Learn Chinese and travel to China
This article was written by Marta Lovisolo, who studies in an high-school at Nanjing since September 2012. She lives with a Chinese family so, when she refers to her dad, mom, sister and so on she’s actually referring to the family that is hosting her.
Click here to read my interview to Marta, an insider point of view on the life of Chinese high-school students.
But I stop here. Let’s Marta do the talk!
At the beginning of 2012 I started to study how the Chinese import/export works.
Looking on Amazon.com, one of the first books that got my attention was Poorly made in China: An Insider’s Account of the China Production Game.
Paul Midler is an American middle man that, before writing this book, had twenty years of direct experience with the Chinese manufacturing industry.
He reveals, in a very entertaining way, the behind-the-scenes of the “Chinese manufacturing and exportation game.”
From one side there are the foreign importers that are willing to outsource their production but don’t know how (or don’t want) to deal with all the hassles of this process. So they hire Midler to take care of it.
From the other side there are the Chinese exporters, who often offer a cheaper price than the one they can afford with the only goal of securing a new, greedy customer.
Here is where the game starts. [Read more...]
“Rather go without salt for three days than without tea for a single day,” Chinese Proverb.
I’m in love with Chinese tea. I drink it every day and every time I come back to Europe I bring some nice tea packages to my family and friends. Most important, I bring a ton of tea for myself.
My favorite Chinese tea is the Long Jing, the green tea produced close to the West Lake of Hangzhou. I also like flower tea and Pu’er, the fermented tea from Yunnan Province.
If you do a quick search on the internet you’ll find a lot of information about Chinese tea.
So I decided to limit this first article to two topics that I found interesting: the different classes of Chinese tea and the most famous tea brands of China (for each class of tea there are many different brands, for instance you have the Long Jing green tea from Hangzhou, the Bi Luo Chun green tea from Tai Hu and so on). [Read more...]
Shot by the photographer Luca Locatelli. Visit the whole gallery at lucalocatelli.com.
I heard about the Mosuo bits and pieces at a time talking to anthropologists and backpackers. They are a Chinese ethnic minority living around Lugu Lake, on the border between Yunnan and Sichuan province. I had the idea that they were a matriarchal tribe and I believed men among them were reduced to sex objects. Mosuo men didn’t even have to work!
“Maybe I could move there,” I admit I thought [Read more...]
I ask myself whether in my situation she would lose face or not…
This year I find my April fools joke on Repubblica.it, one of most important Italian newspapers, while I taste my coffee and delete the usual spam from my email account: The prime minister Monti to China “Invest in Italia.”
I smile and think when, in the middle of the European debt storm, I attended the last [Read more...]
Chinese Merchants.
“kuai kuai kaui!” is the mantra you hear along the streets of Beijing, where there is not a market: Beijing is a market.
Luxury market at Xidan Square, Wang Fu Jing or the Village in San Li Tun; antique market at Liu Li Chang; fake market at the Ya Shou or at the Silk Market in Guo Mao; farmers’ market through the secondary streets full of villagers that come at night riding their horses and run away every time the police arrives; sex market inside the red light massages parlors. [Read more...]
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How to pee on the street…
Where do I start from?
The Beijiners that every summer wander with the t-shirt rolled-up on the stomach to get some fresh air; the Qingdao people puking in Pijiu Jie (Beer Street); the hygiene (?!) of the restaurants kitchens among the draining of dirty waters, garbage of epic dimension and fishes beheaded on the wet floor; the loud spits, so popular all over the Middle Kingdom; the parents that push the little children to pee on the sidewalks; the free burps at office or the followers of Schwarzenegger that arrive at the gym without t-shirt and let a ring of sweat on each bench?
In Beijing even the taxi drivers get lost. Then they scream: [Read more...]
In Shanghai there are so many prostitutes that I got curious and I did some researches about prostitution in China. One of best source of information on the topics is Red Lights: The Lives of Sex Workers in Postsocialist China.
According to the local police, in China there are seven categories of prostitutes (see N. Dougherty’s master thesis for details): [Read more...]
In ancient China, the Dragon was associated with the emperor. Here, the Dragon at the Summer Palace of Beijing, the summer residence of royal members in the end of the Qing Dynasty.
Today 23 January 2012 is the first day of the Year of the Water Dragon. The Dragon is the only mythical creature among the twelve animals of the Chinese zodiac (the Rat, the Ox, the Tiger, the Rabbit, the Dragon, the Snake, the Horse, the Ram, the Monkey, the Rooster, the Dog and the Pig).
According to Chinese astrology, the years of the Dragon are times of change. However, when water is the driving element (instead of earth, metal, wood or fire), the transformations are minor as the Water Dragon is more patient than the other Chinese Dragons and he [Read more...]
Train ticket office at Milan’s China town. 火车票 (huǒchēpiào) means “train ticket”, where 火 means “fire” and 车 means “vehicle”. Hence, 火车 literally means “vehicle of fire,” that is “train”.
Maybe it is because of its special glamor. Or because since the economic crisis began it became quite fashion.
“Ahhh the crisis, used to say my grand mother…”
No matter the reason, every time I come back to Italy I receive a ton of questions about China. Last time even my primary school teacher, who didn’t talk with me since ages, came to say me hello:
“How do they cook the dogs?”
“We can see the Great Wall from the moon, right?”
“Is it true that in China the water is so polluted that your skin will peel off, if you take a shower every day?”
It’s time to debunk some urban legends about China…
Dog meat is really expensive. The cheapest – and then the most popular – are chicken and pig meats. Hence, the worst case is to receive chicken meat while you ordered dog, not the other way around.
