Passport Photos: A Study in Cultural Difference Day 20: Trans-Mongolian Finale Day 18: Iconic Moscow Day 16: Peterhof, Playground of the Czars Day 15: Make the Most of the Hermitage Museum

Snapshot: Hong Kong by Star Ferry

September 3, 2010

Maybe it’s the effects of a week in Beijing, where two sunny days immediately after my arrival quickly gave way to an as-yet-unbroken streak of opaque skies, but this shot of the Hong Kong skyline has me yearning for bluer climes. I snapped this shot from the Star Ferry back in 2008, when a long [...]

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Passport Photos: A Study in Cultural Difference

September 1, 2010
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In between visas, residence permits, and student IDs, I’ve gone through a lot of passport photos over the past few years. And since I never remember to order 20 prints at a time, I end up getting new pictures taken every few months. And yet, they are never quite alike. In the United States, your [...]

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Snapshot: Chinatown Dragon Fighters

August 27, 2010

On Canal Street in Chinatown, even the fire station is China-themed. The “Chinatown Dragon Fighters” are otherwise known as Engine Company 9, Ladder Company 6 of the New York City Fire Department, and they’ve painted their garage door to proclaim this to the passing crowds. Excuse the brevity of this post — I’ve just gotten [...]

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Snapshots: Dancing Dragons

August 20, 2010

This was meant to appear last week as the final post as my series on Guizhou, but then I went to Richmond and forgot the charger to my laptop. So without further ado, the dragons and dragon boats of Shibing, Guizhou: Theundisputed highlight of our trip — a visit to the tiny town of Shibing [...]

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Exploring Manhattan’s Chinatown

August 17, 2010

When people hear that I’ve been living in China for two years and that I’m about to head back for a third, they inevitably ask how my parents feel about this. The assumption is that my parents must be begging me to come home, but that could not be farther from the truth. Although I’m [...]

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Expense Report: 6 Days in Guizhou

August 12, 2010

This is the second in an occasional series of “Expense Reports”  where I use my recent trips to examine the highly variable costs of travel in China. The first report covered the costs of Sichuan travel. In a Nutshell Trip Length: 6 days/7 nights Total Cost: 679 RMB ($100) Per Day: 113 RMB ($17) Starting [...]

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Guizhou’s Spicy-Sour Specialties

August 11, 2010

This week, I’m turning the spotlight on Guizhou, one of China’s least-famous provinces. Read my introduction to Guizhou and then subscribe to my RSS feed to automatically receive the rest of the posts in the series! Guizhou has all the staples of Chinese cuisine — noodles, hotpot — but puts its own distinctive hot-and-sour spin [...]

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Paiyang’s Propaganda

August 10, 2010

In Guizhou’s villages, thick ribbons of writing adorn even the most ramshackle buildings. Sometimes they are painted onto the bricks, sometimes they are written on fabric signs and pinned across a wall. Ever-present dust and faded colors make them easy to ignore. But they reward a moment’s scrutiny, for these inconspicuous strips of text are [...]

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Introducing Guizhou Province

August 9, 2010

Guizhou (贵州) is surely one of China’s least-famous provinces, at least among Western travelers. It lacks the famous karsts of Guangxi, the celebrated cuisine of Sichuan, or the political problems Xinjiang and Tibet. Once-obscure Qinghai leaped into prominence under tragic circumstances, when it was ravaged by an earthquake earlier this year. So far, no similar tragedy [...]

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Snapshot: Buying Thangkas in Tongren

August 6, 2010

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about my trip last year to Tongren, in the far east of Qinghai Province. The city is home to two art-schools-cum-monasteries that are, collectively, the capital of Tibetan Buddhist art in China. The monks and former monks paint bright, colorful images of bodhisattvas, called, thangkas, the best of which [...]

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