Animals 
Children Wear Snoopy Shirts, Do Magic Tricks, Draw Their Dreams
(0)After teaching at a Chinese university for 10 months, I got to hang out with a younger group of students yesterday. A teaching colleague took me to her daughter’s elementary school for Children’s Day, when the kids put on a show for their parents. Each class staged its own performance. The third-graders I watched sang,… Read More ›
Pesky Mosquitoes Circle Like Vultures, Turn Skin Into Mass of Itchy Bumps
It’s mosquito season in Zhengzhou, which means a never-ending battle to keep the pesky insects from turning you into a mass of itchy bumps. We’ve got mosquitoes back in New Jersey, but not like the ones here. Chinese mosquitoes seem to be made of indestructible material that makes it almost impossible to repel or kill… Read More ›
China Cracks Down on Eating Endangered Animals
Good news for readers horrified by my recent post about rich Chinese people dining on tiger meat: China is cracking down on those who eat rare or endangered animals. By closing a legal loophole, authorities can now jail people for up to 10 years for consuming giant pandas, golden monkeys, Asian black bears, pangolins and… Read More ›
Rich Chinese Savor Tiger Penis Soup, Tiger Bone Wine
Tiger lovers, beware. What you are about to read will make you sick. One of the ways that China’s nouveau riche get their kicks is to watch an endangered tiger being slaughtered before dining on its fresh meat. It’s part of a big industry in China that includes the sale of tiger bones, eyeballs and… Read More ›
Trivia Contest Covers Three Musketeers, Windshield Wipers, Bats, Charge of Light Brigade
Which Asian river reverses course when it floods during the rainy season? What automobile part did Mary Anderson invent in 1903? How did the Battle of Balaclava end? What unit is used to measure torque? Athos and Porthos are two of the “Three Musketeers’’ in Alexandre Dumas’ novel. Who is the third musketeer? If you… Read More ›
Panda Death at Zoo Raises Questions About Living Conditions
I fell in love with pandas when Pat and I visited Chengdu’s Giant Panda Research Base, so it was disturbing to read about the horrible conditions the animals are kept in at our local Zhengzhou Zoo. After the recent death of a 7-year-old female panda at the zoo, news reports said the area where the panda… Read More ›
Stranger in a Strange Land 