This past Saturday, I tried something I told myself I would never do while in China. Here is how it went: a ‘doctor’ suctioned small glass jars to my back by lighting an alcohol soaked cotton swab on fire to suck…
Adulting in China
I came to China to escape the corporate nightmare and now I’m living it. Part of living abroad is this idea to escape the real world. Sort of like, I’ll come to China and it doesn’t matter what I do…
What it's like go to to rural China
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…
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?
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.
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…
Terracotta warriors, biang biang noodles, and other things you can't find in Shanghai Part I
Parts of western China seem trapped between the ravages of 1970s Russian communism and pre-1920s Chinese imperialism
Why do we stop writing?
I’ve been thinking about this a lot about over the past several weeks. Do we stop writing because we have too many stories to tell or because we have too few? And when we do stop, how do we get ourselves…
When you're away from a home that isn't quite your home
If my life were a movie, right now would be a great time for a montage. This would be the kind of montage (set to a Jay-Z song, naturally) that has cutaways of work days under fluorescent lights, Terminal two of Hongqiao airport,…