Category: China
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Love for ground zero: Thoughts from an American who’s lived in Wuhan, China
Largely unknown to Westerners until a month ago, the city of Wuhan in Central China has gone viral. It’s become a place synonymous with words like pandemic, quarantine, black swan. While the global media has multiplied unfavorable views of the city, criticism against Wuhan has come from within China, as well. Consider, for example, the…
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Hong Kong International Airport to Mainland China (Shenzhen) by Boat: A Step-by-Step Overview
For those of you looking for information on the easiest way to get from Hong Kong International Airport (HKIA) to mainland China (e.g., Shenzhen), look no further. After having tremendous difficulty finding anything useful on the internet related to this topic before my recent arrival into Hong Kong and my immediately subsequent journey into Shenzhen…
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Nine Measures of Physical Beauty in China
It was the fall of 2015 when, just minutes into my first university lecture in central China, I found the eager eyes of thirty, all-female students transfixed on me, each one anticipating my response to a seemingly simple question: “Professor – what beauty traits do YOU appreciate most in a woman?” It is not the…
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Surviving China: 10 Tips for the Western Traveler
For all you Westerners who haven’t visited China but may want to in the future, I’m going to lay out a few tips for you. The list is far from exhaustive, but these considerations should help you prepare for a few of the many challenges one might confront while traveling through the “Central Kingdom”. Let’s jump right…
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Musings of a Shanghai Disney Debutant
On a Saturday in the summer of 2016, I found myself shoulder to head with the massive throng of visitors ready to enter and experience the single largest private investment China has ever known: a 5.5 billion dollar project known as Shanghai Disney. Looking across the sea of people at the gate (being 6’3” has…
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Balls and Bladders in Central China
Sunday – March 6, 2016 My brother says that problems are like armpits, because everyone has at least two. Over the last three weeks, while helping roll out Colorado State University’s new Masters of Tourism Management program here in Wuhan, China (aka the “Chicago of the East), I have found my brother’s incisive simile to be quite accurate. One unexpected…
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China Fattens Up Amid American Fears
Saturday, December 26, 2015: During my recent, fourteen-hour flight from Hong Kong to Chicago, I realized something: I’ve grown over the last six weeks. The jiggling and jostling of my belly during take-off was proof of that. Becoming suddenly aware of a little fat around the waste is a strange sensation for a guy who’s…
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The Bullet Train to Chairman Mao
Tuesday, December 8, 2015: Getting kicked off a train would not be a good way to start the weekend, but anything can happen on short excursions through central China. I’d boarded one of China’s state-of-the-art bullet trains just moments ago, and we were now barreling along at 300 plus kilometers per hour. My eyes attempted to…
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Sagging Through the Streets of Wuhan
Monday, November 15, 2015: Last Sunday, I had the chance to go to a Chinese church in Wuhan with my friend, Rita (that’s her English name, of course; most Chinese names are impossible for me to remember). As I walked across campus to meet her, happy little birds were singing in the trees overhead and…
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Welcome to Shanghai
Friday, Oct. 30, 2015: Da jia hao!! (Direct translation: “Big family good?” More accurate translation: “Hello everyone!”) I’m sitting in the lobby of my hostel now in Shanghai – listening to a Chinese news program in English, surrounded by other world travelers and sipping a $2 Americano. Upon arrival in Shanghai last night, after a…