Bob in China

  • About Bob
Illustration of a bird flying.
  • The Red House

    Given that Changsha was original stomping grounds of Mao Zedong, you might think that the “Red House” — my abode here — is connected to his life and legacy.  But not so.   Mao never slept here. But the house has its history.  It was built in 1914, by Yale University, which established the Xiangya Medical […]

    February 28, 2012
  • Boar’s Wallow

    Boar’s Wallow.  Now that’s a poetic name!  It’s the Naxi name for a small mountain village in northwestern Yunnan Province, which name loses its bucolic flavor in China Post’s Mandarin designation Xinshang Xiacun, something like “New Respect Lower Village”.  Boar’s Wallow is less optimistic, but more to the point. The Naxi are a people of […]

    February 10, 2011
  • Hāilìlùyà

    Nuremberg is a better choice than Kunming if you need to indulge your Christmas nostalgia.  But if you happen to be in Kunming, why not give it a try? I often bicycle past the apparently generic Protestant church on Peoples’ Avenue West, and when I saw the Christmas decorations go up, I was drawn to […]

    December 28, 2010
  • Magical Valley

    There is something inherently voyeuristic in my desire for close encounters with rural Yunnan.  Chinese villages are a world apart from Chinese cities, and the old aphorism of being a great place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there applies. In the lumpy-bumpy karst mountain region a few hundred kilometers east of Kunming […]

    December 2, 2010
  • The Train to Qujing

    Qujing is the second city of Yunnan Province, an hour and a half east of Kunming, unremarkable as far as I can judge, and a chosen destination only because of a friend there, of the Naxi minority, who is studying English at the teachers’ training college. The train-ride to Qujing is remarkable, in its cluttered, […]

    November 23, 2010
  • Of Dragons and Bellybuttons

    It was the late Martin Gardner who introduced me to the interesting ecclesiastical debate over whether Adam and Eve had bellybuttons.  Given Moses’ (a pen name for God) account of their in- / con- ception, it is clear that they were not born viviparously to a mammalian mother, and so would not have the bumpy […]

    November 16, 2010
  • Sculptured Earth

    Yunnan is a mountainous province and home to many of China’s ethnic minorities; not coincidentally, it is one of the poorest provinces in China.  Some 150 km north of the provincial capital of Kunming there lies a region known as “Red Earth”, with villages perched at 2,500 meters below peaks at 3,200 meters.  As with […]

    November 12, 2010
  • Begging to Differ

    The majestic mountains, the intensely deep blue sky with its blotches of white clouds, the grand architecture of Lamaist monasteries and temples, the distinctly handsome features of the Tibet people, their nomadic tents with herds of yak, sheep and goats — who cannot be impressed?  Words fail me, as they often do, so I suggest […]

    July 3, 2009
  • Pain in the Wrist

    My earlier bout with tenosynovitis had cooled off several months, but had announced its return soon after my arrival in Wuhan.  After a month of tolerating it, I decided it was time to seek medical help. Secretly I hoped Chinese physicians might have some alternative approaches of coping with the malady — which I believe, […]

    May 23, 2009
  • Acts of Violence

    Act 1.  Returning from lunch at the student cafeteria yesterday, a guy stopped my on the stairs and asked, very politely, if he could talk with me.  Nothing unusual in that; it’s nearly a daily occurrence, as students of English want to show off their skills. I’ll call this guy Frank — because he was. […]

    May 22, 2009
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Bob in China

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