Tag: NaBloPoMo

On food and kitchens with three stoves
May 17, 2010

On food and kitchens with three stoves

  We had gone to Qiandao Lake, about three hours by car from Shanghai, for a weekend of diving: at the bottom of the the lake was a thousand year old village that had been flooded back in the 1950s for a dam project.  When we …

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(101 Things About Shanghai) Ludicrous Shopping Tactics
May 16, 2010

(101 Things About Shanghai) Ludicrous Shopping Tactics

  We went to the fakes market today in Nanjing Xi Lu, which is a 4-storey shopping mall that sells only bootlegged goods from hundreds of tiny shops the size of our kitchen. There are a lot of shirts and shoes and ties and small …

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How Not to Organize a Bike Tour in Rural China
May 15, 2010

How Not to Organize a Bike Tour in Rural China

The road ended at the edge of a crumbling cliff, after a series of abrupt structural adjustments: what had been smooth asphalt turned to dusty asphalt, then to pot-holed concrete, then to broken concrete then to gravel then to rutted, dried mud. It was when …

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(101 Things About Shanghai) Sudden Shops
May 14, 2010

(101 Things About Shanghai) Sudden Shops

In Canada, it is highly unlikely that you would ever come across a street vendor setting up an impromptu, unlicensed shop on the sidewalk. In fact, really, it’s unlikely you would ever come across a street vendor. When they exist, they have been vetted and …

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(101 Things About Shanghai) Casual Armband Security
May 13, 2010

(101 Things About Shanghai) Casual Armband Security

At the bus stop just outside our apartment complex there are three elderly people clad in matching orange wind breakers and baseball caps emblazoned with Shanghai Ping’an Volunteer (and a lot more in Chinese). They have government-issued red armbands pinned to their sleeves. They can …

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(101 Things About Shanghai) Furthering the Mop Meme (Just Photos)
May 12, 2010

(101 Things About Shanghai) Furthering the Mop Meme (Just Photos)

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(101 Things About Shanghai) New Wave Dogs
May 12, 2010

(101 Things About Shanghai) New Wave Dogs

One of the interesting things about living in a country that has only recently shifted from a practical, survivalist mode of living (hello Great Leap Forward!) is that everything bourgeois is new and exciting. This includes keeping pets as pets and not as, say, nutrition …

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(101 Things About Shanghai) Street Detailing
May 11, 2010

(101 Things About Shanghai) Street Detailing

  This morning as I walked to work, a Shanghai municipal worker was crouched down on her haunches, polishing a garbage bin. She had already carefully washed it down and was now rubbing shine into the metal containers with a suede cloth. It sparkled.  The …

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