A friend mentioned this to me when I was back in Hong Kong: Young professionals, after overworking themselves far past midnight, gather in McDonalds armed with… PSPs and Nintendo DSs.
Even though they are strangers to one another, they will get together for a good multiplayer game of, say, Monster Hunter. It’s popular enough that one local gaming magazine published a list of McDonalds to play.
They even offer 20 whole minutes of free Wifi! (Free Wifi is not easy to find in Hong Kong.)
Siliconera and Kotaku have more on this topic. Image taken from this post.
There’s a new American in Beijing Chinese Blog at http://transparent.com/chinese/.
It contains some thoughtful posts on Chinese language and culture, as well as sample vocabulary and online flashcard vocabulary practice, including native speakers pronouncing the words you’re learning. You can subscribe to it through an RSS feed.
Everyone is welcome to leave comments in the comment area of the blog, too!