About haonowshaokao

Do people have personal blogs any more? It seems like something that’s already out of date now that people even prefer sending messages on facebook to e-mailing (and even that’s a bit 2007). Anyway, that’s still fundamentally what this is, so if you clicked ‘about’ then it’s me and my life that needs to be summed up first.

I’m originally from the UK, born in Liverpool, raised in Herefordshire and Worcester, studied film in Southampton and later applied linguistics in London, had a fairly rubbish year in Brighton working for a bank, and have spent the majority of the last ten years living abroad – first in the Czech Republic, where I taught English, wrote for a magazine and drank beer, then in China, where I’ve taught much more English, drank much less beer, travelled quite a bit, ate lots of strange food, got married, had a kid and started training, then managing teachers.

Sometimes I wonder if this is all a bit self-indulgent, or if I’m putting too much personal information on the internet, and at times I’ve gone a year and a half without updating. The minutiae of my daily life is probably not of interest to anyone (and if it is then do I really want them reading it?), so I’ve begun to move more towards writing about things, rather than about myself. Maybe this will eventually lead somewhere, maybe not – in any case it’s good practice.

I sometimes write about books. Right now I’m slowly going through Emile Zola’s Rougon-Macquart series and the Chinese classics.  Sometimes I write about music – particularly forgotten 90s bands. My main project these days is writing about every song by the band Pulp – that’s updated every Saturday, much more often than this site, in other words. I also make films / videos (not professionally) and a podcast, which takes me way too long, so please go and listen to it.

If you’re someone I know (seems fairly likely), please feel free to get in touch, or even come over to Beijing for a visit.

Find me here: