China Travel

Everything to do with travelling in China

Open Mic Night In Suzhou

The masochist in me has long been craving the sick-nervous feeling I get when I play in front of an audience. Despite playing for years, I’ve only minimal talent. This, however, doesn’t curb my interest in belting out a few tunes any chance I get. Just before coming to China I was living in the …

April 22, 2007
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Survivor: China – The Best Worst Idea Ever

I like Survivor. There, I’ve said it. Please scroll down and immediately flog me in the comments. I don’t care. I’ve had this romantic notion of being trapped on a deserted island since I was a kid and saw Brook Shields’ (ahem) assets in The Blue Lagoon. When the reality TV show debuted back when …

April 19, 2007
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Time To Face The Book

After endless pestering from my friend Sarah, I’ve finally jumped on the Facebook bandwagon. I’m not a huge fan of social networking sites, mostly as I’ve just been over exposed to them. From back in the day when my friends were on Campus Kiss, and then migrated to Friendster and MySpace and now they all …

April 9, 2007
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The First And Last Day of Spring

Alright, it’s been all of five minutes or something since I posted my last entry – but this deserves mention, especially taking into account how much I bitched about the cold. Spring came the other day. It was great. All 24-hours of it. After wearing a coat, hoodie and undershirt last weekend, despite being officially …

March 30, 2007
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The Green Leap Forward

Apparently my little home-away-from-home province of Jiangsu is kickin’ ass in green goals met. Thanks to Jeremiah over at The Duck who led me to this China Dialogue article about Jiangsu province setting a shining example for possibly solutions to China’s massive environmental issues. Jiangsu’s contribution to China’s gross domestic product (GDP) has consistently ranked …

March 29, 2007
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MyChinaStart.com: A Good Place To Start

I was first introduced to MyChinaStart.com about a month ago by my buddy fiLi (his Chinalyst blog aggregator was interviewed on MyChinaStart). Then, today I heard from (the recently repatriated) Meg at Violet Eclipse that there was a PayPerPost opportunity related to it. The opportunity is done, so I wont get the offered $5.50 for …

January 14, 2007
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The Great China Divide: No Heat For You!

I laughed – laughed! – at the poor fools. Images of a crowd of Chinese standing there on the banks of the Yangtse cursing their northern neighbors who sat toasty warm in their centralized heating watching The Best of CCTV. The shivering swarms swearing generational damning profanity while praying the schizo-aircon unit that worked intermittently …

January 7, 2007
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New Year’s And A Few Beers

I spent my second New Year’s Eve in China with good form last night. I’ve mentioned previously that I’ve become a bit of an isolationist in recent months and have rarely ventured out into the Suzhou social scene – quite diametrical from my previous gregariousness. It’s certainly nothing against Suzhou or its nightlife, as it …

January 1, 2007
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The Library Project

Hey, my friend Tom, through his company Nomadic Marketing, has set up The Library Project, an ambitious and altruistic (as far as corporately sponsored altruism can be truly altruistic) goal of providing two local Dalian orphanages with libraries. Desks, chairs, reading mats, bookshelves and a bunch of books to fill them with. It's an admirable …

November 20, 2006
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A Bit About The Weather

One of the big reasons that, after a year and a half there, I moved south from Dalian was I feared battling through another northeastern winter. But, but, I'm Canadian… there's three things we Canucks all know: hockey, winter and how to make love in a canoe. Well folks, sorry to break the stereotype, but …

November 6, 2006
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