Becky Yances of the blog, Writer, Traveler, Tea Drinker has written an informative post about how in China, everybody (save for the white-haired) pays with their phones now. It's all based on using QR codes. 

I recently dabbled a toe in these digital waters. The fact is, when we moved to China, Ross and I stopped using debit and credit cards for the most part and started paying for everything in cash, and I really liked it.
​I felt in much better touch with my money, figuratively speaking. Of course, life is simpler here, in that there are fewer things I need to pay for, since I don't own a home and could get meals at the school dining hall. 

But over the last few years, we noticed that people were just waving their phones to pay for things. Or we would go to pick up the bill at lunch and our guest would inform us, "Too late, I already paid on my phone." (Arguing over the meal tab is a thing in China.)

Inevitably, I had to move with the times. So I learned how (that is, a student showed me which buttons to push) to link my bank account to the phone, and use two services, Alipay and WeChat, to receive and give payments...

It is often said that Jane Austen didn't write any scenes with only men present. And the reason given is because men were outside of her sweet-little-country-spinster sphere of reference--how could she write about creatures she never knew? Who knows what the guys talk about when the ladies have excused themselves from the dinner table?

I suspect that a more compelling reason for Austen to limit her all-male scenes is that most of her readers are women, and women like stories with women in them. Don't we?  We don't want to see a war movie unless there is a romantic interest included, and women are on the covers of women's magazines, not men. Austen read a lot of novels and carefully analyzed them, making note of what she thought was ridiculous or implausible or preachy. She was a great innovator as a writer but she was a shrewd, self-aware writer as well, avoiding subjects and spheres of life that she felt didn't suit her authorial voice...

My father, J. McRee "Mac" Elrod, died last summer at age 84. I have always been in awe of the fact that he and my mother spent five years in Korea soon after the end of the Korean war, as very young teaching missionaries. They came with a red-headed baby boy--my brother Mark--and added two more kids while there -- me and my sister Cara. 

When my dad reported for work at Yonsei University on the outskirts of Seoul 60 years ago, the small collection of library books was protected from theft behind a barrier of chicken-wire. The card catalogue, I recall father saying, was ravaged by soldiers taking the cards to line their shoes. In the winter, the ink froze in the inkwells.​
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​My father pioneered the adaptation of Western cataloguing methods for Asian library materials, while still in his early twenties. In fact he was the first Western-trained professional librarian in Korea. He did away with the chicken wire and during his time, the library collection grew from 3,000 to 30,000 volumes...

Fanny Price or Mary Crawford — who do you like best?  Is Fanny the sweet heroine of Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park or is she a two-faced wimp?  Is Mary Crawford a charming and misunderstood socialite or is she selfish and immoral? 

​Kyra C Kramer and I take up our pens in defense of these literary frenemies for a no-holds-barred debate, held over five days on the internet. Follow along and join the debate in the comments! 
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​Monday, October 23rd: Just Jane 1813 
Tuesday, October 24th: Diary of an Eccentric 
Wednesday, October 25th: Savvy Verse and Wit
Thursday, October 26th: My Jane Austen Book Club
Friday, October 27th: Austenesque Reviews
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