China Segment

My wife got the idea a few weeks back to check out a Shanghai Sharks game this season. I hadn’t been to a basketball game here in probably five years. The buddies I went with before have long since left China, and I guess I just never paid much attention to the local [...]

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Baseball is not a well-known sport in Shanghai. Many people I’ve come across don’t even know the English word, despite it being an event in the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. But baseball is trying. MLB has put up displays in malls, had the home run derby broadcast on Shanghai’s sports channel the [...]

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Football is not a Chinese sport. The Chinese refer to themselves as ’small ball’ players. That’s all part of the racial stereotypes the Chinese have of themselves and others - another topic. My point is that in a country where ping pong and badminton champions are celebrities, the NFL has a long [...]

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Go Willie. Anyone seen The Gambler or The Man in Black on a deck of cards in China?
During the few hours of Spring Festival not involved in eating, I taught some of my wife’s cousins how to play Texas Hold ‘em. As I was teaching and not looking to take anyone’s money yet, [...]

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I’m actually pretty disappointed with the coverage of the Beijing Olympics in China. I’ve been watching them on the Chinese stations, thankful that my Chinese has progressed enough in the last four years to be able to understand a heck of a lot more than during Athens. However, despite a decent amount of [...]

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The Opening Ceremony of the Beijing Games just wrapped up a couple hours ago. It’s great to finally get the whole thing started. Odd to think that in just a couple of weeks it’ll be all over - a city and country awash with bitter sweet thoughts of having hosted a magnificent Games, [...]

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The Chinese have their own version of checkers and some of them take it seriously. The elderly go out to the parks to play on tables (if there aren’t any they bring their own fold-ups). Though I’ve learned mahjong, I haven’t yet tried to tackle checkers. [Mahjong was pretty much forced upon [...]

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