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A Monday Matinee
As the temperature and humidity climb in Hangzhou interest in my brilliant expositions of the eroterica of biotechnology fades. So I concede to the relaxations of summer by offering to show instead a new American film, a documentary on health care. With apologies to Moore and the Weinstein brothers, the only available copy was a […]
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Circumstance and Pomp
I t’s commencement week at ZheDa = ZJU = Zhejiang University. (Since the Chinese language doesn’t have letters, it can’t form “initials”, but it does have syllables, each corresponding to a character, so it can leave out all but a few key ones, leaving a shortened, but euphonious expression.) A little late by American standards. […]
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Bigbrotherliness
[mouse click on a photo to enlarge it] Some of my readership (i.e. one of the four) have asked about internet access in China. Let’s consider Wikipedia, about whose inaccessibility I have groused previously. The public facts go something like this: in the fall of 2005, when Microsoft and Yahoo and Cisco Systems, were falling […]
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Earth Tones
Three months on, and not a single health problem, unless you consider a marked increase in farting a health problem. Not surprising to me, given that my intestinal flora has doubtless been wholly revamped and my dietary intake qualitatively changed. Though I’m not aware of any mathematical models that would predict the direction of the […]
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Routines
[mouse click on a photo to enlarge it] You once wrote that mostly you were curious about everyday life in Hangzhou. Well, I’m taking a little break from my Saturday morning routine, which is housekeeping day. I put through (usually) two washer-loads of laundry, subsequently to be hung on window-ledge racks to dry. I dust […]
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The People’s Physiognomy
[mouse click on a photo to enlarge it] I can tell that I’m living in a communist country, (only!) because everybody gets a week off for May Day, the international workers’ holiday. I spent some of that holiday in Hong Kong, the second part of the “one country, two systems” duality, rampantly capitalistic, but not […]
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Supper was…
[mouse click on a photo to enlarge it] …a small fish, perch, more or less, steamed in a wok with ginger, scallions and beer, and still swimming 30 min before I ate him. A Chinese would have recognized it as authentic, if a little amateurish. How they manage to wield a clever to deliver such […]
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To Each According to his Aggressivity
I bought a bicycle yesterday (275 Yuan, divide that by 8 for dollars); granted a simple model not even with gears. But, I think robust, serviceable and typical of those on the streets. I took it on my maiden voyage to the University today – about 25 min – I can’t tell you exactly how […]
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Chinese Scatology
[mouse click on a photo to enlarge it] Lest you all thought the squat-toilets were a relic of a hard-scrabble past, let me tell you that a newly constructed, first-rank Chinese medical school is equipped just so. One is forced to the conclusion that it is the considered opinion of Chinese architects and public health […]
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Settling In
[mouse click on a photo to enlarge it] My apartment is more than adequate in terms of space; I’ve spread myself out quite luxuriously. It’s a very typical Chinese dwelling, clustered among 20 or so apartment houses fenced off unto themselves, with a main gate on one of the large east-west drags in the western […]