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Shanghai Snapshots
What did I do with ten days of vacation in Shanghai? Well, I spent a lot of that time recharging my batteries—drinking multiple cups of instant coffee and writing or reading in my cozy attic room at the Astor House, marking the passage of hours by the chiming of “The East Is Red” from the…
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“Home” Again in Shanghai
The work portion of my China trip over, I flew to Shanghai on Sunday morning for a week-plus of vacation. The minute I walked out of Hongqiao Airport, everything clicked: I was back in familiar territory—my territory. I jumped into a cab and smoothly gave the driver instructions to get to my hotel, knowing exactly…
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Postcard from Hong Kong
United Airlines flight 117 begins at Newark Liberty International Airport, 10 miles from my home in Jersey City, and ends in Hong Kong, 8065 miles away. It’s the eighth-longest flight route in operation, and if you’re a restless flyer—and I am a terribly restless flyer—there’s nothing good about it, save the small cup of mango…
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Let’s Go to the Movies
After checking out the exterior of the historic Loew’s Jersey movie theater a couple of weeks ago, I didn’t expect to see the interior anytime soon. I knew that the theater screens classic films, but also that it’s closed in the summer due to a lack of air conditioning. I thought I’d missed my chance…
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Two Movie Palaces in Journal Square
A massive transportation complex dominates Jersey City’s Journal Square, a grotesquely ugly concrete-block monstrosity of the type favored by urban planners in the 1960s and ‘70s. Thousands of commuters pass through the transportation center each day as they head to New York or Newark on the PATH subway trains that rumble underground. Few of those…
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Postcard from Citi Field
I should do this more often. I spent yesterday afternoon watching the Phillies lose to the Mets at Citi Field. It was my first time to that ballpark, and there’s a lot to recommend it: easy subway access, a great seat for a reasonable price (thanks to Groupon), well-behaved fans, Nathan’s hot dogs, the occasional…
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Reading Rainbow
Between commuting to work (about 45 minutes each way on mass transit) and traveling (greetings from Orange County, CA!), I have been plowing through books at a prodigious rate these past few months. I often read two to four books a week, making repeated trips to the New York Public Library branch close to my…
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No Pictures on the Scorecard
“No pictures on the scorecard” is one of my father’s favorite expressions. It comes from golf and (as I understand it) basically means that people only see end results, without knowing how you arrived at them. He usually invokes the phrase when someone tries to dismiss an accomplishment as easier than it sounds. (Because a…
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4/30, New York: Women’s Rights Activism in China Today
On April 30, I’ll be the guest speaker at an after-work gathering of China Hands NYC, talking about the topic of women’s rights activism in China today. The jumping-off point for my talk will be, obviously, the five feminists who were detained in China just before International Women’s Day last month and finally released earlier…
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Two Upcoming Events in SoCal
I will be back in California for a week at the end of this month—first to San Francisco for work, then to Irvine for … well, a working vacation? I originally intended my three days in Southern California to be pure vacation—visiting friends, going to the beach, eating my annual In-N-Out burger. But then I…
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Maura Elizabeth Cunningham 