China is a place where there is little respect for the lives of individuals. China has the highest female suicide rate in the world, the highest number of abortions, the second-highest rate of automobile-related deaths, and the highest rate of executions. It is a place where 60 million women are missing because of gender-related abortions Read More
Category: blog post
Book Review: My Splendid Concubine by Lloyd Lofthouse
Writing a book is hard. As a writer, I know how difficult it is to put the pen to paper and put what you have to say out there for the world to see and then be ripped apart. I try to be fair in my reviews and, even when they aren’t very good, look Read More
Partial Story of a Missionary Family in Changsha and Hong Kong During WWII
The turmoil of the people of Changsha at the hands of the Japanese (and even Chiang Kai-shek) during WWII/the Second Sino-Japanese War is pretty well documented. But never before have I read anything about that time period by a foreigner who lived in Changsha at the time. Joyce Roberts was the daughter of missionary parents Read More
A Trip to the Vet
It’s hard being a pet parent in China. If you live in a “rural” area (meaning anything less than 2,000,000 people), you most likely do not live near a vet. When Vash was only a few months old she ate an entire bottle of gum. This was in the middle of the night and the Read More
And There Was Much Rejoicing!
This past Thursday was Thanksgiving in America, affectionately known as “Turkey Day” because the whole point of Thanksgiving is, honestly, gorging on the most delicious of fowls, the turkey. Chinese friends and students always take note of the glazed, dreamy look Americans get in their eyes when speaking of this mythical bird of scrumptiousness and wonder what is so amazing Read More
Ugly Foreigners: The Shenzhen Epidemic
I’ve had so much material for the Ugly Foreigners series lately that it’s been depressing. Just because the 100 days of foreigner crackdowns is over is no reason to go hog-wild with bad behavior, people. Recently there has been a rash of bad behavior in the lawless border town of Shenzhen (Shenzhen isn’t really like that. Read More
Halloweekend in Changsha
As much as the Chinese love their horror movies, Halloween is still a rather unobserved in China. But Halloween is one of the most popular holidays in the west. Spending is second only to Christmas, still earning retailer s whopping 8 billion dollars in US sales alone. It is also growing in popularity in the UK, with Read More
End of China's One Child Policy in Sight?
According to a report issued by a government agency and made public through Xinhua, the official news outlet for the Chinese government, it is time to start putting the one child policy to rest in China. A government “think tank” will issue the official report within a couple of weeks (most likely after the National Read More
Two Americans in China in the USA
So I know I haven’t posted much since we got back home. We have had a really hard time readjusting our sleep schedules, spent 2 weeks without hot water, and had to dive right into a big project at work. So things have been kind of crazy around here, but nothing really to write home Read More
Ugly Foreigners: The Drunk Russian
It’s been a while since we have had to chastise any ugly foreigners (people who give all foreigners in China a bad name) on here, so we were about due. This one really takes the cake. According to Beijing News, the man was a hotel guest and was already intoxicated when he checked in that Read More