September 30, 2015 By professor Li Mengyu, of Ocean University, Qingdao, China, a friend and intercultural colleague To Don and Ellen You come from a far, far-away place, Maybe we will never see again, After we say goodbye today. But you seem to be my life-long friends, Though we stay together for hours. Your keen […]
Polite here / rude there; polite there / rude here, is the basic way of culture. Overcoming the need for the ‘ways my mom taught me’ to be proper for all, is a tough one. And there is also the issue of public / private manners, or in which situations do ‘good manners’ […]
September 16, 2015 It has been 25 years since we last visited Japan, and 31 years since we lived and worked in this lovely land. So it has been wonderful to spend time with old friends and see what has changed and what has not. What has not changed is the beauty and graciousness of […]
September 4, 2015 Ellen and Don are off to China! We fly first to Tokyo on September 9th, 2015. After a week with dear friends, we continue on to Beijing, where our journey in China begins. We plan to zigzag east and west but mostly southward, flying back to Calgary from Hong Kong on December […]