Mostly Sunny in Shanghai

buzzfeedfood: The phrase “exciting holes” might speak to you in...

Fri, 14 Jun 2013 00:48:28 +0800

The phrase “exciting holes” might speak to you in a way that’s not related to food. That’s ok.

31 Eggs In Exciting Holes

Wow! This blows my mind! I love eggs.

gjmueller: Community Bonding Protects Your Happiness in Times...

Fri, 14 Jun 2013 00:43:54 +0800

gjmueller:

Community Bonding Protects Your Happiness in Times of Stress

Emerging research suggests that social cohesion across communities can help others cope better with crises, and improve happiness among individuals.

Economist Dr. John Helliwell and colleagues from the University of British Columbia in Canada believe this shows that part of the reason for this greater resilience is the fact that humans are more than simply social beings, they are so-called “pro-social” beings. In other words, they get happiness not just from doing things with others, but from doing things both with and for others.

image via flickr:CC | RodrigoFavera

"The big insight here is that younger adults are not indifferent to privacy, as many seem to believe."

Fri, 14 Jun 2013 00:42:01 +0800

“The big insight here is that younger adults are not indifferent to privacy, as many seem to believe.”

- Our director Lee Rainie, who aids the AP’s Martha Irvine in shedding light on the recent misconception (in light of NSA findings) that young people don’t care about privacy.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=191207581

(via pewinternet)

Yes young adults are self-conscious and independent. Why wouldn’t they care about privacy?

The Chinese Language Institute: Westerners need Mandarin to work in China

Wed, 12 Jun 2013 23:52:01 +0800

The Chinese Language Institute: Westerners need Mandarin to work in China:

studycli:

In the past, the job market for Westerners in Asian had been very lucrative. Now, Westerners are seeing their job prospects hinge on one key skill – the ability to speak the Mandarin language. With more Chinese studying abroad and returning to China upon graduation being a native…

pacificstand: ucresearch: Debunking the Myths of...

Wed, 12 Jun 2013 23:46:59 +0800

pacificstand:

ucresearch:

Debunking the Myths of Happiness

Sonja Lyubomirsky, UCR Professor of Pyschology, sat down with the Greater Good’s Jason Marsh to talk about how our assumptions about what will and won’t bring us happiness are often flat-out wrong.

Sonja Lyubomirsky: For example, marriage does make people happy, but the most famous study on marriage shows that the happiness boost only lasts for an average of two years. We also know that passionate love—the love that media and movies and literature tell us that we should all be experiencing—tends to dissipate over time. If love survives, it tends to turn into what’s called “companionate love,” which is really more about deep friendship and loyalty. But because our culture holds passionate love up as an ideal, we think that there must be something wrong with us when our relationships aren’t as exciting to us a few years later than they were at the beginning. The same thing goes for our jobs, or the amount of money we make.

Jason Marsh: Are these myths just a product of the media—or do you think they might be rooted in certain innate, perhaps psychological, propensities?

SL: Wow, that’s a good question! I do think media and the culture propagate these myths. I don’t know whether they’re hardwired or evolutionarily adaptive. I will say that the psychological phenomenon hedonic adaptation—which is a big theme of my book—does strongly affect our ideas of what makes us happy.

Hedonic adaptation means that humans beings are remarkable at getting used to changes in their lives. It is evolutionarily adaptive, and perhaps hardwired, so all of us get used to the familiar. That might be because in our ancestral environment, it was important to us to be vigilant or alert to change—a change in the environment might signal a threat, or it could signal a reward or opportunity for reward. And so when things are the same, when stimuli are constant, we don’t tend to notice them or pay attention to them very much.

But the downside of hedonic adaptation is that when a relationship becomes familiar—or when a job becomes familiar, or when your new car becomes very familiar to you—then you start taking the spouse or job or car for granted. You stop paying attention to them, and that’s when we have adapted.

Read more →

The GIFs make it.

Bittersweet reflections

Sun, 09 Jun 2013 15:04:45 +0800

I love my brother’s mother-in-law, a middle-aged woman from a big family in small-town China. She is now living an American Dream, thanks to her charming daughter, but it is not wasted on her.

