I had an outcast in my middle school a while back.  She was significantly bigger than the rest of the students and in China, where the genetic code predicts that about 83% of the people are going to be skinny, this compounds the stigma of being “big boned.”  She sweated a bit too much....

  Sensational. That’s probably the wrong word to describe the last few days in my life but I’m not sure that one word is capable of describing it. Not even a sensational word like sensational. Some people have an inflated view of who they are and how important they are but other people usually...

“I saw that my life was a vast glowing empty page and I could do anything I wanted.” (The Dharma Bums – Jack Kerouac) Recently I’ve been fostering within me a rather simple approach to life which goes like this: if a person asks you to do something, then do it even if you’re tired and try not...

I teach too much. I’ve been teaching from the same four books for seven months now. I’m not magical but I’ve come to foresee every question, every laugh and every mispronounced word like a sorcerer sees a shrew. This can be mind-numbing at times but sometimes, rarely, my students unravel strange...

Every major news source in the country headlined a little Missouri town called Joplin yesterday. I’m from there. So are about 49,000 other people, but I’m not there at the moment. I’m about as far away from there as possible. I’m in China. The tornado ripped through the center of the city. Destroying...

There is nothing comparable in the history of the world to the cultural gap between the young and old in China today. Tonight Qian Yu, one of my very attractive neighbors, sent me a message and invited me to KTV (karaoke). When a beautiful girl asks you to do something, you (I) usually do it. So I flagged...

Forced to sign-and-red-star-stamp a document insuring that he wouldn’t offend the fragile feelings of the Chinese people, he complied, but even a preapproved Dylan is a resourceful Dylan. He’s gritty at 69 and has songs about everything. Nonetheless, the preapproved Dylan was a sad Dylan. A love...

In mainland China, at least in 1999, they didn’t celebrate – or even acknowledge – Christmas. The brutal winters fit that line from “The lion, the witch and the wardrobe” where Narnia is described as “always winter and never Christmas.” I was teaching English for a major university...

The boss hovered over and said, “Eric, let’s talk.” This is odd because my boss doesn’t speak much English. What did I do? What did I not do? I went to the end of the hall with him where he takes his smoke breaks by the window. He lit up. Inhaled. Exhaled. Looking out the window he started...

“I’m sure God sent them to us.” Politicians love to claim credit for the big – and best – changes of history. Life is rarely so simple. There are those odd little movements like twitches on obscure nerve endings that end up reverberating throughout cultures and eras. The twentieth...