Posted inLifestyle

‘The ovary and digestive gland of a crab digs up the cabbage’ and other menu conundrums in China

As you browse through a menu in China, sometimes courteously translated for you into a version of English we all fondly know here as Chinglish, imagine savouring “ants climbing the tree” or “seafood custard”. (“Ants climbing the tree” is tasty, spicy fried vermicelli with finely chopped pork; I haven’t tried the seafood custard.) Either you […]

Posted inGeneral

‘Man-di-LAH!’: Carefully explaining to the Chinese in Shanghai what it meant to grow up in the old SA (part four)

Following from the previous post in this series The entire English department at the Shanghai University of Engineering and Science knew of Nelson Mandela. Should I say “of course” they knew of him? No. People tend to see their country as the centre of everything and can be appalled, perhaps, to realise that in far-flung […]

Posted inMediaNews/Politics

On Christi van der Westhuizen’s ‘Zapiro’/bless his satirical name, ‘Zuma’/victim and ‘us’/them/women/men

I invite all readers to look at Christi van der Westhuizen’s photo on her blog on Thought Leader. Please note — hopefully without my prior interpretation — that she has chosen a photo where she is looking “down” on you, suggesting she, as a woman, is not looking “up” at you, in other words she […]

Posted inLifestyle

Carefully explaining to the Chinese in Shanghai what it meant to grow up in the old South Africa (part two)

(Continued from previous post) “… This white child and nanny relationship added to the complexity of the racial situation I grew up in,” I said to my entirely Chinese audience at the University of Engineering and Science in Shanghai. These black nannies, or ousies, as we would also call them, were wonderful people and as […]