May Holiday in order to talk about … Continue reading