After she has finished meticulously cooking, doing dishes and putting her grandkids to bed, if it has been a particularly good day full of family and food, she will allow herself to sit back and relax. This typically stoic woman will surprise you with a stream of reflections, usually saved for a half-stranger in a loud, distracted room.

Last night, after my niece’s graduation party, she seemed pleased, maybe overwhelmed. Sometimes I think it’s hard for her to believe she’s part of this loud, multi-ethnic, American family, strange to think that her life is this comfortable, this full and good.

So she started to tell me about Chinese from her generation, how their lives as children were “xin ku” or bitter (literally “bitter heart”). She gave vague details about walking miles to school in the cold and mud, how she saw her first banana at age 18, but one could see that the true pain is too deep to verbalize, maybe even to recall. As a woman, especially, her place as a second-class citizen in her own family was deeply felt. She said it made some of her peers “sick in the head.” Even she won’t—or perhaps can’t—go any further in discussing feelings.

China is a gentle giant in some ways—curious, quirky, shy, sensitive, warm, eager to please, hard-working. But she reminded me that it is still a force to be feared, if only for the simple fact that it has been injured so deeply, especially in the past 100 years.

Only in China: "Ni Pang le"

Sat, 30 Jun 2012 12:58:33 +0800

Only in China will MALE acquaintances casually, cheerfully and publicly inform you that you’ve gained weight. They actually use THE word. Then they thoughtfully translate it for you in English, as if your sudden speechless daze is due to the fact that you FORGOT the Chinese word for “fat.” They say it as if you’re buddies, they’ve got your back and are sacrificially saving you from otherwise INEVITABLE SOCIAL DEMISE. No wonder everyone here is so skinny. You gain a few pounds and THE WORLD WILL LET YOU KNOW. Oh the TYRANNY!! At first I was horrified. Then I was amused. Now I’m anxiously looking over my shoulder, waiting for an ALL-OUT INTERVENTION.

"It’s hard to say goodbye."

Sat, 30 Jun 2012 12:50:58 +0800

““It’s hard to say goodbye.””

- One of my students, very sincerely, at the end of our end of the year party. So sweet and moving.

For some reason this made me LOL

Sat, 30 Jun 2012 12:48:38 +0800

I think it’s the slightly awkward formality, yet endearing frankness in which my Chinese student writes in his second language.

In his homework notebook about marriage:

Many people think that getting married is a vital ingredient for happiness in life. They don’t, however, recognize the consequences of marriage. Rather than happiness, many are victims of tormenting attributes . Marriage grants its followers more responsibility toward self and spouse, leading to more stressful lives. Also, the reduction of one’s freedom is also being in effect, putting a limit toward independence. Lastly, one may not get along well with spouse, triggering redundant conflicts.

Wise words, son.

Passing-on the last 100 years of history

Wed, 27 Jun 2012 16:13:16 +0800

Yesterday I met with a Chinese friend who has been photographing old people in Shanghai.

She said that her grandparents don’t talk about their past in detail or discuss the Cultural Revolution. They may mention one or two points when pressed, but skim over the details. She thinks they are ashamed, afraid or maybe it’s too painful.

I thought, if they won’t tell their own children and grandchildren their stories, how hard will it be to get them to tell a reporter or a storyteller. And all those stories, all that history, will be lost.

Gotta love the Chinese language

Wed, 27 Jun 2012 16:04:59 +0800

Student: “I heard you know how to play, “kill people.”

Me: “Um…? Oh! Yes. In the U.S. we call it, ‘Mafia.”

Student: “Oh. We call it, “kill people.”

(杀人）

Gotta love Mandarin for being so literal.

Oops in translation

Wed, 27 Jun 2012 15:55:58 +0800

I taught my Chinese co-worker “oops” after she heard me use it and thought it was hilarious. Later, after she inadvertently walked us out on a red light, she was throwing her hands in front of oncoming cars, chirping to herself, “oops, oops, oops.” Glad my lesson came in handy.

"A person who has not done one half his day’s work by ten o’clock, runs a chance of..."

Mon, 25 Jun 2012 20:53:01 +0800

““A person who has not done one half his day’s work by ten o’clock, runs a chance of leaving the other half undone.””

