A GAME WITH NO WINNERS Last entry I sent you some photographic proof of what a very nice squat toilet looks like, so this time around I thought I'd give you a little more insight into their use - at least from the male perspective. As you can probably imagine, most public restrooms aren't in exactly the most sanitary state (you can usually find them from about 50ft away by the fairly strong odor). And most stalls / pits (at least in the mens rooms) come with an amorphous ring of yellow fluid (we'll try to imagine it's not pee for now). Now, what you wouldn't know from just a glance is that these liquid rings are actually boundary lines for a game Chinese men like to play - "How Far Away Can I Stand and ... read more

Notice - This entry is more about the pics than the stories, so sorry in advance for the sub par writing. I'll work on getting myself into a few more awkward situations. Electric scooters / mopeds seem are a bit intense here (as I assume they are across most of Asia). There's just one problem with them - they seem to have the same privileges as both pedestrians and automobiles. When they are in the street, this isn't a problem for me, but when they are on the sidewalks it gets a bit crazy. And they are definitely "allowed" to use the sidewalks because I've seen traffic cops wave them out of the street onto the sidewalk - granted they were waved out of the street because they were going the wrong-way down a one way ... read more

This is a frightening thought, but I may be the most photographed person in all of China!!! In my first few days here, I kept catching people taking pictures of me on the sly, and when I looked at them I noticed them waving but thought they wanted me to get out of the way. That all changed today, though when I visited the Forbidden City with about 300,000 Chinese tourists. Being tourists themselves, they were not nearly as subtle, so some asked shyly/politely and other just grabbed my arm and pulled me into their photos. So, I'm guessing in a rough estimate that I was in 25 pictures with people today (and another couple hundred where I didn't know I was in the picture). Crazy! I'm just worried that my drab travel fashion sense is ... read more