Lyndsey Nielsen: A day in the life…

The bus turns the corner and I can see that it is going to be a long day.
On a bus with barely 20 seats and a maximum capacity that cannot be more than 75, there are probably close to 90 people riding this morning. Since I don’t have a choice, I squeeze myself onto [...]

Noodle dancing in Beijing

Dinner at a Beijing hot pot restaurant turned into a show, when this guy began twirling and dancing while making noodles beside our table. Eventually, he dropped it in the hot pot – built into the table. One side of the pot was spicy. One side, not so much. A great [...]

Lindsay Toler: Got Milk? In a Box?

“So the other day, I decided to grab some puffed-rice bars from the grocery store across the street. As I walked up to the check-out lane, I saw a stack of little juice-box-lookin’ things full of milk. How weird, I thought. You would never see unrefigerated milk anywhere in the States, let alone in funny [...]

The Night Market

Bowen says it’s a show put on for foreigners.
He says that most Chinese don’t eat this stuff.
Bowen says it’s a light, easy television story where the pretty reporter takes a bite out of a scorpion, scrunches up her pretty nose while the folks back in the United States laugh on their sofas till they drop [...]

Point-and-Eat

I can’t read Chinese.
Often that makes things difficult. Other times it makes things easy. Like breakfast. My choice is determined by the photo displays at the canteens on campus here at Renmin University.
At one of my favorite ones, just down the stairs in front of the business school, I just point at the poster. An [...]

Shrimp-flavored Pretzel Sticks

The guard at the door of our hotel on the campus of Renmin University likes to high-five Americans as they walk through.
Another guard, who sits in the hall leading back to the guestrooms, enjoys this conversation:
Guard: “Hello, how are you?”
Me: “Good. How are you?”
Guard: “Good.”

I just bought a box of “Pretz.” Yes, that’s a [...]