Meiguo Mike

My mom just sent me an email asking me "Does a Chinese computer keyboard have English letters or Chinese characters? If it's characters, aren't there too many for a keyboard? If it's letters, does everyone know western letters? Is it done phonetically?" I remember that this was a question that I had before coming to China. I always imagined a giant computer keyboard the size of a city block with tiny little buttons for each character. Ha ha! Well, I wrote her back a long response that I felt deserved a presence here on my blog. I must warn you, it's a little dry. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- For inputing Chinese characters onto computers, there are two main systems: 1) Pinyin - Most computer users in China use pinyin, which is the phonetic system of Chinese. Chinese characters are ... read more

Everyone at different points of their lives finds themselves to be part of many communities. Be it your family, your ski buddies, or your religious peers, we all usually gravitate towards people that we share something in common with. Well, recently I've fell in with an interesting community of ex-pats that are awesome to say the least. 我的好朋友们 I feel at home in this community because we are all sharing a very unique experience that even my closest friends and family back home can't really grasp. (No offense guys...I still love you!) We all have some interesting commonalities: * We all enjoy living in China. There are so many ex-pats who live here but hate it. Seriously, if you hate it that much, go home! * We are all here long term. Most of us have ... read more

Dreidel Song Happy Hannukah everyone! I thought you may all enjoy this: http:www.thisridiculousworld.blogspot.com Two of my co-workers have a blog about...well...this ridiculous world. They added a video of my senior 1's performance at the Christmas concert this year. They all sang the dreidel song and one lucky kid, Jerry, got to wear a bad-ass dreidel costume that I constructed out of a cardboard box. Candle Lighting and Jewish Studies For all of my Jewish family and friends, I think you'd be quite interested to hear that I discovered the Jewish Studies program at Nanjing University. It was created by Professor Xu, a Chinese national who took a keen interest in Jewish studies and managed to raise a whopping 50 million US dollars via networking and Jewish philanthropy. Wow! Three Jewish friends (yes, I have Jewish friends ... read more

I know it's been a real long time since I've written here. I'm not going to make excuses, but rather just jump right into a new blog entry. I just turned 25 a few weeks ago. Along with this rather momentous milestone came a bit of looking back on my life and remembering all that I've done. I was sitting there deep in retrospective thought when I made a huge realization. I've eaten a lot of weird food throughout my life. Some I've learned to love and others I've vowed never to touch again. I figured that I should try to rank them in order from odd (10) to downright disgusting (1). This entry is not for the weak-stomached. Enjoy... 10. 海蜇 (Jellyfish) This is a standard dish at Chinese banquet style dining that people usually ... read more

Hey...just thought I'd let you all know that I've decided to head out to Thailand for three weeks. I'm now on vacation for the next month and a half. Today I'm heading into Shanghai to take a flight to Bangkok. I'll stay the night in Bangkok and take an early morning flight to Koh Samui. From there I'm going to take a speed-boat to Koh Phangan, where my good friend Chris is waiting for me. He has rented a place through the end of the month. The 16th is a full moon party, which should be cool. I'm planning on mainly just lying on the beach and drinking fruit juice for most of the time. Should be nice. I'll be back in China on the 4th of August. At that point I'm going to switch apartments ... read more

Well, as I've finally decided to start updating my blog regularly, I've decided to start picking random facets of Chinese culture that amuse or interest me and write a few words about them. Keep in mind that I've only been here for 9 short months and I'm only beginning to attempt to try to make put together Chinese culture. So, I may make some observations that a seasoned 老外 may find either obvious or blatantly false. My apologies. With that being said, I'd like to begin with my first topic: Smoking Smoking seems to be a huge part of Chinese social and business culture. Often times I'll be at a bar or a restaurant with some friends and a Chinese man will approach anxious to make my acquaintance. In the US such a person would greet ... read more

So, my company (WITT) just bought my plane ticket home. I'll be home from August 11 to August 25. I almost bought a ticket returning on August 5, but then I realized that the opening ceremonies for the Beijing Olympics starts on August 8th. (8/8/08...eight is a very lucky number in China) This is a truly historic event and I think I'd regret it forever if I wasn't in China for at least part of the Olympics...so sorry for cutting my trip short, but I've gotta be here for this! What I'm going to do when I'm home: -spend time with family -head up to Seattle for a short time and visit friends -enjoy actual nature (camping, hiking,...) -enjoy American food -drink good beer -go to Megan's wedding -play with Daisy (toy-poodle...that's right! real men have ... read more

大家好！ It's been long overdue that I update y'all on my life here. Here's an attempt at the 4-5 months in a nutshell: Vistors Round 1: Mom, Emily (my sister), Joe (my brother-in-law) They came, they saw, and then they saw some more. You can't even begin too imagine how much we did on this trip. The trip happened to coincide with the largest snowstorm that Southeast China has seen in 50 years. It some ways, it was actually a blessing in disguise because so many of the normally jam-packed tourist destinations were literally empty. Let's see...here's a brief list of SOME of the things we saw/did: Shanghai - gardens temples Buddhas neon-lights big buildings cool museums opera good food Jewish area friends Suzhou - gardens temples Buddhas pagodas silk museums water-villages crazy, exceedingly nice/stalker cab ... read more

So, as you've probably heard, there has been a disastrous earthquake in the Sichuan province of China. It's really a tragedy what's happened. I've been getting a lot of emails these last few days to make sure that I'm OK. I just wanted to let everyone know that I am 100% fine. I am very far from the epicenter of the earthquake. Here in Nanjing it was just a small tremor. My friends who live/work in tall building said that they definitely felt it. I, on the other hand, didn't feel a thing in my ground floor apartment. Just thought you'd like to know. I promise that I will be publishing a long overdue blog very very soon. Much love, 美国Mike... read more

So, many of my students have chosen or been given some hilarious English names. I've put together a short list of my favorite names. I hope to add to this list as I spend more time here in China. Ok, so my favorite names so far are: Yummy Deathknight X-ray Cappuccino Cinderella Eleven Jill (boy's name) Ian (girl's name) Lion Recnaduzi (formerly known as Whisper, but is ironically outspoken in class) Ronaldinho (as in the Brazilian soccer player...naming oneself after athletes is quite common) Sprite Fat Cat Lion Legolas Leaf Panda Garden Wonderful You know that you're getting used to teaching in China when you stop feeling awkward saying things like, "Cappuccino, do you have something to add to this discussion“ or "Great speech X-ray!" If you happen to be/have been in China and heard any ... read more