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Julia Child: the ultimate reinvented “trailing spouse”
Julia Child, after a rather adventurous early life of her own, arrived in Paris as the expat wife of a U.S. Information Service officer. She only understood basic French and had minimal cooking...
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“Low Expectations:” Your Guide to Successful Relocation to China
People often wonder how I happily lived in Mainland China for 3.5 years. What about the pollution/censorship/unsafe food/spitting/high road casualties, they ask? The key is strategically low(ered)...
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Birthdays Abroad
My birthday is this week. Counting up the years, I find that it is the eighth birthday I have spent as an expat. That first overseas birthday in Zhuhai, I had only been living abroad for a few short...
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Ugly Americans, Ugly Chinese: the tourist trap
The original bad tourist: “The Ugly American” in 1950s Cuba. Bashing Mainland Chinese tourists is rather fashionable in Hong Kong. The South China Morning Post is always eager to print something...
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Neon Dogs and Tiny Gods: Color on a grey day in Sai Kung
With three hours to spare in Sai Kung, the “garden leisure district” of Hong Kong, I wandered beneath grey skies and contrived my own color-spotting Easter Egg hunt. Here is what I found: A father-son...
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Mortification at the Mechanic’s
My young expat is an equal-opportunity ignorer. Don’t worry, she’s not being rude to you because you’re Chinese, she’s being rude to you because you’re a living, breathing, strange adult. We’re...
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Ten Tiny Tales from Chiang Mai, Thailand
1. Elephants are awesome. Go to Elephant Nature Park, a heaven on earth for abused and rescued elephants. 2. Small children are highly portable, but very loud. You can check quite a few sight-seeing...
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Damn smug Canadians … or were they Americans?
Queuing up to board a recent flight, I noticed this half of a matched-set couple: The pair of tan, sandal-clad travelers carried black backpacks slung over their shoulders. Onto each backpack they had...
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Propaganda: North Korea is a “Socialist Fairyland” and Expat Life is Glamorous!
If censorship is a blunt tool used to sway public opinion, propaganda is its softer twin. As a long time watcher of North Korea’s (unintentionally) highly entertaining Korean Central News Agency of...
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Sorry, I’m new to this! Notices for novice expats?
On my first walk around Mainland China, I should have hung this apologetic public notice on a placard around my neck: As a new pedestrian in China, I initially looked for official painted crosswalks,...
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“Gau go gaau gau gau ge!” Song by The Police or Cantonese tongue twister?
Since Chinese New Year, I’ve been studying Cantonese with a small group of beginners. Our class consists of a few Brits, a few Dutch, a token American (me) and a token Beijinger. As our instructor has...
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One to rule them all: Starbucks in China
Feet and fingers aching from Beijing’s winter air, I once went in search of the Forbidden City’s much-maligned Starbucks. As a former “friends don’t let friends go to Starbucks” anti-corporate...
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Land Granny, the Heavenly Bureaucrat and other tiny deities
In shopping mall filled Hong Kong, districts still exist where altars to gods outnumber coffeehouses. Wandering haphazardly around the New Territories, I’ve randomly stumbled across and photographed...
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Heaven is a Hong Kong junk trip
Watching the boats bob in Causeway Bay Typhoon Shelter, I swallowed two small pink pills to combat sea sickness. With the thick smell of “harbor” in our noses — diesel exhaust, fish and petrol — we...
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United in Mutual Revulsion: Spit and Shoes
It is amusing how horrified we can be about the behaviors of others, while turning a blind eye to our own horrifying habits. Spitting is an entrenched habit of many in Mainland China. Entering the...
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Monolingualism as a badge of pride? A view of America from Hong Kong
A comic inspired by recent traffic on my Facebook feed from American relatives. I saw the following sign at a Hong Kong public transportation interchange today. The sign includes three linguistic...
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Dreaming of a lighter future amongst a wreckage of wrong-headed packing
Eight ceramic mugs, four ceramic bowls and three ceramic vases qualify as my most underthought packing decision. We purchased this heavy set of souvenirs in Rajasthan during the heat of a...
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8 slices of America
1. Big lawns and kind-hearted eccentrics. Lawns, lawns, soft, runaround-in-bare-feet lawns. Lawns only made better by the addition of purple-bearded “Bubble Man,” an enigmatic staple of Seattle’s...
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Snakes, superstition and sulfur dust
There was a dead mouse hanging from inside the wire trap she was holding. The mouse was the bait. She was the local pest removal expert trying to catch the snake in my neighbor’s garden yesterday. Not...
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I read “The World of Suzie Wong” so you don’t have to (warning: rife with...
The World of Suzie Wong is a famous, but exceptionally melodramatic, novel based in late 1950s Hong Kong. Think Moulin Rouge! set in Wan Chai with a happier ending pinned on. It’s an easy read, not a...
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