China’s population is the largest in the world, estimated at 1.4 billion people, and the ramifications of this number constantly ripple through every part of daily life. There are always lines at every turn, transportation is crowded, and of course, there is limited personal space. Chinese New Year, or Spring Festival, falls on January 23rd this year, and is a time...

Whenever you hear "The Avocado Lady" uttered by Western lips it is quickly followed by "legend". Western palates have been enlivened, some may even say saved by the diverse array of produce offered at her ever expanding shop. Much has been written about The Avocado Lady: her 19 hour days beginning at 4 am for over 20 years, her astonishingly low 7-11RMB avocados depending on ...

T’was the night before Christmas, and all throughout Shanghai, Not a creature was stirring, except for a few restless Laowai. Tattered clothes were hung outside balconies with care, As they dried and soaked up the smog-infested air. Little Emperors were nestled all snug in their beds, All dreaming of cash-filled envelopes colored red. So I sat down ...

Hundreds of people walk down this sidewalk every day on their way to a suburban Shanghai Metro station. But most people barely glance at what’s behind the cement wall alongside a path that was rebuilt after a storm destroyed the old one. Tons of trash is spread out behind the wall, in a landscape that looks nothing like the neatly-kept grounds nearby -- an en...

A bespectacled 17 year-old hunched over a textbook, thick rimmed steel glasses, dim light on a cramped desk, crunched ball of used tissue on the desk, so focused and with seemingly no time to blow the nose properly, nor throw the used tissue in the wastepaper basket.

Mathematics may not be the first thing that comes to mind when thinking of a culturally diverse subject, but the subject is rife with as many associations to Texas Instrument calculators and American Advanced Placement tests as it is to Kumon tutorial classes and Chinese gao kao examinations.