After reading an article listing 8 reasons why Western women rarely marry Chinese men on The World of Chinese, I have to wonder: Is my husband completely different from most other Chinese men (he sure is extraordinary) or is it just way too convenient for us to stereotype a whole group of people (a group that […]
Monthly Archives: May 2014
I’m currently in the process of moving my blog from wordpress.com to wordpress.org. The blog is getting a redesign and will include much more pictures in the posts and thumbnails of pictures and illustrations on the homepage. I hope to be done with the move in the upcoming days, but I’m not sure if moving all the wordpress […]
For Christmas Eve 2013, I prepare a simple Austrian Christmas dish – sausages with sauerkraut and potatoes. While I’m in the kitchen looking for the right spices, I find pure MSG hidden behind other spices. I show it to my husband. He gets angry and starts a fight with his dad. They agreed that we […]
In November 2012, I’m visiting the Dragon’s Backbone Rice Terraces in Guangxi province. After a night spent in a guesthouse on one of the hills, I start a 5-hour long trek across the rice terraces to another village. I’m trekking with 3 Chinese guys who have also stayed in guesthouses on the hill. November is low […]
I’ll exchange the humid climate of coastal Guangdong for the dry climate of Central Europe tomorrow, but don’t worry – I’ve prepared lots of China-related posts to keep you entertained until I’m back in a few months’ time small talking with locals in China. It’s May 2013. Leaving Shenzhen during its moldiest season is probably not a very good idea. […]
In February 2014, one of my former co-workers who just had a baby girl stops me in my tracks: “Let me see your belly.” After looking at it, she concludes: “It’s really big. You’re wearing quite sexy clothes. You should wear more layers.” She says that on a sunny day with 21°C that reminds me […]
One of my husband’s friends is working as a trainer at a gym. It’s the trainers job to find people they can train. The competition is fierce and more often than not, he doesn’t have anyone to train. If he doesn’t have anyone to train, he earns about 1000 CNY a month (around 120 EUR or […]
After 11 exhausting weeks of early pregnancy, my in-laws arrive in Shenzhen to stay with us for a few months. I love being independent and I’ve always liked living on my own (and with my husband), but I am also a person who’s reluctant to admit that I might need other people’s help, so when […]
One day in the fall of 2013, I listen to two co-workers talking. One is a guy from Northeast China who’s 24, the other one is a woman in her mid-30s who has a 3-year-old child. She tells us how hard it is to find a place in a kindergarten in Shenzhen. The guy says: […]
China elevator stories 