| Searching for 'authentic' China |
14-10-2012 |
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| On the quest of foreign travelers for 'authentic' China, the failure in distinguishing between 'traditional' and 'modern' and the acception of 'real' everyday China
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13-10-2012 |
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| Learning a new language and the benefits of Chinese. A short tutorial dedicated, mainly, to our North American readers.
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| Going abroad for the first time - The story of low-income traveler Chen Luwei |
24-08-2012 |
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 A story of an uncommon journey of a young rural woman to a vacation overseas. The cultural shocks she experiences turn out to be less striking than the shock of her hosts, who encounter a type of Chinese 'traveler' that does not fit our categorial thinking concerning Chinese tourists as well as socioeconomic classes in China.
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| The Curse of the Noodles |
23-11-2011 |
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| The story of Lanzhou Lamian, the popular noodle chain, from the perspective of Maysoon, a loyal, yet curious, noodle eater.
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| Chinese webpages and exhibitions - An ocean of details in front of the eyes |
19-07-2011 |
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| The hundreds of titles that cover the homepages of Chinese internet portals, and the lack of variety in layouts between site to site, leave the foreign surfer with a pain in the eyes, as well as curiosity, pondering whether such phenomenon could be associated to other domains and concepts in Chinese culture.
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| The Taxi Chat - The questions foreigners constantly get in China |
27-06-2011 |
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| A taxi or actually any meeting with a Chinese stranger. If you can navigate with some Chinese there are a few questions that somehow all Chinese never miss asking. Questions that any foreigner who settled in China heard for about 1.3 billion times.
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| Going to the Wilderness? Going to Disneyland! |
07-09-2010 |
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| Visiting a natural park in China might be different than what you expect. Some of the country's natural beauties are very bustling locations, a situation which is derived from the fact that Chinese prefer wild-less nature.
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| A White Sheep in a Yellow Herd |
31-08-2010 |
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The big crowds wash the streets of Chinese cities, but a typical 'urban solitude' is seldom experienced by a Western, getting used to the special attention he or she receives from curious locals.
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| Language Barrier, or 'Why We are Lucky to Speak some Chinese' |
17-07-2010 |
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| Thinking Chinese is clearly the last place where there is a need to explain the benefits of speaking some Chinese, particularly while visiting China. Still, it is always fun (or maybe disturbing for some) to remember the days when the language barrier made it difficult to buy even a bottle of water, plus to notify the non-Chinese speakers who are visiting China soon that it's not going to be a walk in the park...
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| Mountains of People |
15-07-2010 |
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| 人山人海 (rénshānrénhǎi) = 'Mountains and oceans of people' was my favorite idiom in my first few months in China. Clearly I have made some novice's mistakes that drew me directly into the crowds and hardened my knees while waiting in neverending lines, but the 1.4 billion population size is a fact one comes across every day in urban China.
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