Blogs from Hohhot, Inner Mongolia, China, Asia - page 2

A Morning of Celebrity Lately, I have been in the stage where I'm so caught up with getting ready to come home that I haven't been going out as much on social visits. But last weekend I had the unique opportunity of being involved in a "Question and Answer" session hosted by my friend Lulu and attended by her classmates, who are all studying English as part of their major. I felt a little anxious about it until the night before; then Lulu texted me with the topics and possible questions I was supposed to "lecture" on: they were not weighty, and I could just kind of outline answers in my mind before I went to sleep. Sunday was the day of the event; Lulu's campus is outside the city, so at 8:30am she picked me ... read more

Why China always surprises me Right now I am reading "The Member of the Wedding," courtesy of the care-package of books my Mom brought for me when she visited China. So far the book is exceedingly odd, but it's one of those books you can't put down. The protagonist desperately wants to be part of something, to be a member somewhere, in some club of life; to belong. I often have that longing too, as I am living abroad; perhaps it is a longing we always have in some degree, but being a foreigner obviously would heighten the feeling. Today I went out in the morning with the modest plan of some shopping and lunch with my friend Lulu. When we met at the mall downtown, she told me that her Dad had invited me to ... read more

Doing China "a la carte" Deciding where to go and what to do when my parents came to China was tough. We decided to visit three cities known for their historical treasures, and then to visit the grassland areas close to Huhehaote. In all, Beijing, Xi'an, Shanghai, Huhehaote, and a day in the Wokuotai grassland east of the city, two and half hours by car. Mom and Dad are fearless travellers, who gave me invaluable experiences as a kid with summer trips and the like; but China, it is probably safe to say, is the farthest any of us has wandered afield, both geographically and culturally. Our meeting in Beijing, as documented in my previous entry, was a happy one. This was a journey four years in the making: in 2006, I began formal studies in ... read more

It's almost July and the hottest weather of the season is getting ready to hit Northern China. Already my office is filled with periodic exclamations of "好热!"("so hot!") uttered in a somewhat mournful tone. Here, "beating the heat" is called 消暑: 消 meaning "spend" or "pass," 暑 meaning "heat" and "midsummer." And now is the time to see the locals beating the heat; every time I walk out on errands, I pass old men playing Chinese chess under a tree on the sidewalk or shopowners sitting on their stoops with fans flapping lazily in their hands. Being from a subtropical town, I have to laugh when I'm outside and hear people complaining about the heat. I'm so used to blistering temperatures with stifling humidity that being outside in the dry heat feels good to me. But ... read more

Not much going on...which is a good thing! The past two weeks brought the Table Tennis World Veterans Championship to Huhehaote. Our hotel was one of many suddenly occupied by hundreds of foreigners from Europe, South Africa and Australia. For me, this meant almost round-the-clock readiness to hear my phone ringing and pick up to the sound of the hotel operator saying, "Um...there's a foreign guest on the line, I can't really understand him...help?" I worked two weeks including weekends: the first weekend because the guests had just arrived and needed attention and help to get their bearings, and the second because the guests were leaving...and needed attention and help to get their bearings. Also, most of the managers worked the weekend in anticipation of the Dragon Boat Festival, which meant three days off from Monday ... read more