Month: December 2013
-
Holding My Breath
Just after noon on Saturday—three hours behind schedule—China Eastern Airlines Flight 721 broke through the clouds on its ascent from Shanghai Hongqiao Airport. From my seat in the middle of the plane, I turned my head left and looked out the window. For the first time in five days, I saw blue sky. Shanghai doesn’t…
-
Fourteen Books for 2014
I acquire a lot of books. My mother receives all my Amazon packages in Philadelphia, so I’m sure she’ll confirm this statement—and those are only the physical books that I buy! My Kindle gets fed on a regular basis, too, and book publishers often send me review copies of new titles so I can write…
-
Postcard from Hangzhou
I spent the weekend in Hangzhou, a pleasant “small” city of almost 9 million people, which sits an hour away from Shanghai by train. I had been to Hangzhou before—during the summer of 2006, I attended the CET language program there to work on my Chinese—but this trip was far better for several reasons. Two…
Maura Elizabeth Cunningham 