Opinionated content from personal perspectives
If you had told me back at the beginning of the year that I would soon be writing for the media company that was my go-to source for all things Beijing, I wouldn’t have believed you.
Each year for the past ten years, I have traveled with my family back to the city in which I was raised as a child,
The day that school finished for Chinese New Year, I left Beijing to visit my mother, who works as a journalist abroad in Israel. Back in January, Coronavirus was but a distant disease to us Beijingers.
There’s so much uncertainty in everything we do right now. However, with this uncertainty comes anticipation for adventure. That’s what I’m hoping this school year’s going to be like: adventurous with ups and downs.
The thought of experiencing college life beforehand excited me. Unfortunately, as soon as I stepped through the door, I heard the professor exclaim from the front of the class: “I don’t want a Chinese in my class!” She paused for a moment before adding: “Because of the virus, you know.”
With cosmetic surgery gaining ever more popularity, young people having the means to pay for the changes they want, and society become more and more nonchalant about it, is it really the kind of message we want to be sending to the young women and our next generation? If you don’t like your face, change it? Or is it more important to love what you’re given?
The effect of corporal punishment has been found to be associated with more aggression and anxiety, but this correlation was strongest in countries where corporal punishment was the least normative.
After watching movies like Before Sunrise and reading books like Eat Pray Love the notion that the purpose of travel is somehow linked to self-discovery has grown on me.
When I was expecting our first daughter, my sister-in-law gave us our baby’s first gift: a blue babygro set. “Blue?” I asked, puzzled. For although I’m not a pink and sparkly kind of person, I still thought the color blue belonged to the boys’ club.
It’s always a lot of fun to look back and see how far we have come, and in the spirit of reflection and also helping out some newcomers to this weird and wonderful city, this week we are throwing back to July 2018, when we published the article “What I Wish I’d Known Before I Moved to Beijing, Part 1: “You Aren’t Supposed to Flush Toilet Paper!”