Attn: parents of mixed Chinese kids

From the Global Times: The city’s Exit-Entry Administration Bureau on Monday strongly advised parents of biracial infants born in China with Chinese nationalities to make sure their paperwork is in order before arriving at local airports, after some 100 families have been prohibited from taking their infant children out of the country this year. Mixed …

Learning about the Li – Hainan’s largest minority

ChinaTravel.net has an excellent, and cleverly titled, regular feature called “Minority Report” in which the Ctrip-sponsored blog explores China’s numerous non-Han peoples. In the most recent edition, Minority Report: China’s betel nut-chewin’ islanders, the Li people of Hainan, Sascha talks about Hainan’s large Li minority population and their long history on the island. From the …

Interviewed by Offbeat Marriage

When Glee contacted me about being interviewed for her site, Offbeat Marriage, I was a bit unsure what I would be able to add to the discussion. Despite Maggie and I having been married for about four and a half years now, I spend very little time consciously aware of the fact that we come …

Facts are expensive, invaluable really

As the category for this post suggests, here is something done well: an RSA speech by Timothy Garton Ash. “Against every post-modernist in the world, Timothy Garton Ash maintains that there are facts, and that establishing them is both a political and a moral imperative – and an aesthetic one, too.”

Casey’s 1st Birthday

I did all my jawing about being a dad for 365 mostly-wonderful days last post, but would be failing in my fatherly rights of overly saturating this blog with talk of my son. We ended up dividing Casey’s first birthday celebrations into two. For his actual birthday we hit the local park and took him …

Father of the Year

Shortly after noon tomorrow I will have been a father for one year. Yep, Casey’s already one year old! I can hardly believe that we’ve hit his first birthday already. Oddly, at the same time, it feels like a century ago I was in that hospital room marveling at his wrinkly hands and unpracticed cries. …

Haikou Airport Pickup

I’ve learned to set my expectations low with service in China. I don’t mean for that to come off too jaded, but there’s only so many times you can say “it’s just done differently here”. So, when I do get amazing service, I love sharing it for both the benefit of anyone who happens upon …

Trip to Haikou’s Holiday Beach

We’ve had awesome weather here in Haikou for much of the last two weeks — in stark contrast to the cold and rain of our first week on the island. Not wanting to push our luck though, Maggie and I decided that we’d play hooky from the massive amount of stuff we still need to …