I recently started frequenting a Japanese-run Italian restaurant/bar, called RZ 69. This place has some of the cheapest western food in town as well as the cheapest beer on tap that I have come across (about $1.25 per pint). Their lasagna is made with lamb and is outstanding. It was this lasagna that got me rather involved in their menu. They have a menu posted in the window with one price at the top of it - about $2, which makes it look like all the dishes on that menu cost $2 - fairly plaus... read more

I just got back from a tour of Thamestown, a massive real estate development in suburban Shanghai. Supposedly designed to recreate a small rural English community, this place has the same kind of eerie quaintness that characterized the Cotswolds villages so often featured in old Avengers episodes. A little too English and a little too clean to be believed. In fact you really have to see the place to understand. Their website:

www.thamestown.com/english/default.htm

The website giv... read more

I just got back to Shanghai from a four-day trip, my first real vacation and the first time I've left the greater Shanghai area since arriving here. I spent a day and a half in Suzhou and two and a half days in Nanjing. I'll describe the Suzhou leg in this post and the Nanjing leg in a post tomorrow. Suzhou is a canal city, full of traditional walled Chinese gardens. In some guidebooks they call it "The Venice of China," and while that analogy is a stretch, it deserves a reputation as one of ... read more

I got on the train to Nanjing with no trouble at all. Nanjing (historically spelled Nanking), may be best known as the place that got raped by invading Japanese armies in 1937, but the city has a long and tumultuous history, and has been the capital of China at various times, most recently under the Nationalist government. It was also the “capital” of the Taiping Rebellion.

Lu Genzhang, who was my Beijing Opera teacher when I was in grad school in Hawaii, met me at Nanjing’s ultramodern tr... read more

I just got home from an art opening that got shut down by the police. 38 pretty well-known artists each did a self-curated show in sections of a disused PLA army barracks. It was the most well-attended art opening I have ever been to, with maybe a couple of thousand people there. The crowds were such that you had to wait in line to enter each barracks building. So it was quite dramatic when shouts were suddenly heard followed by the power abruptly being cut off. We waited around in the dark f... read more