Financing Hurdles – and New Opportunities – for CFPA Microfinance

November 14, 2014

Every year just before the spring plowing, CFPA Microfinance General Manager, Liu Dongwen, gets the same request: more money.

Offering Fit for an Emperor

July 11, 2014

The Western Mausoleum Complex in Hebei Province, built over two centuries, houses the tombs of four Qing emperors. At the entrance to the principal tomb, there is an altar replete with offerings. It is said that the gifts offered on earth can be used by the deceased in their next life. So, naturally, donation boxes were crammed with bills and food rations were heaped in great piles. But then, there were more bewildering provisions: alcohol (all bottom-shelf), a palm-sized covered drum, stationary notepads, a stuffed sheep. And finally, atop a package of breaded pastries, a lone CD: Westlife’s 2001 World of Our Own – all to ensure a pleasant afterlife.

If Not For the Melon

July 03, 2014

We discussed it, and after a time decided on the watermelon. What if the landlord doesn’t drink, we wondered, or if he hates sweets. Watermelon was neutral, we reasoned; something we could all agree on.

Finding Skewered Meat in a Hopeless Place

July 01, 2014

By Taigu standards, it was golden summer; three days in the upper 70s, with the kind of blue skies that I thought had ceased to exist in China. I was staying in Amelea’s room, though of course I had known it better as Ray’s room, and before hers, Nick’s. Even still, it seemed something of a misnomer – Amelea had already left, and in a few weeks’ time, the room would be newly appropriated by one of the first-year transplants to Taigu. The house they had each inhabited was adjacent to the identical red brick flat No. 11 where I used to live. For the entire duration of my visit, it was hard to reconcile the reality that I was sleeping, not in my own bed in my own house, but in a room that I had, for two years, scarcely ever entered.

Last Train to Taigu

June 22, 2014

There were no more cars. That was how the station attendant announced that the subway had stopped running for the night. It was already 11:00 and I knew, even before I rounded the platform to transfer lines, that my fear of missing the last train would quickly be realized.