Start: 95.4 Last week: ??.? This week: 89.5
Thursday 4 October: Pleasantly surprised this morning after getting on the scales for the first time in three weeks. I’ve been eating three meals a day for the past two weeks, and I thought it would show more. But maybe that’s the unfamiliar foods effec...
It was pure good fortune that I read Victor Mair's guest post over at Language Log a couple of days ago. In it, Mair treats with loving respect the details of a sign seen at Silk Street Market in Beijing. The sign lists the Recommended Words and Forbidden Words for the benefit of the salesgirls at...
Yesterday was full-on tourist travel day. Summer Palace first thing in the morning. Then the Great Wall. Then lunch in an authentically exotic restaurant hard by the Chinese Ethnic Culture Park. Then the Forbidden City and finally Tiananmen Square. Nothing I could say about any of those places wou...
At last night’s banquet I sat next to an old China hand; he’s been coming here since 1985. He really appreciates the changes that have taken place. For me, the China of memory is a childhood picture. Huge squadrons of identically clothed androgynous workers bicycling through the smog. Drabness and g...
I’ve noticed that many blogs hosted on Blogspot are unavailable here. Behind the times as I often am, it took a quick Google to discover that they are indeed banned, and not just here, apparently, but also in Pakistan and India. All of them? I suppose that’s the only way. There appeared to be a redi...
