A few weeks ago I packed my gear and headed off to Kashgar to cover a mission by Operation Smile there. Kashgar, a city in China's western state Xianjing, is where the sun stays out until at least 9PM and is home to  Uighurs, ethnic Chinese Muslims. While the past few years have seen violent encounters between the Uighur population and their Han Chinese neighbors,  my job did not give me the freedom or time to look at that side of life in Kashgar. Instead I followed the hundreds of people looking to give their children a new face. Over the course of four days 158 patients, many of whom were from some of the furthest areas of China's west and were seeing a doctor for the first time, received reconstructive surgery by a team of 50 volunteers from China, Australia, and the U.S.

After overtaking Japan to become the number two economy in the world, it seems it’s time for China to set it’s sites on it’s next conquest. Producing this year’s winner of the Ms Universe contest. Apparently winning the Donald’s beauty contest is such a priority, a training camp was set up to teach contenders to walk, talk, smile, use make up, and have that killer instinct one needs to win this coveted crown. It’s hard not to be tongue and cheek about it when I kind of felt like I was in boot camp. A perfumed, lip glossy kind, but still a sort of boot camp.

For months I've been a bad little blogger. Again. I've spent the last few months trying to sort out a visa for India, gone to Haiti(again), covered elections(again), and moved around the world(again). Throughout it all, I've neglected to blog. I started this thing to share my work and clear my head. Kind of like an online after action report. I'm still trying to work out the kinks and be more efficient with it. It's a one of my New Year's resolution. That and run in the New York City Triathlon. We'll see how it goes. Anyway..... After half a year in I am off to a new city and new country. I am now in Beijing for the forseeable future. While I miss India, my firends, colleagues, and Diwali and want to go back more than I ever imagined,  I have had enough of being in j-visa limbo. I am still holding out hope and am planning a trip there in the spring but in the meantime I can find new bureaucrats to drive me nuts.  While I enjoyed my most recent time in New York but my heart is here in Asia. If I can't be in one rapidly growing Asian country of 1 billion I guess I'll have to settle for the other rapidly growing Asian country of 1 billion. I've had  had the good fortune to work with Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal since getting to Beijing earlier this month. This week I got to work a story on farmers who are stockpiling their harvests of cotton in hopes that the prices will rise back to the record high from a few moths ago before a sharp drop just recently. With a year of inflation and higher costs for fertilzer and labor it's easy to understand what motivates them. Growing up I spent my summers working on my grandparents' farm, so I've always had a place in my heart for farmers. I can empathise with them on how much it costs to work the land especially in a season of drought. It's been tough on them. Many of them seem hopefull that there will be a rebound in the coming months. In the mean time they are storing the stuff in backyard closets and even living rooms. Check out the WSJ Photo Journal piece here. If you want to read the story click here. I'm adjusting to being here slowly but surely. I hate the cold and not knowing Mandarin but there's good stories to be told. I am getting on to telling some of them.