East Meets East: Archive

Battle: English of Indian vs. Chinese Origin

Liz! Apologies, apologies, apologies. December got the better of me but I’m back and ready to restart our project for the new year. I actually just finished finals at school and now have an extremely long holiday until mid-February. Unlike the rest of the city, I have no plans to fly or train anywhere during Spring Festival, so with any luck I’ll be posting regularly. My grad...

Jan 12th

1 note

Sunday Book Market - Old Delhi

I’ll add explanations later — for now I’m just thrilled to have finally figured out how to add pictures!

Dec 1st

Eyes on Mumbai

Hi Aaron - Sorry about the delayed response. Yes, I’m fine – I spent the bulk of yesterday and today sitting in my blissfully dull office following the events in Mumbai online. There was very little discussion of the attack at work, aside from an email exchange between some of my expatriate colleagues – primarily on whether or not, in light of the abject conditions in which millions (HUNDREDS of...

Nov 28th

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The Times of India: Terror attacks in Mumbai →

I’m 99.99% sure that today you could be found sitting at your desk in Guragon sending nonsensical “epiphanies” to your personal e-mail, but please let us know that you’re fine. Incidentally I didn’t go to school today (partly in remembrance of Thanksgiving, mostly to work on grad school applications) and followed the whole disaster from home. It’s clear that...

Nov 27th

1 note

School Daze No. 3

1) ‘Alien’ is 外星人 (wai4xing1ren2), literally foreign-star-person. Nearly all of the time, Chinese really is this practical. 2) About your treat/brainteaser, I want to first mention that I used to do the same when I occupied a desk in Los Angeles. Although I don’t think I ever reached this level of cryptic! Now, for me each one of those words is representative of a different...

Nov 26th

Chinese Vocabulary Question

Aaron - How do you say ‘alien’ in Chinese? - Liz Just kidding, that’s not my post… I was just sorting through my email. I can’t access my personal email at work, so I send a lot of miscellaneous thoughts to myself from my work email address to look at later. They tend not to be too fleshed out, as I assume I’ll know what I was thinking of later. Here’s a treat/brainteaser from few weeks ago...

Nov 25th

1 note

3 tags

School Daze No. 2

Sorry you’re finding the web site hard to use, Liz. Of the three options, one is preferable, one I’m okay with as a last resort, and one is absolutely not allowed. You can guess which reaction matches with which option. We’ll figure this one out - after all, aren’t you a high powered editor now? Don’t you have minions to do these things for you? Today, meet...

Nov 25th

Nov 24th

School Daze No. 1

Liz - This is Teacher Xu, my spoken language instructor. I have three teachers at the university and twice a week Teacher Xu graces us with her wisdom of Chinese oral grammar and equally wise fashion choices. As much as we all talk together in class, I still know remarkably little about Teacher Xu: 1. Teacher Xu is from the northeast of China where they eat a lot of roast pig. 2. Teacher Xu...

Nov 24th

Lion's Head 狮子头 (TIEL No. 2)

Liz - Your colleague’s food map of India is a testament to not only India’s culinary variety but also to its citizens’ finesse with photoshop! As for your criticism of Indian food not being photogenic, I mean, hasn’t it been proven that color in food adds to the enjoyment of it? It reminds me of that scene in Hook when Peter teaches the Lost Boys to imagine their food and...

Nov 23rd

Hairy Crabs 上海毛蟹 (TIEL No. 1)

Liz - Thanks for joining me! I was beginning to think after a few entries of me rambling to an entity named Liz that readers would start questioning my sanity. Thank you for stopping the inevitable intervention. As for your “requisite introduction,” what kind of Indian temple doubles as an amusement park? It reminds me of the time I voluntarily entered the Church of Scientology in...

Nov 13th

I'm here! I'm here!

Aaron - I’ve been waiting to start this for a long time. That’s no accusation, by the way. As I’m sure you know, I have no idea how to start a blog and no interest in learning. So, to begin – thanks for setting this up, writing the first entries, and making it look cool. Pictures! Videos! It really does look snazzy. The requisite introduction: After collecting enough horror stories in Kyrgyzstan...

Nov 9th

China and the American Election

Liz - Lately, one of my favorite epistolary blogs has been The Guilfoile-Warner Papers from The Morning News. For a couple months now, they have covered the presidential beat, bandying statistics, quizzing each other on the campaigns, and colorfully analyzing the media like only the former editor of McSweeney’s can (i.e. “the dean of liberal blogdom, Markos Moulitsas”). I like...

Nov 3rd

Watch

Liz, As you know, I went to Tibet earlier last month during national holidays. The train ride to there and and back was brilliant, as were all the monasteries we visited. Some of the more frustrating moments however came from our tour guide, an unfunny, unprepared fake who insisted on speaking to me exclusively in Spanish despite the fact that he did not actually speak Spanish. We lovingly,...

Nov 2nd

I feel great guilt over the delay of this...

Liz - I finally pried open the doors of the Great Firewall with the help of some handy software! It was a downward battle for a long time: the worst part about Chinese censorship is that you aren’t even given a reason for why you are being denied access. A “connection denied” screen just appears, black on white. From what I’ve heard and read, all net traffic from China...

Nov 2nd

1 note

5 tags

Oct 26th

Aug 5th