A China Blog On Suzhou Expat Life

Returning To Dalian

I’ll likely be offline for the next few days, as later this afternoon I’m packing myself into a sleeper bus for the 15-hour journey from Suzhou to Dalian.
Though I’m always quite keen to go back up to my old stomping grounds in 东北, and Maggie’s thrilled to see her father for the first time since [...]

Linktastic V

It’s been a while since I’ve done a Linktastic entry (though a bunch of other posts have started to pollute the category). Anyway, I’ve a few sites/stories I’ve run across lately that deserve mention, but I can’t seem to muster the words/time for an entire post about each one.

A victory for Wangs the world over: [...]

No Sham, All Rock: Shamrock Open Mic

Right, so as I mention last post, Suzhou finally has a venue for any wannabe musicians to come out and get heard. I “opened” the Shamrock Open Mic Night last night and it was a modest success.
With no advertising, I fully expected to be the only one going up to play - something I was [...]

Open Mic Night In Suzhou

The masochist in me has long been craving the sick-nervous feeling I get when I play in front of an audience.
Despite playing for years, I’ve only minimal talent. This, however, doesn’t curb my interest in belting out a few tunes any chance I get. Just before coming to China I was living in the rootsy [...]

Put Down The Chalk & Pick Up The Language

My road through the Chinese language has been a bumpy one full of roundabouts and dead-ends. In the more than two years I’ve been here I’ve not had any formal Chinese education, and I’ve really no excuse for it.
I’m often praised and then quickly chastised by Chinese co-workers on my level of Chinese. When they [...]