Time is winding down rapidly as the school year (or at least the portion I am contracted for) peters out. As of next week, our finals will be past and from here on, be freed from work and duty obligations. So that has also meant a flurry of recent activity trying to maximize my time… Read More Helter Skelter
The second portion of our trip in Guangxi Province began in Longsheng, the winding riverside town that operated as our main operations base. With a map drawn on a napkin and the advice that it would take 11 hours to reach the Longji Titian, some the the most famous rice terraces in China, Andrew and… Read More The (short) Long March
Due to a combination of a three-day weekend and our amazing foresight as teachers to ask for an extra day off on either end of said weekend, my co-teacher Andrew and I were able to escape the increasingly warm and humid confines of Shenzhen to journey out into the Chinese countryside. Our destination was Guangxi… Read More 我的休假在广西省/My trip to Guangxi Province
So in the midst of the busy-ness and activity that consumed my normally free and easy 13-hour work week in the beginning of January I never got around to putting down my thoughts and experiences for these two cities. Needless to say that writing now, nearly a month and several countries later, the fine details… Read More Delayed Updates- Suzhou/Hangzhou
Last week I was liberated from my teaching duties of the term, which culminated in Andrew and I spending several minutes after our final class signing autographs for some students. This was a definite first, and a little funny. I think some students were worried they may never see us again, I’m sure at least… Read More Adventure Free Time – Shanghai Edition
Thanks to some quirks in Europe hundreds of years ago and the expansion of Western influence at the turn of the 20th century in Asia, I was able to celebrate New Year’s Eve in China much as I would at home. People littered the streets late into the night on a scale that surpassed vastly… Read More So this is the New Year
I have heard from a number of people curious to know what exactly a typical day consists of here. The majority of my writings have rambled on about the trips I’ve managed to squeeze in in my time away from Shenzhen, so I suppose explaining a ‘normal’ day in China could be of interest to… Read More By Popular Request
This weekend began with a small group expedition Friday evening to Macau. For those unaware, Macau is a former Portuguese colony that was returned to China in 1999 after a good four hundred years or so of foreign rule. It is administered much like Hong Kong, with its own private government, currency, and strict border… Read More Wow for Macau
So I finally made it down to Hong Kong a couple weekends back. It was, and most likely remains, awesome. A funny string of events led to our travel party being composed of Andrew, myself, and a mutual friend from high school neither of us had seen in years. He was backpacking China, visiting another… Read More Hong Kong
Chairman Mao founded the so-named People’s Republic of China on October 1st, 1949, making the announcement from the gate at Tiananmen Square that has held his illustrious portrait for the past few decades and has been seen in pictures the world over. Thanks to this action, we have the coming week off from work here,… Read More The Build Up to National Day
Zak Abroad 