Kurt Groetsch @ OldTasty.com

That forecast doesn’t lie: it’s been dry and dusty all day today, so much so that the sky’s turned orange on this side of town. This happens all the time in Beijing in the spring — the region averages a little under two inches of rain between October and March. Add in the fact that […]

This one’s for Brian Marston, whose “Breakin’ @ The Commonspace” Saturdays seem to be taking off.

Can’t the State Department’s spokesman get a .gov account instead of blasting these things out via Hotmail? Every time one of these shows up in my inbox, I halfway expect it to be touting cheap Viagra, available online without a prescription.

While I’m at it, let’s take a look at this paragraph:
Terrorist actions may include, but […]

There are a lot of traditions (and superstitions) surrounding pregnancy, childbirth and the first year of a baby’s life in China. While some of them sound strange or downright bizarre to Westerners, it’s important to remember that for the most part, they originated in the countryside where infant mortality was high and formal education scarce.
One […]

Cui Jian’s bad luck in Beijing continues. There’s a rumor making the rounds that because the Deep Purple concert later this month is a “special cultural event,” Cui Jian’s opening set will be limited to six songs in Beijing only. He still gets to play his full 15-song set in Shanghai and Guangzhou, but that’s […]

Cui Jian MP3s:

Flying (5.0 MB)
Get Over That Day (5.3 MB)
Solution (4.8 MB)
Wild in the Snow (7.1 MB)

Poor Cui Jian. He may be the godfather of the Chinese rock scene, but he sure has a hard time lining up performances in his home country. His last national tour was way back in 1990 when he was […]

My way to the office in the morning isn’t exactly the prettiest in Beijing — lots of concrete, lots of construction and dusty sidewalks — but it’s interesting in its own way. This morning it was the bus stop that’s being reconfigured, where workers were moving pre-fab office blocks from one spot to another. Usually […]

I’m coming up on the anniversary of my move to Beijing, and while it hardly seems like it’s been a year since I arrived, it also means the end is near. I’ll be returning to the States sometime in July for my sister’s wedding, and I plan to do some traveling before then, but I […]