Banking from China is ludicrous no matter who you bank with. For starters, you have to get up before Five AM to talk with a human, that is, if you are granted the right to talk.
Parlez Vous Bank Bot?
Dirty Doodle
My faith started to have hot flashes way before Asia’s potpourri of religions and my imploding marriage. It started unraveling with a dirty doodle.
Maus Mouse shǔ 鼠
If your school’s reading scores are in the bottom 33 percentile, you shouldn’t be banning books. Do whatever it takes to get your students to read.
Red Earth hóng tǔ 红土
This is not the place you’d want to be during an earthquake. These old houses are made out of mud brick.
Crowds
Chinese New Year is around the corner. In order to avoid crowds at Carrefour and Walmart, I decided to go to the slightly less crowded wet market. A lot of action happens outside of the market. The sidewalks are bustling with delivery bikes. The three-wheeler belongs to a recycler. Recyclers get a nominal fee for the flattened boxes. If I […]
January 5
Hospice is both the most wonderful and hardest endeavor I have ever experienced.
The Line
A week’s worth of Covid Testing in Xishuangbanna. China in order to get a coveted travel certificate.
Lock Down
the only thing that can top earthquake on vacation is a city-wide lockdown for mandatory Covid testing.
Rice 饭 Fàn
his year for Christmas, I travelled to Xishuangbanna, where rice is anything but a bland side dish. There are rice stuffed pineapples, purple sticky rice, speckled rice dumplings wrapped in Bamboo leaves, and rice stuffed bamboo shoots.
Chinese Bird Walkers
Bird walking in China is a popular hobby with men. It’s like car shows. but with songbirds, not T-birds.