I am usually not too picky about my sleeping quarters when I travel. On my recent trip to China however, I met a really friendly university student on the bus who offered to help me scout out a relatively clean and conveniently located hotel near Shandong University. The place turned out to be more than [...]
I’m not sure what the Chinese name is for it, but there is a kind of huge bread often found sold on the streets of China that I have to admit is pretty tasty. It is not the kind of hearty whole grain material that I usually like but there is something satisfying about the [...]
I mentioned in an earlier posting written while visiting Taiwan in 2005 that, in addition to media products such as Korean movies and dramas, there is another “Korean wave” out there. As I mentioned in that posting, “Korean-style plastic surgery” (韓風整形) can be found advertised on the streets of Taipei. In this advertising we see [...]
I spent the afternoon in a coffee shop mining footnotes of various secondary accounts of the violence in the autumn of 1946 (it is also known as the Autumn Harvest Uprising, the October People’s Resistance, the October Riot Incident, the October Rebellion, and the Taegu Uprising) to see if I have been missing anything. I [...]
With minor modifications, I think this has to be my favorite new slogan: This sign can be found in the bathrooms of Jinan airport in China.1 A loose translation of the Chinese might go something like this, “Support the protection of the environment, use only what [toilet] paper you need.” (or “be economical in your [...]
I spent an hour or two on Shandong Normal University campus in Jinan and noticed an interesting addition to the services available at their university library. The sign on the left reads: Library Glasses Department (in red) Accurate Eye Examination, Fast Delivery of Glasses (in blue) Similar info on the vertical sign. That the library [...]
I was walking through the back streets of a neighborhood in northeastern Jinan the other day and, among the restaurants one can usually find on the street side, I found myself curiously watching a dentist perform his work while another patient (?) waited by the door.
I caught a taxi today to visit the Baotuquan（趵突泉）springs here in Jinan. I asked the driver what my chances were of catching a cab to the airport around 5:30 in the morning on Monday to get to Jinan airport to return to Korea and how long it would take from my hotel. After he answered, [...]
I spent a few hours in the Shandong provincial library here in Jinan this morning to pass the time while I waited for an appointment with a professor at Shandong University. After spending less than ten minutes to get a one year library card for 15RMB (Using my Chinese name 林蜀道, American passport, writing down [...]
As I mentioned in an earlier posting, the blog here at Muninn.net appears to be blocked in China. I have tried it from several internet cafes (网吧) here in Jinan and in addition to failing to load, on one occasion I was greeted with a scary alert box that told me I had tried to [...]