Things you will always see on a trip to rural China: A snake slithering inside your village hotel. A snake’s head snapped in half in front of a crowd after it was found inside the village hotel. Girls going up hiking trails wearing…
The Shilin Night Market, a pork-belly-shaped stone, and other things you can only find in Taiwan
The plastic sheet doors bring a cool air and tanks of giant crabs softly scraping at the edges of the water, abalone, mollusks, spindly lobsters, sweet shrimp, tiger shrimp, giant shrimp, geoducks, mussels, oysters, and coral-colored fish. It’s dizzying and intoxicating and I want to eat all of it.
Freedom
“Foreign girls are so brave. Your parents cut you off at 18 and then you’re left on your own. I wish people in China did something similar.” I nod, silently wishing that I could still spend the rest of my manicure finishing…
Shanghai Summer
The bead of sweat forms at the nape of my neck and travels to the small of my back. We breathe in the warm air, gulping sea water in the Shanghai humidity. My shirt sticks to the back of my…
Things I'll miss about Russia and things I've missed about Shanghai
Not having to confront my mortality every time I cross the street..
The Yellow Mountain
“The Lonely Mountain! Bilbo had come far and through many adventures to see it, and now he did not like the look of it in the least.”
Living in China is dangerous
.. isn’t it?
Cherry-Apple Crisp
Making a dessert for a potluck should be considered cheating. My kitchen scale sighs under the weight of the brown sugar, the gluten-free flour, and the butter. It heaves as I upturn 1/4 of a cup of rolled oats into the bowl, kneading…
The thing that always happens to writers
When I don’t write for long stretches of time, it’s not because I have nothing to say, but because I find that I don’t have the words to fully express what it is that I have to say. I’ve started and stopped entries…
An apartment, a boyfriend, and a dog
There are times where I am afraid to fall into the rabbit hole of my own picket fence nightmare.
36 Hours in Macau
In which we drink Port, bet on Greyhouds, and I climb a Portuguese fortress in the pouring rain.
Terracotta warriors, biang biang noodles, and other things you can't find in Shanghai Part II
In which we finally see the terracotta warriors and I search in vain for non-squat toilets in Western China.. The first day in Xi’an, I learn three things: When you are on the back seat of a tandem bike on…