Around the World Podcast #28: Fei Fei Huo

My guest for this episode is Fei Fei Huo (霍婉菲). She grew up in Chengdu, China and has traveled to many parts of Europe. We recorded this podcast while sitting by the river in Shaxi, China at the end of yet another picture-perfect day. Our discussion was mostly about cultural differences between East and West, and she taught me a lot. You can even hear my moment of epiphany when I learned why Chinese people sometimes say things that don't make any sense to my Western brain.
If you enjoy this discussion even half as much as I did, then we're off to a good start. Here you go:

Download this Episode (right-click and choose “save as”)

Fei Fei is part owner of the Horse Pen 46 Hostel in Shaxi, China. This rates as one of my all-time favorite hostels. I guess it should, considering that I stayed there for nearly a month.

Show notes:

• Here's how to write “horse” in simplified Chinese: 马. Here's how to write “mouth”: 口. And here's how to indicate that you are asking a question: 吗. To remember the “question mark” character, you can visualize opening a horse's mouth, and finding a question mark inside. You can apply these kind of visualizations to learn hundreds of Chinese characters.
• The Naxi people still use hieroglyphics for their writing system. As far as I know, this is the only hieroglyphic system still in use today.
• Fei Fei mentioned Ali Wong's hilarious show. Here's her website.