So I'm legal for another year. Well, a year and a bit, actually. The whole residence permit extension process went through without a hitch.... for my two colleagues. For me, well... I arrived just before lunch time this morning with colleague K to collect our shiny, new residence ...

And so it seems Chinese people are making themselves heard in France. But two little things stuck out at me, a little comparison suggests itself. In the second article, the one about Chinese protesting in Paris, we have this: Un rassemblement pour réaffirmer le soutien ...

So we picked up a few DVDs yesterday afternoon, among which was 李杨/Li Yang's 《盲山》/Blind Mountain. I'm wondering if this is going to turn into a "Blind" series, each film exploring another of modern China's social ills. If Li Yang is not careful, he might end up like Zhang Yimou, ...

So I didn't get time to finish all I wanted to do on this post this morning, and promised I'd get back to it this afternoon. Well, the day's classes are over, the housework is done, and so here goes....  I found three articles on Xinhuanet this morning, one in English, and ...

Some thoughts that have been ruminating on the remnants of my brain since that torch lighting ceremony in Greece not long ago.... I think it was the (well warranted) cynicism of this post that finally spurred me into writing these thoughts down... No, I don't think; I know. ...

We had to go to the Foreign Languages Bookstore on Wangfujing today, and, well, never take me to a bookstore- I'll happily wander around the store sifting through all the books for hours on end, closely examining anything of even the slightest interest. Anyway, we hadn't been ...

The vernal equinox has made its presence felt. This morning it was an apartment block further south than those that were lit up over the winter that was hit by the rising sun. It's almost perfectly due east of our lounge room window, maybe a centimetre or two south, and at this time of ...

We're back in Beijing. I'll tell you one thing: One way to guarantee you don't get a good night's sleep is to share a kang with people who have been getting up literally at the crack of dawn, or even earlier, for their entire lives. It doesn't help when you wake up at ...

It was still raining when we left home early yesterday morning. After sitting through a ridiculous traffic jam on the Third Ring, we eventually made it to Nongzhanguan, then hung a left and drove down to Dongzhimen then around the Second Ring to Deshengmen. Funny thing was, the ...

New Zealand has an election this year. Yes, I know, stating the bloody obvious. Everybody's seen intense coverage of the run-up to the election plastered all over the international media. Chinese people I pass on the streets say, "Hey, you look like a Kiwi! What do you think of the ...

Well, so far I've found nothing about Air New Zealand on the Chinese internet- maybe I need to figure out how to search properly. But I have found a report about the upcoming Qingming holiday.  清明时节放假三天 Three Days Holiday for Qingming ...

Just watched the second disk of that Country Calendar DVD I rambled on about this morning. I was disappointed to see it had only two programmes and an interview with the Country Calendar reporter, the guy who's been doing this programme since well before I can remember. But there's good ...

I still haven't taken lzh to New Zealand- I know, I know, I'm long overdue for a trip home, and she needs to see my homeland and meet my family- and so the only other Waughs she has met are Shushu and my parents. They're the only other Waughs to have visited Beijing. Well, ...

It's getting warm here in Beijing. Has been for a while now. I think we're in for a long, hot summer. It's much warmer now than I was expecting for this time of year. We've had some of the spring winds already, but we're back to still air and the murk that brings. Fortunately, although I ...

So just in time for International Women's Day, we get some middle-aged woman who seems to be roughly half a dozen cans short of a six-pack banging on our door looking for someone we've never heard of.... And then she runs up and down the stairs trying every other apartment in the ...

So yesterday afternoon, while lzh was still out somewhere, probably feeding her brother before making sure he could find his way to Deshengmen and get the right bus back to Yanqing, I suddenly decided what I needed most was fresh air and exercise. So I turned the computer off, grabbed ...

It feels kinda odd, considering I've actually only worked three days (not counting prep done last week and Monday), but there you go, the first week back is over and done with. Three days, because there were no classes Monday because the students were registering and collecting ...

Happy birthday, lzh!

This is way overdue. I actually watched Feng Xiaogang/冯小刚's new film Assembly/《集结号》for the first time at least a week ago, and the second time just after we got back from the village on, ummm, Tuesday? whenever... First up: Excellent film. Well worth it. Second: This ...

Found via an unusually relevant post at Public Address' Hard News, The Opinionated Diner returns to Auckland and is left with a rather sour taste in his mouth. First up, he's shocked by the general state of Auckland and its people. My reactions to that, of course, were quite ...