(translated from a Chinese conversation textbook)
Mary: Teacher, what is a “dagongmei”?
Teacher: A “dagongmei” is a young woman who comes from the countryside to the city to do part-time work.
Mary: Is their work always very hard?
Teacher: It is relatively hard, but compared to being in the countryside, it’s a bit more relaxed. Actually, they don’t […]

A few days ago, I was walking down Wangfujing Dajie, Beijing’s main shopping street, when I came across a public sculpture exhibition dedicated to world peace. Clearly, the standard olive branches and children-holding-doves material, while represented, wasn’t enough for the organisers of this exhibition. The vast majority of the pieces were instead of […]

I have noticed, since turning this site into something resembling (but still not being) a blog, that people are much more demanding of things like updates. Unfortunately, while the site’s design was originally intended to make it easy to update, I quickly realised that anything more complicated than adding a simple post was far […]

There are times when I truly love China. This evening, when I won five litres of milk in a restaurant lucky draw, was one of those times. For one glorious moment, after I opened the outer box, I thought that I had won five litres of expired milk. Then I remembered that, in China, the […]