Aug 26th, 2009 at 10:00AM: You don't just stumble upon Brooklyn's Sunset Park neighborhood by casually walking around New York City. It takes effort. And you're also not going to find any world famous buildings or iconic parks while you're there - those are elsewhere. But for all the things Sunset Park lacks (like tourists), it still manages to have plenty to offer. This little neighborhood-that-could has been surprising ...Click on a label to read posts from that part of the world.
Chinese posts
Undiscovered New York: Sunset Park
Aug 26th, 2009 at 10:00AM: You don't just stumble upon Brooklyn's Sunset Park neighborhood by casually walking around New York City. It takes effort. And you're also not going to find any world famous buildings or iconic parks while you're there - those are elsewhere. But for all the things Sunset Park lacks (like tourists), it still manages to have plenty to offer. This little neighborhood-that-could has been surprising ...Dim Sum Dialogues: Double Happiness
Aug 16th, 2009 at 8:30AM:
In a continuation from yesterday on my post about Hong Kong weddings, I wanted to shed some light on the interesting history behind a prominent symbol that can be found decorating virtually every wedding in China. Double Happiness.
Sometimes translated as "double joy", or "double happy", the character itself is a ligature of two Chinese characters that mean "joy", pressed together. It's ...Outsiders not welcome at Chinese spy museum
May 2nd, 2009 at 9:00AM: Foreigners keep out!
Committed to preserving national secrets, the new Jiangsu National Security Education Museum in Nanjing is only open to Chinese citizens. So, if you want to see guns embedded in lipstick, maps hidden in decks of cards and other accoutrements of the spy trade (or, "tradecraft," as spies over here call it), you have to have the right passport.
Most of the items on display are ...Budget Travel: Butte, Montana
Jan 9th, 2009 at 11:30AM:
Summary: Butte, a town in the southwestern part of Montana, began as a group of gold and silver mining camps in the 1870s. When copper mining boomed, it grew into one of the wealthiest spots in the United States. During WW I, Butte was called "The Richest Hill on Earth." Never mind that Jon Stewart's the "Daily Show" made fun of Butte a couple years ago. It's one of those towns with a unique ...Galley Gossip: Interview with a flight attendant - ME!
Dec 15th, 2008 at 10:30AM: Dear Heather,
I know this is really random and weird, but I'm a Jr in high school and we were given an assignment to write a research paper over a job that we would like to do once we graduate and I have become very interested in becoming a flight attendant. Anyway part of the assignment is to interview someone that does the job we would like to do. It's been very hard trying to find someone that ...Why you'll still be able to find the new Guns and Roses album in China
Dec 4th, 2008 at 11:00AM: Yes, I will put a shamed expression on my face and admit that I felt a bit of excitement when I heard that Guns and Roses was releasing a new album. Come on, I was an awkward, pimple-ridden junior high-schooler when Axl and Slash were still at the top of their game. I thought that they were the shit. Well, the new album, which was actually made by Axl Rose and a bunch of session musicians, is ...Xinjiang Journal: Sixteen hours in China's Wild West
Oct 1st, 2008 at 9:30AM: 3:05 pm. The plane from Beijing has barely landed, and I'm already on my phone. The screen flashes 5:05 pm, and for a moment, I fear I've missed the ballgame, that I've flown 2,400 miles to the heart of China's wild west-roughly the distance between New York and San Francisco-for empty bleachers and discarded foam fingers. Then, I remember that there are two worlds here in Xinjiang, each with its ...Taiwan's road signs will make more sense next year
Sep 21st, 2008 at 10:30AM: When I lived in Taiwan, I normally didn't have a clue where I was going. The signage was not particularly helpful. I didn't read Chinese, and, outside of Taipei, that's mostly what you saw. Even when there were signs in English, there was an inconsistency with how street names were spelled.
