The Legend of Hedy Lee

I haven’t thought of Hedy Lee in years. But in the last month she has made a comeback – among certain circles at least – courtesy of this thread on Reddit. It begins with indignation over a magazine article she wrote in 2009 giving advice for managing ayis before devolving to the question whether or not she was a fiction perpetrated by City Weekend. It’s an absurd question. A simple Google search shows you she is a real. The real question is – what to make of her?

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[Video] My 3 Minutes of Fame from the Beijing Olympics

Slow news day in White Confucius land so I dug up this.

This was broadcast throughout Indiana, on all the NBC affiliates, back in 2008. These nice people took time from reporting on the Olympic action to give an Indiana boy his three minutes of fame. They wanted the editor of the pre-eminent entertainment magazine and website in Beijing to show them how Beijing parties. So that’s what I did.

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The Best Salesmen in China

Who hasn’t been victim of a scam in China at least once? Maybe the teahouse scam or the ladybar scam or the maybe, like me, you simply suspect that life in China is one giant scam. But last week I heard a new one. This happened to a colleague of someone I know, a Chinese girl. She was bilked for RMB40,000 in the space of a day. Here is her story.

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In Memoriam: SmartBeijing

A week ago we woke to the unexpected announcement that SmartBeijing.com had closed. Few saw this coming. Just as surprising was just how little coverage the closure got. Beijinger blogged it, throwing a few crumbs their way. Sister site SmartShanghai mentioned it on their Wire in between “Shanghai Dolls Networking Night This Thursday” and “Mauro Colagreco, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Theo Croker At Unico”. Someone posted the news on the Beijing sub-reddit and it drew zero  comments and only 5 upvotes, 1 less than “Vietnamese Food Recommendation In Haidian”. No one seems to realize that for the first time in like what 7, 8 years Morgan Short is off the air. This, my friends, is wrong and now I am going to rectify it.

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Reading Hessler

I never read Peter Hessler. Mainly because, having myself spent a year as an English teacher in Wuhan 1998-1999, I lived my own version of River Town. Secondly, everyone else had read him and recommended him and talked about him so I figured why bother. But then a copy of River Town came into my possession and, having finished–and thoroughly enjoyed–Michael Meyer’s new book In Manchuria, I figured the time was right. I’m glad I did. It left me groping wistfully for my own memories of early China days and the people of my China past.

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