East Meets East

Battle: English of Indian vs. Chinese Origin

Mon, 12 Jan 2009 00:54:00 -0500

Liz! Apologies, apologies, apologies. December got the better of me but I’m back and ready to...

Sunday Book Market - Old Delhi

Mon, 01 Dec 2008 10:54:50 -0500

I’ll add explanations later — for now I’m just thrilled to have finally...

Eyes on Mumbai

Fri, 28 Nov 2008 08:07:00 -0500

Hi Aaron - Sorry about the delayed response. Yes, I’m fine – I spent the bulk of yesterday and today...

The Times of India: Terror attacks in Mumbai

Thu, 27 Nov 2008 08:33:00 -0500

The Times of India: Terror attacks in Mumbai: I’m 99.99% sure that today you could be found...

School Daze No. 3

Wed, 26 Nov 2008 10:36:00 -0500

1) ‘Alien’ is 外星人 (wai4xing1ren2), literally foreign-star-person. Nearly all of the...

Chinese Vocabulary Question

Tue, 25 Nov 2008 11:18:57 -0500

Aaron - How do you say ‘alien’ in Chinese? - Liz Just kidding, that’s not my post… I was just...

School Daze No. 2

Tue, 25 Nov 2008 10:10:00 -0500

Sorry you’re finding the web site hard to use, Liz. Of the three options, one is preferable,...

Picture to illustrate my previous entry. Stare at it and try to...

Mon, 24 Nov 2008 10:20:00 -0500

Picture to illustrate my previous entry. Stare at it and try to figure out what’s in the orange sauce (I think it was fish or chicken) while I beg for help…

Aaron! Please! I know it’s not cool to discuss the blog on the blog, but I need help with this thing. Right now I see three options: 1) I mail you my stuff and you post it; 2) I never post anything; or 3) We confer and you explain how this stupid website works. (Skype?)

I really enjoy the 1,2,3 lists, have you noticed?

I appreciated your last entry. I was just thinking that I had no idea what you were actually doing there — I was going to request a “Day in the Life” post — and voila!

I’ll try to post more this week as well (can’t promise every day), IF I can figure out how to put in pictures properly, etc. Let’s “interface” sometime this week.

- Liz

School Daze No. 1

Mon, 24 Nov 2008 09:14:00 -0500

Liz - This is Teacher Xu, my spoken language instructor. I have three teachers at the university...

Lion's Head 狮子头 (TIEL No. 2)

Sun, 23 Nov 2008 09:57:00 -0500

Liz - Your colleague’s food map of India is a testament to not only India’s culinary...

Aaron - Although I’ve been enjoying your food posts, I...

Sun, 23 Nov 2008 08:37:00 -0500

Aaron - Although I’ve been enjoying your food posts, I have to say, I think that the odds are against me in the India vs. China food competition. Indian food, while delicious, is not at all photogenic and thus not blog friendly. Photo-wise, most dishes fall into just a few categories:

1. Lumps of something (is it meat? is it a vegetable? no way to know until you try it!) in orangish-red sauce

2. Lumps of something in yellow sauce

3. Lumps of something without sauce

Even the most sincere attempts to take appetizing pictures of Indian food seem to fail. I have received this Photoshop project THREE TIMES via office forward from proud colleagues. I’m sure that all of these dishes, from the “special tea” in Mizoram to the “baked balls of wheat” (uhh, bread?) in Bihar, are delicious, but somehow the foods of India don’t look all that appetizing mixed up together in this picture.

Hairy Crabs 上海毛蟹 (TIEL No. 1)

Thu, 13 Nov 2008 09:51:00 -0500

Liz - Thanks for joining me! I was beginning to think after a few entries of me rambling to an...

I'm here! I'm here!

Sun, 09 Nov 2008 12:37:00 -0500

Aaron - I’ve been waiting to start this for a long time. That’s no accusation, by the way. As I’m...

China and the American Election

Mon, 03 Nov 2008 04:59:00 -0500

Liz - Lately, one of my favorite epistolary blogs has been The Guilfoile-Warner Papers from The...

Liz, As you know, I went to Tibet earlier last month during...

Sun, 02 Nov 2008 05:45:00 -0500

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, and then not so lovingly, called him by two of his self appointed names: Jimmy-Miguel. By we I mean myself and students from the university across town, Fudan University, some of whom are shown in the clip. The following moment is brought to you by Jimmy-Miguel as we find ourselves - as Paulina so desperately says without any consolation - stranded atop the Himalayas surrounded by a throng of Chinese tourists. About an hour earlier our bus had overheated and we hitchhiked to the top of the mountain. We did eventually hitchhike our way back down, but not without several of us suffering from severe altitude sickness and one particularly weak soul gaining an oxygen dependency (which, to my knowledge, still has not gone away). Like for most figures you come to hate in life, our disdain for Jimmy-Miguel did not come from this botched excursion or any single screw-up, but from a series of repeat, boneheaded lies and offenses. To reference our former blog and DFW, a Chinese tour is without a doubt a supposedly fun thing I’ll never do again. - Aaron

I feel great guilt over the delay of this inaugural entry

Sun, 02 Nov 2008 05:42:00 -0500

Liz - I finally pried open the doors of the Great Firewall with the help of some handy software! It...

天坛 The Temple of Heaven, a Taoist complex in Beijing, where the...

Sun, 26 Oct 2008 16:00:00 -0400

天坛 The Temple of Heaven, a Taoist complex in Beijing, where the Emperors of the Ming and Qing dynasties came (some more than others) for annual prayers to heaven for a good harvest. The other part of the encyclopedia entry from which I stole this description considered it a supreme achievement of traditional Chinese architecture, but (1) that is obvious and (2) I think it’s funny what Chinese people choose to be modest about and what to lavishly overpraise. This being said, it was very impressive. I think I might just be winking to you and/or our readership here. This is my attempt to introduce myself to our readers and engrain the fact that I’m in China into their brains. Also, note the very nerdy audio guide hanging around my neck.

A visual representation of our mission. (via)

Tue, 05 Aug 2008 15:18:00 -0400

A visual representation of our mission. (via)