China Archives - Rachel's Ruminations

Sadness of the Hanging Monastery

Rachel Heller — Thu, 15 Jan 2015 17:35:43 +0000

The hanging monastery outside of Datong, China, a UNESCO world heritage site, is breathtakingly beautiful, yet also in a way, sad. Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links. If you click on one and spend money, I will get a small cut of what you spend. It will not affect your price. The monastery was built...

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Chinese Tourists

Rachel Heller — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 00:08:45 +0000

Everywhere we’ve gone so far, there have been very few foreign tourists like us. Most of the tourists — and in some places all of the tourists — are Chinese. Sometimes they’re in pairs or families, sometimes in groups. When they’re in a group, even if it’s just 5 or 6 people, they hire a...

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Toilets in China: On cleanliness and filth

Rachel Heller — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 02:15:06 +0000

Note added in December 2019: I wrote the following article years ago in Hancheng, China, and I see now how terribly judgemental I was about toilets in China. I’ve added some tips and comments to update it a bit. My message now is: be aware of how you communicate and behave around the issue of...

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Intercultural Understanding and Chinese Beds

Rachel Heller — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 18:50:37 +0000

When I started teaching a class in intercultural communication this past year at the teacher training college, I didn’t actually know anything about it. Or rather, I didn’t know any of the theory, but I’d had a whole lot of practice. I had plenty of anecdotes to share, for example, about differences in expectations and...

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Conspicuous Consumption

Rachel Heller — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 16:31:46 +0000

In my last entry, I mentioned how it seemed to me that the Chinese have wholeheartedly embraced conspicuous consumption. Visiting the Forbidden City the other day emphasized that for me. You could say that the emperors of pre-revolutionary China were the originators of the concept for this part of the world. They represent the ultimate...

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