Several months ago, Empire Nation Fish and Chips left the Nanluoguxiang Street, followed by the Mirch Masala Indian restaurant. And now, the Saveurs de Core restaurant has announced that it too will move from the Nanluoguxiang once its lease expires.
Break out the beer and fire up the grill. The World Cup is upon us again. After four years of waiting, you have a perfectly good excuse to wake your neighbors at three in the morning with boisterous cheers of delight your favored team has scored a goal. Come morning, you can stumble into work red-eyed and delusional, still blabbering nonsense about how many bad calls the referee made. No rebuke, only nods of agreement. Undoubtedly there are many upsides for it being World Cup time again.
"Light up, and 100 yuan may go up in smoke." That was the headline of a story in China Daily last month that told how Beijing city hopes to increase the fine from 10 yuan to 100 yuan for anyone caught flouting the no-smoking ban in some buildings.
Every adult who attended high school in China has a secret file called a dang an. The file is "secret" because access to it is closely guarded. Yet, the dang an is also not a secret at all.
Even though I am not part of any effort to help beggars in Beijing, I can't help but run into them. They are everywhere that you look.
I still wake up, occasionally, wondering where I put my Y-fronts.
Foreign teachers are glorified "sexpats". At least, that's what you could be led to believe, given the negative coverage given those in the teaching profession, especially those involved in teaching English.
Beijing has indeed arrived on the global culinary scene, and not just for its renowned roasted duck, slithery sea cucumbers and divine dumplings.
Two months ago, some Chinese newspapers published an editorial urging that the hukou, or residency permit, system be scrapped immediately. The editorial said the policy was not only unjust, but acted as a drag on China's economy.
The health check: a process nearly every non-Chinese person staying here for a protracted period must endure. A series of tests are done to rigorously assess your potential lifespan and to make certain your impending death won't take place on Chinese soil.
Last week, Chinese and American bureaucracy conspired to force me into making several trips to Haidian district, where my family's hukou is still based. As far as the government is concerned, I'm still a resident of Beijing's scrappy west side, and not its chic eastern half. So, whenever I need anything "official" done, I set off on a 20-kilometer trek across town.
It's hard to live a day in Beijing without realizing trash is everywhere. Lining the streets, stuffed in crevices of couches, floating in the rivers and streams - approximately 152 million tons of it each year throughout China according to a recent report.
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