Tag: China
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Notes on the First Anniversary of my 7th Blog
Origins I started this blog near the end of last April, impulsively, after I read the words ‘ephemera and detritus’ in a comment on a blog I’ve long since lost track of. Possibly from Salon’s now defunct Broadsheet. Rather than just noting it down and having a chortle over the awesomeness of the imagery as…
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A Totally Impractical Expat Interview #7: Philip Johnson of The Philiad
Welcome to episode 7 in my infinite series of expat interviews. Today I bring you the eloquent and witty Phil of the brilliant Philiad (pa-dum!). Phil lives in Guadalajara, Mexico for now, and rumor has it he’ll be heading of to NYU come September to do his MA in International Education. That, I must say,…
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A Totally Impractical Expat Interview #6: Fiona Reilly of Life on Nanchang Lu
Welcome to the sixth interview in my infinite series of one sided conversations with expats (and ex-expats) all over the world. I started this series partly out of curiosity and partly out of a need for me to know I wasn’t alone in having mixed feelings about the path I had chosen. Now, with half…
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3 Short Scenes from the Chinese Classroom: Why I Probably Can Never Go Home Again
Scene 1. ‘Happy April Fish Day, teacher!’ My students are knee deep in plastic snack-sized dried fish wrappers. It’s April 1st. There’s a huge grocery bag three quarters full of unopened dried fish packets under one of the rows of desks. It was a gift from a friend of a friend in Fujian province.…
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Blue Skies, Fake Britain and Imaginary Friends: It Gets Better (For Now)
Four days ago, I was quite dissatisfied with Shanghai and with living abroad in general. I wanted to go home to Canada, to go live in the forest and bake bread and raise goats and make really awesome goat cheese and to say, quite pleasantly, fuck it to this whole expat/travel lifestyle. I was fried.…
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A Totally Impractical Expat Interview #1: Nancy Lewis of Wandering Solo
Welcome to the first interview in a series that has not yet had its parameters defined. I’ve loosely determined that I want to talk to as many people as possible (or at least until I start annoying people and cease-and-desist comments begin to outnumber spam) about a topic that has been banging around quite…
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A Call To Arms (and Submissions): A New Series on Settledness and Restlessness
As you may have noticed, my posts recently have been flailing wildly back and forth on the subject of being settled in a place. It’s not just my posts that are contradicting themselves. I’m waffling on a daily basis, veering between quiet acceptance of being in Shanghai long term (-ish), with comfy familiar things around…
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After thoughts: Notes on having settled whilst still unsettled
I was wrong. Last week, I declared with false confidence that I was settled and ready to stay in Shanghai for a few more years. Or maybe the better word would be ‘bracing myself’ or ‘girding my loins’ or ‘grudgingly acquiescing’ to staying put for a while and enjoying my job and my slow cooker…
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Travelling Yourself Into a Corner: On Impulse Control and Unplanned Stability
It looks like we’re going to be here in Shanghai for a while. Doug has just signed a three year contract with his school; I have another year left on my two-year contract. We own a slow cooker, a full set of cutlery and several potted plants (which are somehow still alive), including one…
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Notes on Genocidal Tourism in Cambodia
One of the emotionally complicating factors of constantly living in and travelling through countries with troubled pasts is that you will inevitably end up having many conversations with and interacting with people who had lived through that troubled past. And given that troubled pasts often involved death, betrayal, torture, imprisonment and whatnot, it’s a disconcerting…
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Chinese New Year II: Explosions, Bunnies, Shuttered Doors
So the incessant festive explosions of last night continued until very very late, late enough for me to have filmed several chunks of an hour’s worth of explosions around midnight and still had time to upload, edit, save and upload to YouTube and then add it to yesterday’s post before it was calm enough outside…
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Chinese New Year in Shanghai: Bunnies Gone Wild
As a Rooster, Doug’s mortal enemy in Chinese astrology is the Rabbit. And lo, come tomorrow, we shall be fully immersed in the Year of the Rabbit. There are bunnies EVERYWHERE. It’s like Donnie Darko with lots of red and gold and glitter. There are sparkly cutout stickers of bunny silhouettes on department store glass…