On Smokeflowers and Hawaiian Pizza
by David Musgrave A little while ago I returned from three months living in Beijing and found my world subtly changed. I’d gone there with the intention of continuing my study of Mandarin, but in a more intensive fashion than hitherto, and succeeded in that aim to the extent that maybe for one whole month I didn’t have a conversation in English with anyone at all, apart from writing emails. This of course does not mean that interesting conversations in English were replaced with interesting conversations in Mandarin: on the contrary, most of the time I felt like a…