I had just gotten a new pair of boots suited for the Shanghai winter, which is not particularly cold but has a penetrating damp. They cover the ankle and have heavier soles than shoes, but the point is that I can wear them all day, so they are not what I would call […]

In 1993 and 1994, I was a foreign teacher at Jilin University in Changchun. On Tuesday, I was back for the first time in at least fifteen years, and by a stroke of luck the hotel I was staying at is on the corner of Liberation Road and People’s Avenue (formerly Stalin Avenue,) right where […]

I am in rural Chongqing, just a few kilometers from Guizhou, in one of the poorer areas of China. My day today went like this: A quick hike up a boardwalk into a deep valley with a stream running down the bottom (we are doing a national park plan), then sloshed back and forth in […]

I was back in Hubei this weekend, ina small tourist city. We arrived around eight thirty on Friday night, and after checking in to the hotel I went for a little walk. The moon was out, and with a light breeze it was warm but comfortable walking around. There were people strolling, and groups of […]

So there was an opinion article in the Times the other day by Dickson Despommier, professor of public health at Columbia, who is writing a book on urban farms and has a company to consult on urban farms, pushing urban farms. I came across the same idea (from the same source) a few years before […]

Well, no posts for a while. All of us swapping illnesses, HIHO XX starting new daycare, work, generally overwhelmed by life. In recovery now. So I’ll just put up a link to a James Fallows post about every China resident’s favorite old chestnut: Beijing or Shanghai? It’s a dog or cat, New York or LA, […]

I travel a lot - maybe not as much as some, but it seems like a lot to me. It causes a lot of difficulty in our lives, but I get to see a lot of the country (China, I mean) in a way that I never would otherwise - in a way […]

I haven’t posted any staggering statistics recently, but not long ago the WSJ had a brilliant one:
“Much of the $586 billion stimulus package China unveiled this week will go toward building highways, railroads and airports. Already, according to official estimates, infrastructure spending had been increasing by an average of 20% annually for the past 30 […]

Sometimes I like to pretend I live in the future. I’ve ridden the Shanghai maglev many times and always liked it, but lately I’ve been on it mostly at night when it doesn’t go as fast (limited to 300km/hr) and it’s dark out anyway. So yesterday afternoon when I took it on my way to […]

All right, I’ve actually been back in Shanghai for more than a week, but these were my thoughts over being in Dalian, HIHO Shanghai’s home town, for a week over Chinese New Year:

Blue skies. I would rather have 20 F and sunny skies than 35 F and raining - or just gray and hazy […]