There and Back Again – Going Full Circle

I mentioned in a previous post that big changes were coming (as if bringing our daughter home only six months ago wasn’t a big enough change!). So today I can finally announce that… We are moving to Yangshuo! Our China journey began nearly seven years ago in Yangshuo in Guangxi province. We came to China Read More

Hiring a Housekeeper in China

Long time readers of this blog might remember one of my more popular posts from a couple of years ago about my Housekeeper from Hell, Annie. Long story short, Annie came across some very personal photos of mine while cleaning and shared them on WeChat, China’s most popular social network, and called me a prostitute. Read More

Dozens of SZ Expats Swindled in United Airlines Flight Scam

The following was originally published in the Shenzhen Daily. I have added a little more information for clarity and an analysis to the end. DOZENS of expats in Shenzhen have been swindled out of tens of thousands of yuan in a United Airlines fraud case allegedly perpetuated by a well-known Shenzhen international student, an investigation Read More

Be A Good Landlord

The following was originally published by the Shenzhen Daily.  Two weekends ago, I spent a couple of days helping a friend look for an apartment. She is a young professional whose company relocated from Shanghai to Shenzhen. However, our excitement over her move quickly gave way to despair after looking at over a dozen apartments Read More

Living with Epilepsy in China

Recently, a man in Hubei was sentenced to life in prison for causing the deaths of four people when he crashed into a group of pedestrians after suffering from an epileptic seizure. Most of the comments in response to the article have centered around how stupid it was of the man to keep his illness Read More

Give the Dog a Bone – Let Guide Dogs in China Help the Visually Impaired!

Last week, when Beijing announced that seeing eye dogs would be allowed on the Beijing metro, my first thought wasn’t “wow, this is a great move on Beijing’s part.” Instead, my first thought was “seeing eye dogs weren’t already allowed on Beijing subways?” followed by “seeing eye dogs aren’t already allowed on all of China’s Read More

Step 1 of probably 100 million

As any reader of this blog or anyone who has ever met us knows, our dream is to adopt a baby here in China. We finally took that first step and submitted our initial application, which was approved last week! Yay! That was probably the easiest step, though. I was immediately given about 50 more Read More

China – Not As Safe As You Think

In the past, when people have asked me “is China safe?” I have answered “yes.” And most people would agree. In fact, if you Google “is China safe?” you will find plenty of forums that tout the safety of China, even for women. Yet I have been seeing more and more incidents of Western women Read More

Frog by Mo Yan – Book Review

Talk about disappointing. Two years ago, when Mo Yan won the Nobel Prize for literature for Frog, Westerners and Chinese were shocked and elated. The Chinese were ecstatic that a Chinese writer won the honor at all (he’s the only Chinese writer who lives in China to have ever won the prize) and Westerners were Read More

I Am Not Charlie

Last week, the opinion page editor sent me an opinion article and asked me “should we print this?” I thought it was a strange request since what the paper does and doesn’t print isn’t up to me. However, when I discovered that the article was basically about how Americans are hypocritical in how they use Read More