Lost Laowai China Blog
The no-nonsense China expat and traveller community.



ChinesePod releases Chinese Olympics guide (Jul 3)
With that title, it sort of sounds like they were holding one of those eager English-language students hostage. Terrorist activities aside, Chinesepod.com has produced a fantastic guide to the Beijing Olympics for visitors, athletes, journalists - or just whelps like myself who can’t be bothered to deal with the crowds, but wouldn’t mind brushing up on [...]


Photo of the Week: Do & Me (Jul 2)
Some humorous Chinglish from Life in Nanning (blog). In the photographer’s own words: “A Fast Food Chain in Nanning has a strange English translation. The problem is, the local people say the Chinese name (Duo Mei Li - meaning ‘how beautiful’) doesn’t really make sense to them either. They thought it was a bad translation [...]


Zheng Jie’s Wimbledon Win Gives China Reason to Cheer (Jun 28)
I love tennis: watching and playing. What with queueing with the common people overnight twice to get my tickets, fond, overpriced strawberry & cream memories of posh debenture holders drinking champagne and dozing in their seats, oh, and the tennis, Wimbledon necessarily remains my most eagerly anticipated annual sporting event. Forget football, it’s those long [...]


Book Review: A Stress Reliever and History Lesson in One (Jun 27)
For the last month or so I’ve been really stressed out at work. When I get into a state like that I tend to look for books that help giving me a new perspective on the situation. That’s how I found Mo Yan’s Life and Death are Wearing Me Out, the story of Ximen Nao, [...]


Lost Laowai Celebrates 2nd Birthday (Jun 26)
I’m a bit crap at remembering birthdays, and so this is a bit late - but Lost Laowai officially turned 2 years old a week or so ago. It’s a bit hard to believe that it was that long ago I started clacking away on my keyboard attempting to put together some sort of site that [...]


British Embassy in China Eager To Locate You (Jun 26)
I’ve just received the following press release release from the British Embassy in Beijing. It appears to me that the office has taken some heat from home about tracking down their nationals in natural disasters, and is now very concerned you may get crushed in a shoddily-built school or swept away in a flood - and [...]


Hong Laowai has some serious Commie Stones (Jun 22)
This guy has guts. And I like him for a bunch of reasons. For those who don’t know, Hong Laowai (means “Red Foreigner”) has been a bit of an internet celeb over the past year. He stands in front of a webcam, and belts out the most ridiculous old communist propaganda tunes. But you can see [...]


A Modest Proposal (Jun 19)
I first became aware of the enormous language gap in China three weeks into my first year, when I taught English at a public high school in northern Jiangsu.  One afternoon, feeling slightly homesick, I hopped into a taxi with a simple mission: to go to McDonalds.  Being completely unable to speak Chinese at that [...]


Bikini-clad Chinese girls show off their … Olympic spirit (Jun 18)
Finally some Chinese Olympic fever I can appreciate: h/t to Jenny Zhu - and you thought she just did ChinesePod - that’s just her part-time gig. Her real career centres around hunting down videos of hot Chinese girls in swimsuits. It’s a tough job, but someone needs to do it. Really.


Looking for good independent Chinese music? Neocha delivers (Jun 17)
I love music. Don’t well all? Music is awesome. But I hate pre-fab pop. Don’t we all? Pre-fab pop is crap. That China’s mainstream music scene is near completely made up of boy bands and girl groups is a sad fact. But mainstream music scenes usually are (sad facts). So, when after digging around a bit [...]