Lost Laowai China Blog
No-nonsense China Expat & Travel Community



Fact or Fiction IX: Homecoming (Aug 31)
Welcome back one and all to the August edition of Fact or Fiction. Those of you who read any or all of the last seven will know, every edition I will have a guest and we will discuss a few of the big issues in China of the day. Every answer will have a “Fact” or a “Fiction” and some justification to go along with it. My guest today is fellow Lost Laowai blogger, Travis.  Travis recently turned heads, and opened up tear ducts with his post titled "There and Back", a look at the journey back home for the summer and how things changed from when he first left.  Judging by the response to the post, I certainly wasn't the only one who was touched by his descriptions of the complicated place that we call "home". In keeping with the themes of his most recent post, and the fact that the summer is the most likely time for many of us to head back to the land of our birth, our topic today is going to be one that is both simple and complicated, happy and sad: home.  Join us today for Fact or F...


Expo Scoop: Miss World 2005 @ Iceland Pavilion (Aug 31)
If you’re heading to the Shanghai Expo and don’t feel like spending your day under the sun in line for one of the biggie pavilions; head over to the (surely cool) Iceland Pavilion, where you can rub elbows with Miss World 2005 Unnur Birna Vilhjálmsdóttir. According to the Iceland Expo site, Unnur is heading up [...]


Lasseter explores the Internet according to China (Aug 25)
Tom Lasseter, who in 2009 took over the Beijing bureau chief spot for McClatchy Newspapers from long-timer Tim Johnson, has a great post on his blog about the GFW. Due to a computer glitch, Tom lost his VPN the other night and without it decided to traipse around the Internet as viewed from inside China [...]


Weird Things That I Got Used to in China, Part II (Aug 13)
Part 2 of my two-part rip off of a Forbes article of a similar name.  Did I mention there are two parts?  This is the second one (of two). 7. The Internet I’m a freedom-loving American, so the whole idea of the The Great Fire Wall is a great annoyance to me and my values.  It [...]


Weird Things That I Got Used to in China, Part I (Aug 12)
Today I read part 1 of the Forbes China Tracker Blog article Weird Things That People Get Used to in China (a translation of a Chinese article on NetEase).  I suppose it is about things that Chinese people get used to, but since I’m leaving soon (countdown: 4 days), I figured I’d write one based on the [...]


Video: Young & Restless — China’s Graduate Dilemma (Aug 12)
Caught this SOOKSTV video being shared on Danwei, and felt it was well worth sharing. Very poignant mini-documentary on the difficulties faced by well-educated Chinese and their quest to find jobs that actually pay a decent wage. China will be producing 6.3 million graduates this year. Figures from 2009 indicate 13% of last years 6.1 [...]


Photo: Outdoor Pool (Aug 4)
With Summer’s inferno holding much of China tight in her sweaty clutches, I thought it poignant for the latest featured photo to be a capture of something I had never seen before coming to China, and think is all around a fantastic idea — outdoor pool (as in balls and cues, not laps and pee). [...]


Review: Invisible Browsing VPN (ibVPN) (Aug 3)
A little down recently about my regular VPN’s lackluster speed, I started testing out a new service called ibVPN (Invisible Browsing VPN) and am decently happy with the results/ease of use. The service is strictly PPTP and not SSL, which I suppose is both a pro and a con. From my experience PPTP is faster [...]


Laowai Answers to questions about China (Jul 31)
For what feels like forever, I've been tinkering away at a new feature here at Lost Laowai, and I finally feel its at a stage where I can announce it. It's called "Laowai Answers" and it operates pretty much on the same principle as any of the many of other "q & a" components out there -- most notably Yahoo Answers and Answers.com -- except ours is completely China-focused. The concept is simple -- have a question about China, post the question, get a answers from fellow China expats and travellers. Just a lil' Laowai helping Laowai love. A two-way street where expats can gain and share knowledge about living, working and playing in this crazy country we call home (even if for some that's only temporary).


Fact or Fiction VIII: Hey Ho! Expo! (Jul 26)
Welcome back one and all to the July edition of Fact or Fiction. Those of you who read any or all of the last seven will know, every edition I will have a guest and we will discuss a few of the big issues in China of the day. Every answer will have a “Fact” [...]