June 4, 2009, shortly before 7:00 p.m. Location: People’s Square, Shanghai. A police van with a bewildering array of cameras, lights, whizzing bits and oddly bulbous domes is parked near a large crowd. The van’s side door is slightly ajar. Signs behind the crowd reveal that the people are here to watch “High School Musical” […]

I’m a big fan of China’s many regional cuisines, which provide a nearly endless array of mouth-watering dishes: solid, proletarian Beijing dumplings, grilled lamb skewers from Muslim western China, delicately steamed fish from Hong Kong, sweet Shanghainese “red-cooked” pork, fantastic green vegetables from just about everywhere, and, my favourite, the exquisite “numb-spicy” dishes of Sichuan.
But […]

From a friend (and hosted on Danwei), a new show on urban life in Shanghai: “The Shanghai Beat”. The first episode features a tour of Shanghai’s gay scene. More to come…

This explanation (with diagrams!) of cars at a Beijing intersection making a left turn is one of the funniest things I’ve read in a while. Substitute a Volkswagen Santana for the Hyundai if you’re in Shanghai, and add a couple of mopeds.
Edit: Proxy link here.

I was visiting the Web site of the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games (BOCOG) a few weeks ago, and was disappointed to find that the weather conditions in Beijing — temperature and wind speed — were given only in degrees Fahrenheit and miles per hour, respectively. I sent a suggestion through BOCOG’s online […]

As of 4:30 pm, Monday, April 2, 2007:

The “500″ is for respirable particulates. The other numbers are concentrations of Sulfur Dioxide and Nitrogen Dioxide, respectively. Taken from the Shanghai Environmental Monitoring Center. I’m not sure if this is a computer error or not, but looking out the window at the entirely brown air seems to […]

A few months ago, I posted pictures of my Beijing commute from home to my language school. Since then, I have moved from my old apartment in Beijing’s northwestern university area to an apartment within the city’s Second Ring Road. The Second Ring traces the line once drawn by the imperial moat and city walls, […]

Photos from a ride out to the Fragrant Hills (香山) area in the Northwest of Beijing.

David Moser, of the University of Michigan Center for Chinese Studies, has written a wonderful article entitled “Why Chinese Is So Damn Hard”. A short excerpt on learning classical Chinese:
“Whereas modern Mandarin is merely perversely hard, classical Chinese is deliberately impossible. Here’s a secret that sinologists won’t tell you: A passage in classical Chinese can […]

A short, silly essay.
什么是苹果？按照词典，苹果的定义是：“落叶乔木，叶子椭圆形，花白色带有红晕。果实圆形，味甜或略酸，是普通水果”。我平时对《现代汉语词典》的定义没有什么不同意的，但在这种情况下，我必须表示我不满的感觉。词典的编者哪儿有权利把这么美妙的水果称为“普通”水果？大概是因为编者没有意识到这个小水果跟我们“普通人类”有多么长的历史，多么强的关系。
什么是苹果？当然是词典所说的，但除此之外它也是人类最古老的同伴之一。据西方的传说，第一个人吃的苹果给他怎么分别好和坏的知识，但也是人类从人间乐园放逐的原因。这样一来，苹果给我们带来了辛苦的生活，但也使我们凌驾于真正的“普通”动物之上。知识是苹果赋予我们的大负担和大赠礼。
什么是苹果？是使我们健康的一种食品。苹果不但是世界最流行的水果之一，而且是富于营养的食品。苹果有几百个种类，有甜的，有酸的，一个人无论有什么偏激，都能找到适合他口味的苹果。由于苹果的普遍性，苹果平时不是特别贵的，每个人都买得起苹果。可以说苹果是“大众之食”。
什么是苹果？实际上，我也不敢妄下评论。但我的感觉是苹果既然赋予我们那么多利益，我们都应该以更理解它重要性的角度回报它所给予人类的。什么是苹果？苹果就是人类的老朋友。