It hurts to pay $5.44 for a soy latte… and even more to inhale outdoors. It’s nerve-wracking to take the subway through Brooklyn to Manhattan then stand confused in the middle of Chinatown alone at night…and even scarier to wake up in the morning and realize that no one’s there. Yet it’s exhilarating to walk through Times Square [...]
Past the windmills, cows, and grapevine is a valley blessed with year-round sunshine yet cursed with traffic and pollution. And the stereotypes are true—everyone does work in media and entertainment. Host #1, Jon, works for Formosa Films while host #2, Christina, manages people like Jaeson Ma and Vanness Wu with Plan C Agency (FarEast Movement, [...]
In Asia, everything is cute or compact. What’s cute is usually compact as well: miniature toys, toy poodles, girls… but what’s compact is not always cute. The room I stayed in at my distant uncle’s over the summer was a Taipei standard. Oh, an 8 x 10′ box, perhaps? The mattress was smaller than a [...]
While I was out catching up with ex-colleagues in the Shida district, my mom took my three-year-old cousin up to the Sheraton’s lounge area for afternoon tea. Apparently, there was a double-decker glass tray with treats on top and wine glasses on the bottom shelf. Wanting to reach the M&M’s, my cousin climbed up on [...]
The Good
Public transportation is efficient and very affordable. Buses cost 2 yuan (RMB) each trip (~28¢) and run frequently, while the metro costs 2-9 yuan each way (28¢ – $1.28), depending on the distance. The D train from Hangzhou to Shanghai was 54 yuan (<$8), and another (slower) train from Shanghai back to Xiaoshan was [...]