Day 31 – 恭喜发财 – PassageMaker’s Chinese New Year party!

February 15, 2010 by whit · Leave a Comment 

恭喜发财, gōng xǐ fā cái, wishing you a prosperous new year! More articles and weird stuff: Toxic Linfen – regardless of Climategate, there is still room for commonsense pollution controls in developing nations Think You Know China? Eight Things Foreigners Get Wrong Interesting talk on Vested Outsourcing – not sure if I care for the [...]

Why I don’t brew beer (anymore)

October 13, 2009 by whit · Leave a Comment 

20 years ago I wanted to be a brewmaster.  The American microbrew movement was just taking off, and it was a good time to get in.  I attended beer festivals, visited breweries, did research (in the days before the internet no less), etc.  Ultimately I had two banker’s boxes full of information on techniques, equipment, [...]

The importance of food (and drink); or learning to love Pig Brain Soup

September 25, 2009 by whit · Leave a Comment 

Business books aplenty have been written on the importance of guanxi or relationships in China.  And most of them are boring, so I won’t add to the pile. From my personal experiences over the last 15 years in Asia, as a round-eye you build relationships by eating anything put in front of you and drinking [...]