Ask people to spell a word phonetically, and you'll see variation. In Taiwan, up until recently, there were ...Using an online translator to come up with an English name for your restuarant is a bad idea
Aug 3rd, 2008 at 1:00PM: Let's assume for a minute that you own a restaurant in China. Then we'll assume you don't speak a word of English, but you don't care because you have Internet access, and have found a great online translation site. The Olympics are coming, along with millions of hungry tourists who'll want to try your food, so you do the right thing and pop your restaurant name into the translation site, and have ...Mickey Sets a Course for Shanghai
Aug 2nd, 2008 at 12:00PM: Mickey Mouse has been planning to bring Disneyland to Shanghai for some time now. Details have been sketchy and the project has been put on the shelf several times. But people in one village are banking on the billionaire rodent to eventually get things off the ground. According to Shanghaiist, business people and home owners in Jinjia have been building on to current structures and establishing ...Expedia survey rates the world's worst tourists
Jun 25th, 2008 at 8:30AM: The French, Indians, and the Chinese have been voted as the world's worst tourists by a group of 4000 hoteliers, in a survey conducted by online travel search engine Expedia. On the other hand, the best tourists are 1) Japanese 2) British and Germans. Yup, looks like the annoying and continuous photo taking of everything in sight by the Japanese, and the drunken stag parties of the British and the ...How fluent are you? Find out here.
Apr 10th, 2008 at 8:20AM: Though people spend quite a bit of time learning foreign languages in high school and college, their language skills have a way of withering from inattention, like a dried-out potted plant sitting on a window sill.
But just how far have your language skills fallen? Here are some handy categories to help you find out:
Completely Fluent
You can converse with native speakers with ease, with ...The many languages of Suriname
Mar 23rd, 2008 at 6:30PM: If you've been following any of the recent language controversy in Philadelphia, you begin to see that a country's language is a constantly evolving mix of the cultures, customs and the people who use it. Here at home, this interplay is at often work between our country's de facto official language, English, and an increasingly populous minority of Spanish-speaking immigrants. Now imagine this ...A bathroom problem of "Olympic" proportions
Mar 20th, 2008 at 8:00AM: When I first saw the venue designs for this summer's Olympic games in Beijing, I was quite impressed. The Chinese have pulled out all the stops to create several cutting-edge stadiums for the games, including the Beijing National Stadium designed by award-winning architects Herzog & de Meuron and the Beijing National Aquatics Center, which looks like a huge floating cube of water. However, as ...Celebrate 2008 Year of the Rat with red rat-themed panties!
Feb 5th, 2008 at 11:40AM: Thanks to the Internet that allows us to travel and educate ourselves without getting out of our pajamas, today we can be privy into lifestyles and traditions of radically different cultures. And, when culture and superstitions blend, it's almost impossible not to have an an interestingly strange (if not explosively bizarre) outcome: believing that wearing red panties with rats on them will bring ...Resolution to learn a language?
Dec 29th, 2007 at 2:30PM: My husband comments every so often that he's going to learn Chinese. "That's nice, honey," I say. I think he might some day once he puts his mind to it. I used to have a resolution that I will learn American Sign Language. I have a deaf brother-in-law and sister-in-law. I can finger spell, kind of. I also know how to sign spaghetti, please, thank-you, and I have to go to the bathroom. The one ...How to tell the Chinese and Japanese apart
Nov 30th, 2007 at 1:00PM: Sometime all you need is a picture (or two in this case). James Fallows, a correspondent for The Atlantic based out of China right now, has posted a great observation about the difference between the Chinese and Japanese. He looked at a simple case of how workers refuel a jet. When it comes to the Japanese, they're fastidious, orthodox, and dressed to match. With the Chinese, well ... anything ...Band on the Run: Chinese History in Lahaina, Maui
Aug 23rd, 2007 at 10:51PM: Ember Swift, Canadian musician and touring performer, will be keeping us up-to-date on what it's like to tour a band throughout North America. Having just arrived back from Beijing where she spent three months (check out her "Canadian in Beijing" series), she offers a musician's perspective on road life. Enjoy!
I had to get away from resort land today. I packed my shoulder bag and computer, ...A Canadian in Beijing: Vegan Mandarin Language Survival Guide
Jun 27th, 2007 at 12:40AM:
When I first arrived in China, I wrote a post entitled: "Vegan in China, Part 1." It was pretty negative all around. Why? Because I was hungry! About half-way through my trip, I followed that post up with a piece about the presence of an active vegetarian and vegan society here in Beijing. I would consider that my "Vegan in China, Part 2" post, although it wasn't titled as such. This, then, ...A Canadian In Beijing: A Shu-in for Language Training
Apr 21st, 2007 at 12:36AM:
School is... school. It's hard, but it's helpful. It's work, but it's bringing pleasure. It's a commitment, but it's enabling a freedom that I couldn't have predicted. I am a part-time student at the "Beijing Yuyan Daxue," or Beijing Language and Culture University in Wudaokou, a suburb of Beijing. Above is a picture of the southern campus gates. Every day, I wake up at about 7:15 in the ...
