A stock broker from Inner Mongolia

If you’re looking for examples of modern China, consider my friend Aviva.
She’s the one in the yellow sweater, and she is dancing on the bar in a place called Zapata’s, in Shanghai.
She’s 30 years old, which means she was born about the same time China decided to transform itself from a Mao Zedong-led Communist state [...]

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What my students know about Barack Obama

1. He’s black.
2. His half-brother lives in Shenzhen. (This was major news in the national press here)
3. He just won the presidential election in America.
4. He beat Hillary Clinton.
Almost no one at the school has heard of John McCain, but there are quite a few students here who are still bummed out about Hillary losing [...]

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So, was it worth it?

With the Olympics now in our rear-view mirror, it’s time to answer the $40 billion question.
Was it worth it?
China spent $43 billion on these Games, more than doubling the previous record of $15 billion for the 2004 Games in Athens. The government shut down hundreds of factories across northern China and pulled half of the [...]

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A good idea and a silly one

The Chinese government is doing what it can to clean things up before the Olympics.
That doesn’t mean anyone is cracking down on spitting, or small children urinating in public, on the streets of Yangzhou (though they are going after spitting and line-jumping in Beijing). And it doesn’t mean the canals near our school are any [...]

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Who will America attack next?

I am always curious about what people here think of America.
I’ve had this image in my mind of a group of Chinese college students sitting around a table after a few drinks and talking about what the Americans might be up to. Having recently graduated from a university in America, I know American college students [...]

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