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I remember the first time i invited Chinese university students over to my parents’ home in America. As usual, we offered them something to drink and as always my parents had an assortment of beverages to offer: sodas, sweet tea, water, fruit juice, and probably more. My Chinese friends wanted water. No problem, we grabbed a glass, filled it with ice, and poured water from the faucet. The look on my Chinese friend’s face was priceless. I might as well have been pouring poison from a bottle. I assured them that American water is clean (sorta) and it’s fine for them to drink it. They took a few sips and decided it was too weird or foreign to drink water directly from the faucet.

Ok, so fast-forward four years. I’ve been living in China for a while now (i had not been living in China when the story above took place). This morning i went to make a pot of coffee and second-guessed myself when i filled up the coffee pot with water from the faucet. It felt strange to not be using purified water from a water dispenser. My mind immediately jumped back to when my friend was over and i poured them a glass of water. I guess this is why understanding another culture is important and valuable. Not only do they think tap water is gross, there is an internal habit inside of them that opposes it. Like this morning, my internal habit opposed the tap water i was pouring for my coffee and i had to remind myself that this is okay.

The brand new high-speed train between Beijing and Shanghai just opened on June 30 and i had my first experience on July 10. I’ve been reading the hype controversy for many months now so i was pretty darn excited when the opportunity came for me to take the train. Lucky for me i just got a small appetizer on the train. I only had to go from Shanghai to Changzhou, which is only an hour journey.  If i had to sum up the brand new, shiny, sparkly, highly-hyped China bullet train i would say it’s… underwhelming.  The seats were cramped. Less room than the D trains. Felt more like an airplane cabin than i was expecting.  The aisle was very narrow.  The food carts were nothing special. Just your typical Chinese delicacies like chicken feet and seaweed flavored chips.  No wifi. No power outlets (that i saw anyway). Same ol’ boarding process: hundreds of people pushing, shoving, and running to the train. Ummm… the train is all reserved seating so what’s the big rush??  Okay, i’m being debby downer so let me think of something positive… Here’s one: It topped out at 307 kmh! That’s fast!  VERY fast!  I’ll be taking that train again in a couple of days from Changzhou to Beijing and here’s something cool: After calculating the time and money it would take to go back to Shanghai and fly to Beijing it’s actually both economically wiser and more efficient to take the train than to fly.  That’s neato.  Here’s something else neato: 4 terribly shot photos from my cell phone…

I’ve been in Ningxia Autonomous Region for the past 9 days.  Access to internet was virtually non-existent as i was only able to keep up with email via the mobile data connection on my phone.  I’m writing to you now from the Yinchuan airport as i prepare to board a flight back to Beijing.

My experience in Ningxia goes far beyond words.  Majority of my time was spent at an altitude of 7500 feet in a tiny rural town.  This area of the country is largely closed off to foreigners so our arrival was the talk of the town.

In the next day or so i hope to start posting a few pictures and maybe a few words about our experience in one of the most remote areas i’ve been to in China.

I was honored to be a part of a beautiful wedding in Hong Kong last week.  While sitting in the service i began to think about my closest friends.  I’ve known the bride nearly my entire life.  The pastor performing the service has been a friend for more than 15 years.  Friends texting me from America during the service have been by my side for who-knows-how-long.  And beyond those, there are many other people near and dear to me.  So, naturally, during a wedding where a new season of life was beginning for two phenomenal people i was thinking about the end of life.  I was thinking about funerals.  Not in a sad way or a morbid way, but in a real way.  A real way as in we’re all going to go.  And sitting in that chair watching two of my favorite people tie the knot i decided that building community is about the funerals you’ll attend.  We can spend all of our energy networking or building our name or our business or our thing, but those too will go.  I think what will matter in the years to come is that i have stories to tell about the person’s life i’m celebrating from the pew i’m occupying at their funeral.

A while ago i posted a link to a TED talk by Ken Robinson.  I watched it and i took notes and now i want to share them with you.  As someone who works for an NGO focused on education in Asia i particularly found the talk inspiring as we look ahead to what education in Asia could look like.

My notes are first and the video is below.

• Education is meant to take us into a future that we can’t grasp.
• Nobody knows what the world will look like in 5 years, but we’re supposed to be educating for it.
• Children have extraordinary capacity for innovation.
• All kids have tremendous talents, but we squander them.
• Creativity is as important in education as literacy and we should treat it with the same status.
• If you’re not prepared to be wrong you’ll never come up with anything original.
• We run an education system where mistakes are the worst thing you can do.
• We don’t grow into creativity, we are educated out of it.
• Every education system on earth has the same hierarchy of subjects. At the top is math and science and at the bottom are the arts.
• Suddenly, degrees aren’t worth anything.
• We need to radically rethink our view of intelligence.
• Creativity = the process of having original ideas that add value.

