Pat's Blog
Sporadic and sparingly-edited dispatches from China, Southeast Asia, and wherever else.
Category: Uncategorized
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A humid summer weekend in ancient Chang’an Back in late July, a few of my coworkers and I made an impromptu visit to the city of Xi’an in northwest China’s Shaanxi province, the former ancient capital of China, and at various points the largest city in the world. From Chengdu to Xi’an is a bit…
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Editor’s note (11/2025): As I’m transferring this over to the website, I’m reading things I wrote almost a year ago and thinking that now, with more experiences under my belt and more familiarity with the language and culture, that I could phrase some things slightly better or explain ideas more correctly. However, I think overall…
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When I left off, I was leaving Thailand for Hong Kong. The map below is a good illustration of China’s “Greater Bay Area”. I went to Hong Kong, Shenzhen, and Guangzhou, three of the four most well-known cities in this cluster, the other being Macau. Macau (formerly a Portuguese colony) and Hong Kong (formerly a…
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Hi everybody, I’m now back in Chengdu, a couple days before two weeks into three weeks into the new term. I’ve been way taking too long to finish so I’m breaking it into two parts. Second part of this trip covering HK/Guangdong will be out very soon (I promise). Hope you enjoy. The flight to…
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Three Hoosiers in the Far East Last week, two of my friends from college came to visit during the National Week/Mid-Autumn festival holidays. I had October 1st – 8th off of work, so we decided a few months ago that this would be the best time for them to come visit, despite being the busiest…
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