- EMILY BRONTE, Wuthering Heights

Prices on the mainland rivaling Hong Kong?

Sat, 19 May 2012 06:56:33 +0800

I visited my friend in Hong Kong last weekend at the same time that I went to a journalism conference. This friend is from mainland China, so it was interesting to hear both her nostalgia for her home as well as her perspective on Hong Kong, where she has been living, working and studying for the last three years. She kept saying that Hong Kong was so expensive, and I have to agree that 6,000 HK dollars for a tiny two bedroom apartment in the north part of town did seem steep.

Still, I think I blew her mind when I informed her how expensive the mainland has been getting. Granted she never lived in the more expensive cities of Shanghai or Beijing, but even in her hometown in Northeast China, she didn’t understand how her parents and friends were spending money.

Her mom was buying 70 RMB movie tickets, and her friends barely batted an eyelash at a 1000 RMB dress. She didn’t understand how they could afford new apartments and designer bags with 3,000 per month salaries. She couldn’t believe that rent for my brother’s crummy two bedroom apartment near Peking University in Beijing went from about 3,000 RMB per month to 6,000 RMB in the last two years. She assumed that at least food is still cheap, but when I told her that an average Chinese meal out with friends was around 30 RMB (which I thought was cheap), her inquiries ended in a wail of despair.

The average salary for a white-collar worker like her in Hong Kong—8,000 HKD—is significantly higher than the average 5,000 RMB in Shanghai and Beijing or 3,000 RMB in second and third-tier cities on the mainland. She longs to go back home, but prices on the mainland that seem to be starting to rival Hong Kong made her reluctantly reconsider.

Got a lesson in cooking this week from some of my students. Most...

Thu, 12 Apr 2012 18:16:00 +0800

Got a lesson in cooking this week from some of my students.

Most of these just require a couple of ingredients plus the typical Chinese condiments: soy sauce, vinegar, salt, garlic and ginger.

The main lesson I came away with was that you can stir fry egg with just about any vegetable, and it tastes good.

Here are some of the simple dishes that I learned:

Celery with pork, egg with pepper, potatoes with vinegar, a green vegetable that we don’t have in the U.S. with egg, tomato with sugar and cucumber with garlic. Oh and chicken wings with Coca Cola.

WEDDING FOOD!: Cold dishes, crab, eel, Mr. Turtle and watermelon...

Sat, 31 Mar 2012 16:37:00 +0800

Cold dishes galore

Crab faces

Eel with garlic

Goodbye Mr. Turtle

Watermelon boat dessert

WEDDING FOOD!: Cold dishes, crab, eel, Mr. Turtle and watermelon boat.

This is what I love about Shanghai. One day you’re...

Sat, 31 Mar 2012 16:25:00 +0800

This is what I love about Shanghai. One day you’re downtown, exchanging ideas with young people from all over the world, and the next, you’re outside of Nanhui, rollin’ jiaozi with Grandma, who speaks to you as if you understand Shanghainese.

(This is at a friend/fellow English teacher’s wedding)

Style & Glory: What language is hardest to learn?

Sat, 31 Mar 2012 16:14:48 +0800

Style & Glory: What language is hardest to learn?:

styleandglory:

The Foreign Service Institute at the United States Department of State rated 63 languages based on how difficult they are for English speakers to learn. They concluded that Arabic, Cantonese, Mandarin, Japanese, and Korean were the most difficult, with Japanese typically being the hardest of the…

beijing365air: Date & Time: Mar 30; 17:00 Air Quality Index...

Sat, 31 Mar 2012 16:09:16 +0800

beijing365air:

Date & Time: Mar 30; 17:00

Air Quality Index (AQI) Level: 60

Level of Health Concern: Moderate

—-

Official Reading from BeijingAir: 03-30-2012 17:00; PM2.5; 19.0; 60; Moderate (at 24-hour exposure at this level)

While China has 350,000 millionaires and 115 billionaires, 700 million of its people live on just "four dollars a day".

Sat, 31 Mar 2012 16:08:23 +0800

While China has 350,000 millionaires and 115 billionaires, 700 million of its people live on just "four dollars a day".