• i went to the Urbanity Project Beijing book release on Saturday in the 798 arts district.  Love what my friends at the Shanghai Arts Community are doing.
• It’s not fair to use numbers to compare China to other parts of the world, but these 18 facts about China are still fun.
• I read these 59 ways to tell if you’re new to Beijing and laughed at several of them. After living here a while, this list is quite funny.
• Photographing Pyongyang
• I’d like to find a store that sells Esemplare clothes. I wonder if they are as cool in person as they are online. (Thanks to @jakrambl for the recommendation)
• The average temperature in Beijing between 7 a.m. – 9 a.m. is about 70 degrees.  I’ve been spending the first two hours of my day on my front lawn with coffee.
• That is where i’m writing this post from. It’s 8:45 a.m.
• Shot, edited and uploaded 4 new videos for work.  I bet you’d like to see them.  Seems that everything i do is for a very select audience and i can’t show them publicly.  Darn.

I don’t claim to be a photographer, but this was a fun shot to take the other day outside my office.

Every once in a while people from the US find themselves in Beijing for this reason or that reason, so it’s fairly often that i’ll get an email suggesting i should meet them for dinner or, god forbid, take them to the Forbidden City.  I’d much rather take someone to a delicious dinner than to the Forbidden City.

Just a few nights ago i found myself in this very situation.  A friend of a friend from the US made their way to Beijing for one reason or another and so i had the chance to go to dinner with them and a few others.  We talked about life in America, mutual friends that we have, China, politics, religion, and world economics.  Fairly interesting for me, but probably bored my new friend to tears.

Let me set up the dinner for you:  there was me, 2 Americans and 2 Chinese.  I knew one of the Americans and the other was her friend that she was traveling with.  The two Chinese were friends of the friend.  Is this making sense?  It doesn’t matter.  It was four girls and me.  That’s what matters for this next part.

At the tables next to us was a group of about 20 business men who were at some sort of business dinner together.  Those of you who know China well just rolled your eyes and mumbled something like, “Oh no!”  That’s right, it quickly goes downhill from here.  These 20 men were so loud and drunk that we could barely talk at our table.  We were literally shouting across the table just to have a simple conversation with each other.  It’s a Chinese custom that men are loud and drunk at business meals.  They drink more rice liquor than you or i can imagine and their faces turn red like tomatoes and their clothes are often soaked with sweat.  And they shout.  Loudly.

About halfway through our meal, the guy who i had noticed to be the most drunk of them all suddenly appeared at our table with his arm around one of his colleagues who was obviously a bit younger and eager to meet the foreign women at my table.  They didn’t come empty handed either, they showed up with two glasses of rice liquor to offer their new friends.  The younger drunk guy goes around the table pointing at each girl and saying through a drunken slur, “YOU are beautiful.  YOU are beautiful…”  while the older – and extremely drunk guy – is simultaneously yelling, “Where are you from?? WHERE ARE YOU FROM??”  It’s at this point that i’m trying to figure out how we’re going to navigate our way out of this ugly situation.  I looked at my two American friends and pointed to the glass of liquor sitting in front of them and said, “Good luck.”

Then, just as it was getting intensely awkward and i didn’t know if i could handle it anymore, the older drunk guy put his arm around the younger drunk guy.  Leaning over our food, uncomfortably close to our faces, he pointed to the young guy and said through a thick slur and a thick Chinese accent, “SHE IS A VERY GOOD BOY!!”

That’s when i lost it.  This was now the funniest thing i had seen all night.  But i still wanted them to go away.  And they eventually did and everything went back to normal.

The end.  Just another night at dinner in China.

As i live and work in China – particularly in the area of education – i can’t help but get excited when thinking about the possibility of instilling a culture of creating thinking in the education system for Chinese students.  If you know anything about the Chinese education system then you know it’s a long way from this idea.  Chinese education is mostly known for its rigorous memorization method of learning and intense testing system that dates back to the beginning of Chinese history.  However, as i read these websites i think of China and i wonder if there’s anybody else dreaming of a better way.

• Schools Kill Creativity
• Being a Creative Leader
• Transforming Education
• Why Creative People Need to be Eccentric
• And how it might look if we rethink “normal” :: The Future of the Library

Disclaimer: I heard this story second-hand through a mutual friend of whom the story is about.  If the story isn’t true or the facts are wrong then, well, it’s still hilarious.

A few days ago a friend walked into a breakfast gathering looking stunned and awed.  Seeing the puzzled and distraught look on his face another friend asked where he had just come from and what was wrong.  My friend said he had just come from a school performance on the campus where he teaches.  Being that it’s a primary school, all of the students are between kindergarten and sixth grade.  School performances are not uncommon in China and actually occur quite often throughout the year.  My friend said that during the performance one of the classes sang a song and danced a dance and they were all dressed as pirates.  Seeing a bunch of Chinese kids dressed as pirates has to be a hilarious sight in and of itself, but i can understand my friend’s confusion.  Not understanding the song and, therefore, not understanding the purpose of the pirate costumes left him a bit confused.  After the performance he went to one of his Chinese colleagues and asked why all the students were dressed as pirates during that particular song.  The colleague replied, “Oh, their class was representing Somalia.”