I am grateful this year to have been invited by podcast host Gail Zugerman to appear on her program Growing Older with Gusto. She asked me to present a cross cultural view on growing older. I admit the first time …
How did chop suey come to the US?
Food writer and scholar Andrew Coe’s Chop Suey: A Cultural History of Chinese Food in the United States traces the first US contact with China starting in 1784. On August 23, 1784, Samuel Shaw arrived at the mouth of the …
Voting as a Healthy Exercise of Democracy
A healthy democracy requires a regular exercise of voting rights. This year shows a very vibrant number in American voter turn-out. As we celebrate our democracy in the US by casting our votes, what does voting mean in China? Over …
Haunted Houses for Less
According to Haunted Houses have a Chilling Effect on the Property Market that materialized on The Economist, Hong Kong homebuyers flee from houses where untimely, unnatural deaths have occurred. Is this phenomenon a vague apparition or a measurable economic impact? …
Dammed if You Do, Dammed if You Don’t
CNN published China’s Three Gorges Dam is one of the largest ever created. Was it worth it? This comprehensive report on a Chinese large capital project is impressive for covering more than the usual choppy piece about China filled with …
Do we see things as they are?
“People only see what they are prepared to see.”― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature In my last blog, we learned that we hear what we want to hear. When images are symbols, how do we know what we see is what …
Professor Removed for Speaking Chinese?
In September, Professor Greg Patton of University of Southern California (USC) was removed from his post while trying to broaden his students’ worldly perspective in his August 20th seminar. In fact, he was giving a cross cultural lesson on filler …
What’s the Beef with Asian taste for American food?
The cultural answer to the East Asians’ low tolerance for Western food will take a whole chapter. In short, the Chinese palate and stomach is unaccustomed to a protein heavy American diet. Furthermore, a dairy rich diet (think alfredo sauce, …
What is the Chinese term for “grit”?
Chinese Characters: Profiles of Fast-Changing Lives in a Fast-Changing Land edited by Angilee Shah and Jeffrey Wasserstrom will challenge any statistical blandness that you may subscribe about China. Such facts as that over 90% of the Chinese population is ethnic …
Beijing Olympics 2008
I picked up China in 2008: A Year of Great Significance, a compilation of stories edited by Kate Merkel-Hess, Kenneth L. Pomeranz, and Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom, after I returned from China in 2019. The 2008 Olympics seemed so far away, …