I recently attended a cooking class at Shanghai’s Chinese Cooking Workshop, which has been teaching expats to cook since 2003. The nondescript entrance, on Dongping Lu, would be easy to miss without knowing what to look for. Our class was held in a glass-enclosed room in the courtyard, hidden behind the thick stone walls. The […]
Destinations
Revisiting the Jazz Age at a Shanghai House Museum
I am fascinated by the 1920s and 1930s. The Jazz Age, the Great Depression, prohibition and the romantic musings of F. Scott Fitzgerald make up some of my favorite reading material. But lately I’ve been learning about the history of my adopted home. Shanghai was then known as the “Paris of the East” and was […]
Exploring Fuli Ancient Town, China
After our boat ride down the Li River from Yangshuo, we disembarked into a field full of water buffalo and carefully made our way across. The gentle giants looked curiously on as we marched past, peacefully chewing their cud. They seemed so docile that I wanted to pet one but our guide advised against it. […]
Aglow in Yangshuo, China
A friend is visiting from the States and I wanted to show her there was more to China than the towering skyscrapers and luxury hotels of Shanghai. She was open to seeing more of the country so I decided to take her to Yangshuo in Guangxi province, home of the famous karst formations. We set off on our […]
Tea Tasting in Shanghai’s Yu Gardens Bazaar
There is an infamous scam in Shanghai where seemingly nice Chinese “college students” invite hapless tourists to practice English with them at a tea house. There are variations to the set up, but the result is always the same: the tourists are forced to pay outrageous sums of money. But not all tea tastings are […]