Adventures in Asia

Sometimes you come across an injustice, and you simply can’t keep quiet about it. I’m not a science-loving person, but this week I learned about benzene. To sum up, the stuff is poisonous. It causes cancer. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services classifies it as a human carcinogen. In 1948 (!!!) the American Petroleum Institute said that “the only absolutely safe concentration for benzene is zero.” Wikipedia that crap. You can’t really find much benzene in the U.S., maybe a little bit in gasoline and tobacco. No duh, it’s poisonous. But in China? Here it occasionally turns up in the water. Besides my sudden interest in science, this week also included contaminated water in Lanzhou, Gansu province. Benzene was found in the tap water. Lanzhou is a normal size city in China with about 3.6 million people. So why is there benzene in the water in Lanzhou? The finger is pointed at an oil pipe leak, which I suppose is somewhat explainable, benzene ...

So I’ve already blogged about how Korean TV is taking over the world. Yet when I first moved to China, I wondered how popular Korean media would be. I mean, China is geographically close to South Korea, but who knows if the Chinese are into their music/TV shows? Turns out some of my teenage students listen to kpop groups like EXO and Super Junior – no surprises there. (Those boy bands release whole songs in Mandarin in addition to Korean.) What was a little shocking was when I overheard my Chinese coworkers (women in their thirties) gushing about the latest kdrama: “Man From the Stars.” (Also translated as “My Love From Another Star” or “You Who Came From the Stars.”) Then my roomie discovered news articles about how Chinese leaders are quaking in their shoes over the immense popularity of the Korean show, because “Why can’t China make something this good?” Then we found more articles about the addictive tendencies of Chinese viewers. For example, ap...

Kdrama. In case you didn’t know, Korean TV is currently translated into a plethora of languages and is viewed around the world. And secret’s out: I’m hooked. I barely watch any American TV, just an episode or so of whatever my family or friends have on. But Korean? I can’t stop. In under a year I’ve watched 8.5 kdramas (and re-watched 3), each about 16 winsome, exciting, heart wrenching, blissful episodes long. (And yes, I am currently in the middle of one.) There are some definite reasons why kdrama is taking over the world. Here are my theories: 1. Kdrama is plot driven. Story is king. It’s not about the wit or comedy, though that’s there. It’s not about sex. It’s not about shallow, stereotypical selfish-people-backstabbing-each-other drama. This is K drama, in which good, old-fashioned “What’s going to happen next???” keeps me clicking the next episode – and analyzing every twist and turn in the plot, every moment of character development. 2. Kdrama doe...