February | 2012 | Dust and the City

Browsing All Posts published on »February, 2012«

Men and Women in Beijing

February 6, 2012

When I first moved to Beijing I tried to get out a lot and see the city. Sometimes I went on hiking tours to the Great Wall, or networking events and met other foreigners there. The one consistant message I got from foreign women is that they both love and hate living here. They can […]

Weekend Special Edition

February 4, 2012

This morning I woke from a dream about Kate Adie. If for some reason, you don’t know her, she was a BBC war correpondent from Northern Ireland to Yugoslavia to Beijing to the first Iraq war. Several years ago I read her book The Kindness of Strangers and loved it so much that I really […]

The Russian Connection

February 3, 2012

Today my colleague asked me to have a chat with an interview candidate, in order to judge her English ability. She was from Inner Mongolia (which is a province of China). I asked her why she chose to study Law, and she said actually it wasn’t her real choice, she had to choose between Law […]

The Spirit of Beijingers

February 1, 2012

It was a clear bright day today. I went to the park at lunch-time to use the exercise machines. I was wearing my ski-pants. My face hurt from the cold. I strolled through the usual bunches of people who are either doing some group activity or else sitting around aimlessly (in the sub-zero weather) watching […]