Daughter, whose umbilical hernia starred in one or two old entries now has a new navel. There's a scar on it, and it doesn't stick out like it used to. She was not, technically, a "special needs" or "waiting" child, but there are things that are not like other children - the scar on her abdomen is already fading, but there are other, less obvious things. Being raised... more

"lingyang"="adopt"

My fellow Floridian Dave Thomas seemed like an interesting guy, as far as CEOs of fast-food giants go (no, not this Floridian Dave Thomas, but the one with the daughter named Wendy). His was the first burger joint to offer a salad bar. And he was the founder of the Dave... more

Mao's famously big face is looking a little bit darker thanks to vandalism (or at least it was before the cleaning crews got finished).

A guy down on his luck threw "something flaming" at the giant portrait overlooking Tiananmen Square. The painting didn't catch fire, but it got a little sooty.

(The Dalai Lama, that notorious anti-Mao "splittist," probably wasn't responsible - he's just announced... more

How do you say "Bueller? Bueller?" in Mandarin?

I've been looking at the programs in which American yayloos like me go to China and teach English again. (That is, I have again been looking, not that I would be notionally teaching English again. Maybe I shouldn't be trusted with this language after all.)

Anyway, I found this one, Worldwide Language Study, which has an awfully sunny and green image... more

Review: My Mei Mei by Ed Young.

Ed Young is both Chinese born and an American adoptive parent of Chinese children. He's got stacks of Caldecotts.

This book tells the story of how Antonia, his daughter, got her little sister in China. It's a true story, as near as I can tell. We were sort of hoping to sling this... more

Beijing Ancient Observatory

OK, so what I was saying about toxic counterfeiting? That isn't the only bit of advanced biochemistry that China's contributing to the world. (And it's not like... more

Kongfuzi, better known on this side of the Prime Meridian as Confucius, outlined one of the world's clearest and most durable ethical systems. Thousands of years after writing his Analects, he's still got admirers among scholars (and bloggers!) around the world. And although viewed as a dangerously counter-revolutionary imperial influence during the... more

So, back to my notes on the I Ching, that cornerstone of Chinese culture. If you want to know China, there's no way around the I Ching.

After the wise advice of the last hexagram, which was all about hanging in there and keeping on keeping on, we come to the inevitable stopping and backing away. Not all courses are worth following.

What's the character mean? The character for dun shows three footprints over a... more

I'm sort of breaking a promise to myself by writing this, since all the talk about the recent unpleasantness at that school in Virginia is really part of the problem.

But, predictably enough (at least for those with blackened, cynical hearts), the Asian-American community is the target of new social pressures. Which is a clinically detached way of saying that things like this are going to be more common, at least for a while: a Chinese-American student (apparently,... more

Do you remember the time not so very long ago when I got all het up over Vladimir Putin offering citizens money to make more Russians the old-fashioned way, by putting babies in Russian mommies' tummies?

As opposed to, oh, maybe taking babies out of social welfare institutions?

Well, apparently, the Russians aren't the only one of China's neighbors to offer money to people to create... more