Sometimes I can’t even fathom the world of self-delusion that CSL (Chinese as a Second Language) planners in Taiwan live in. Yesterday, I saw an article in the TaibeiTaipei Times titled, Teachers seek edge over China.
Great, I thought. A sense of competition will be great for us students. Maybe the schools here [...]

Tonight, I saw Mission Impossible III with JT. It was pretty much what I expected, but there is one thing I’ve been noticing about American movies recently. Recently, it seems like the protagonists go to China a lot more than they used to. Aside from MI3, which I just saw, quite a [...]

I’ve known for quite a while that there are some Japanese proverbs which have very different meanings from the Chinese proverbs composed of the exact same characters. I think I’ve come across a similar situation with an English saying. Here it is:

A rolling stone gathers no moss.

What does that mean? Is “moss” [...]

One thing about living in Taiwan as an American is that people here already have a great deal of exposure to American things. As a result, many feel that they have a good understanding of things American, whether they be politics, traditions, dating customs or food. Unfortunately, much like Americans have very one [...]

After living here for over three years, there’s still a commonly used Chinese word I just can’t bring myself to say: 拜拜

You know, I’m not one to constantly blog about annoying things about Chinese culture on my blog. Nope. Talk Talk China’s got that corner of the web nailed. They’re up front about it, too. Right on the front of their page, they say

Having a bad “China day”? If so then you’ve [...]

One new thing I have to do for my first and second grader classes is to make some point cards. I give points to all of my students. I don’t give them any physical item, though. I just tell them when I give or take points, and I post their rankings on [...]

One peculiarity about Chinese ESL learners is that they usually want “English” names. Back when I was learning French, I didn’t take to calling myself Jean-marc; when I was learning Japanese, I didn’t call myself Taka. I just used my English name phoneticized into Katakana. I saw no need to change my [...]

I’ve been actively participating in some discussions about the Japanese whaling issue over on Darin’s blog. I don’t want to discuss the ethics of hunting endangered species, nor do I want to get into the complex legal background of the issue. What I’m more interested in is this question: Do right and wrong [...]

I’ve gotten way too busy with teaching and curriculum work to do any serious Chinese studying for quite a while. Thanks to my experiences while learning Japanese, I’m still an extensive reading believer, though. I still have one last bastion of Chinese reading in my life- bathroom reading material. I’ve been going [...]