When I lived in Beijing, students hoping to study abroad would travel half a day to a certain shrine, praying to receive an “offer”. They were practicing hieroglossia. That’s because they deemed the shrine’s name; 卧佛寺 similar enough to the English word ”offer” to place their trust in, or hedge their bets on, this place for a few hours of their lives. I was intrigued that students treated it as more than just a joke, more than just an excuse for a jaunt. I was curious about this geomantic...

Chinese food was the ultimate treat for me. You may sneer at those British-Cantonese restaurant dishes which so excited me: spare ribs, crispy noodles, crispy beef with carrots, etc. I am unrepentant. In our family, we each ordered one dish. Mine was always Lemon Chicken. Sure, the take-away version usually comes in a gloopy sauce with the same lemon-ness as “lemon-fresh” bathroom cleaner. But fresh lemon (word order is important here) is always used in the best restaurants. And, thanks to BritishChinese food evangelist Ken Hom, it’s a dish...

Now the baking days are behind us, we can say it’s been another hot summer, with one tiny difference;  Things have heated up in the cold tea sector. For a long time, there was only Suntory (三得利) with its iconic pair of Oolong SKUs: WITH-sugar (red characters) and WITHOUT (blue). These black/brown bottles have a following (of fans and imitators) to rival Laoganma (老干召) sauce.  Traditionally, the remainder of the “tea” bottles on the c-store shelf were of the lemon-tea or the milk-tea type, all stashed with sugar, of course.  Actually, those teas...

Delicious, isn’t it? Remember the smell when you unpeeled your first credit card? If you have bought electronics, you will know the excitement of transparent sleeves and instruction booklets. Let us also mention polyethylene. If I write here about the smell of new bin liners, you will experience something quite specific in your “inner nose”. Polyethylene. It is the softer plastics that seem more generous to give off their scent. PVC raincoats and toy umbrellas. We all know the aromatic explosion from a roll of bubble wrap. Tiny seams of injected modernity. It...