I was parked outside the Arrivals section at Trudeau Airport this morning looking up and down the waiting area for someone. I have been picking up strangers at the airport once a year for the past few years. This isn’t as bad as it sounds. The occasion is TD Canadian Children’s Book Week when I volunteer to pick up visiting authors and drive them to their hotel or to a school or bookstore for a reading. This time, I was Continue reading
The time has come to say good-bye to one of my favorite writing spaces: my armchair. I’ve had it for 20 years. It started out as just a piece of living room furniture when I used to write at a desk chained to a desktop computer. However, once I got a laptop and wi-fi, I was free to sit and write anywhere in the house: the dining room table, the Continue reading
Looking for something new to read? Want to try a new genre? This is your week!
Smashwords.com is offering e-books at either deep discounts or for free all week during Read An E-Book Week. This is your chance to discover new authors and new books. Click here to browse the catalogue.
You will also find my short story collection on sale at 50% off. Use the coupon code RAE50 at checkout.
Hurry, the sale ends Saturday!
I’m not good at keeping New Year’s resolutions. I’m one of those who forgets/gives up a couple of weeks into the New Year or I’ll procrastinate and start the resolution when tulips are blooming, maybe. (What’s the rush? There’s 365 days in the year.) But this year will be different. I will not procrastinate as this resolution will be easy to keep: I resolve to read more. Continue reading
I dropped by Chinatown this afternoon where the celebrations for the New Year were taking place. The Montreal Chinese Lion Dance Club was performing the ritual dance in front of various stores in Chinatown to wish them luck and good fortune for the new year. Here’s a short clip.
I wish you all good fortune for the Year of the Rooster!
One evening in Beijing, my tour group had supper at a family home located in a hutong. A hutong is an old residential neighborhood. Many were bulldozed in the name of progress and replaced with skyscrapers, but apparently, the Chinese government put a stop to it in order to preserve those that remain. This was an opportunity to see a private home, and get away from the bland meals served by the restaurants that catered to tour groups, even if it was only for one evening.
To get there, we took an old mode of transportation: a rickshaw. There was at least a dozen of them lined up along a wide street waiting for passengers and we would need all of them for our group. The drivers happily helped us climb in and when everyone was seated and photos taken, the rickshaws rolled out one after the other, like a wagon train rumbling across a frontier. Continue reading
Download The Red Pagoda and Other Stories for only 99 cents during Black Friday Week at the Kindle Book Store from November 20th-25th.
Language was definitely an issue for me in China. When sales people started talking to me in Mandarin, I’d stop them and ask if they spoke English. Luckily, there would be another customer close by who stepped forward to translate. So being a Chinese in China who couldn’t speak the local language, I found some local signs amusing, even if it was just a typo. My favorite is the last one. Continue reading
One of the highlights of my trip to China in October was Shanghai. With a population of over 24 million, it is three times bigger than New York. If you combine Shanghai’s population with the 8 million who inhabit the city of Suzhou which is just two hours away, it almost equals Canada’s population which is just over 36 million.
Shanghai rivals New York City in razzle dazzle. Every evening from 6p.m. to 10p.m., it puts on a light show along The Bund that highlights the old and the new sides of the city. Here’s a short 2 minute video that I put together. It doesn’t do it justice, but I hope you enjoy it.
Day's Lee 