My husband says he acted like a secret agent during a recent trip to buy wires for our home entertainment system.
Like most Chinese consumers, I'm able to mentally discard all the religious associations and go right to the fun part.
I was looking for wrought iron art when I bumped into a store in one of Beijing's immense home decoration centers. This year, wrought iron is particularly fashionable.
The country's cabbies drive me crazy - in a good way, that is. Surely, some of the zaniest people I've met in China were behind the wheels of cars for hire.
I don't know whether I'm a typical user of MSN. I use my real name and accept anyone who asks to get on my "friends" list.
One of my many regrets is that I was born too late to be a turn-of-the-century satin-wearing, grape-eating aesthete. I could wear satin and eat grapes all I want in the industrial gloom of suburban Beijing, but it's just not the same.
The host then had to live in a wooden box beneath the branches where the birds would perch. Every day for 10 days, he had to think of a different way to cook the eggs.
We had just feasted on a sumptuous seven-course Cantonese dinner and I was about to enjoy my usual dessert - a soothing cigarette - when all hell broke loose.
One word I learned before going abroad was "multicultural". It's arguably the single most popular word to pop up in an IELTS essay question, and I got it down.
China's youth was speaking loud and clear at the telephone interview round of the "21st Century Scholastic Cup" speech contest, which I recently helped judge.
Does wearing a black turtleneck sweater instantly turn you into a social leper?One thing's for sure, throat huggers do not make for appropriate karaoke garb.
My friend Xiao Wang should have scored a 40,000-yuan ($5,256) a month job as a sales director at a top US company. Instead he became yet another victim of East meets West culture clash.