Chinese | Chinese
Jan.26.2010
My name is James Kuai. I am 29 years old, a resident of the U.S., but a citizen of the People’s Republic of China. I have lived and worked in West Los Angeles for about a year. I don’t know when exactly it started, but for a long while, many times when I am driving on the highway, a voice in my...
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Dec.21.2009
This hilarious rejection slip is from a Chinese economic journal. Had I been the recipient, it is unlikely I may have kept quiet.
Here is the note (quoted in The Financial Times):
We have read your manuscript with boundless delight. If we were to publish your paper, it would be impossible for us to...
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Oct.06.2009
Despite its roller-coaster economic upheaval, China still remains one of the few places in the world with a lifestyle characterised by basic simplicity which almost resembles child-like innocence. Most of the people I have met in China are simply down-to-earth curious about non-Chinese. They are so...
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Aug.24.2009
Having recently seen an article about copycat covers (see post before last), when I saw the NYT review of Woman from Shanghai by famed Chinese author Xianhui Yang, I did a literal double take. Mr. Yang's book gets a strong review, yet the cover reflects nothing of its content: privation, starvation...
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Aug.09.2009
I am crazy about Japanese books. It started way back with Yukio Mishima and the Sea of Fertility Cycle with begins with the brilliant Spring Snow. I've read Murakami and his work, and some of the classic Japanese authors like Kawabata and Ogai. I have also some contemporary writers like the...
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Jul.12.2009
I am finally peaceful enough to write after a health scare that sucked away all oxygen for nearly a year. The last three weeks turned nightmarish, because my eyes were to be implanted with medicine at St. Mary's on Wednesday. A foreign object was going to be plugged in near my retina. After...
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Jun.03.2009
June 3, 2009, Trento, Italy
I’d been living in Beijing for almost six months on the fifth anniversary of the June 4, 1989, Tiananmen Square Massacre.
Our area of Beijing, between People’s University and Peking University (referred to as Ren-da and Bei-da, their Chinese names), had become tense and...
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Apr.04.2009
[JOURNAL ENTRY, JANUARY 2005:]
Here in Shanghai, the golden city that attracts opportunity-seekers from all over the country, you see a vast range of Asian faces. There are the square, flat-planed ones from the north; the almond-eyed, somewhat Polynesian ones from the south; and some that are so...
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Apr.04.2009
[JOURNAL ENTRY, OCTOBER 2004:]
There are about a billion and a half Chinese, and they all seem to ride the subway at the same time that I do. Still, it’s interesting to watch people. In China, as elsewhere, girls who really like a guy always look at him in the same way. And when they don’t really...
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Apr.04.2009
[JOURNAL ENTRY, OCTOBER 2004:]
The Chinese young people all know Western pop music. But they particularly revere the Carpenters and it is not unusual to hear “Yesterday Once More” booming out of the shopping mall sound systems. I cannot tell you the number of times I’ve heard that song swirling...
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