Sinica Weekend Edition: Three Days Out and About in Beijing

About this episode

Something different this week. Since I moved back to Beijing, the question I get most often has nothing to do with trade or tech or the 15th Five Year Plan. People want to know what my life here is actually like. So I carried a mic and a portable recorder around for the weekend of October 30 to November 1 and let it roll: a Friday afternoon at Café Zarah with a new friend in from Berlin, Friday night at the Golden Weasel, a Saturday that ran from a China Unicom office to an HKU forum to a very good dinner, and Sunday lunch at Sanyang Cai with an old friend back after eight years. Along the way, conversations with Olumide Abimbola, Michael Cherney, Anthony Tao, Wang Zichen, Wang Feng, Andy Rothman, and Eric Fish, a few words on the word "expat," and news of a new apartment near Tuanjiehu. • 01:19 – Why a weekend edition: what my weekdays in Beijing look like, informal office hours at Café Zarah, and a home full of moving boxes • 02:59 – A word about "expats": why I avoid the word, why I don't avoid the people, and what a city's foreign community says about the city • 07:16 – Friday at Café Zarah with Olumide Abimbola of Berlin's Africa Policy Research Institute: building-integrated