It’s about time Brendan got some love for his skills! When he showed me around Beijing the summer before last, I was amazed at his Chinese. To me, he sounded completely indistinguishable from a native Beijinger. Admittedly, coming from Taiwan, the Beijing accent is a bit hard for me to judge, but [...]

I’ve been extremely lazy in working on the layout and presentation of this site, as regular readers can surely tell. The banner image that used to be at the top of this site was just the default image from the Wuhan theme, plus some text. It sucked.
In fact, it sucked so bad that [...]

Since my trip to the mainland, I’ve been mulling over my impressions of Shanghai and Beijing, and how they compare to the closest thing to a big city Taiwan has- Taibei. Before my vacation, I had a really distorted view of what the mainland was like. Living in Taiwan, I haven’t really had [...]

After touring the Forbidden Palace, Chris and I decided to go for some pizza at this great place I knew of near Beida. Unfortunately, we couldn’t find the place, so we ended up going to McDonald’s instead. They had an absolute monstrosity of a hamburger there, called the “World Cup” burger. It [...]

After a rough night of clubbing and drinking, I dragged myself out of bed early to go to the Forbidden city with my roommate, Chris. Chris is a tall, thin Canadian guy, who works in real estate. He’s a really cool guy with crucial exception- he’s a morning person. At 10AM, after [...]

I can’t believe I’m writing what I am right now, but since these are the feelings that pull at my heart, these are the feelings I must put to paper. I don’t want go home. I don’t know how to leave Beijing. In Taiwan, I have friends, an apartment, a job, and [...]

Last night, I went back to the same restaurant again with Martin, Shawn, Peter, Zhanqiang, and the two Aussie girls. I finally remember their names, too- Winnie and Queenie. We had more great food, more beer, more laughs with the boss, and more good times. After that, we decided to go to [...]

Despite it’s annoyances, I’m finding myself loving Beijing like no other place I’ve been. Not even that great weekend I had rollerblading around Vancouver when I was 20 compares to this. It’s as if I were born to come here. For years, I’ve been fascinated with all things Chinese, and now [...]

Yesterday, I met some interesting people. The first was a guitarist named Zhanqiang. I’m not sure how, but somehow Peter, an English guy I know from the hostel, met him yesterday. It’s a little amazing, since Zhanqiang and Peter are both incapable of speaking Each other’s languages. They both played a [...]

Today, I met Brendan O’Kane (Bokane). He showed me around the city a bit. First we got a meal at a Sichuan place, then we hit a local punk concert, and after that we went to a popular hangout for “intellectual lăowài”, and got some Xinjiang food. It was [...]