If you can read Chinese...

...then you can find here an exceptionally entertaining story about the travails of a long-suffering Chinese wife whose husband wants to take her to his fancy company Christmas party. Alas, said husband's airheadedness makes it all rather needlessly difficult.

In all seriousness, I keep hearing what a wonderful writer Helen is from native Mandarin speakers who read her blog; so if you can read Mandarin, by all means follow the link. I practice my Chinese by trying to read her blog, but obviously I can't really tell you how good a writer she is. But that she has a flair for vivid and moving metaphor, I can guess from the final paragraph of this post, in which she (a) carries on about how good I am at giving her praise and compliments, and then finishes up with this paragraph:

哎，我可爱的傻瓜先生，我知道你还是看不懂我写的这些中文。不过此时此刻就只想感谢你，真心真意感谢你的爱和你的包容。我想告诉你，虽然这是秋天，虽然你喜欢雷暴雨，可你的感谢和赞美，像春雨一样淅淅沥沥，像泉水一样叮叮咚咚，滋润流淌在我的心田。在我的低谷里，总是有着你的感谢之雨，赞美之泉。为你，我深深感谢上帝！也祈愿这样的感谢和赞美流淌在世间每一个家庭！！

Which, as far as I can tell, means something like this:

Oh, my sweet doofus husband, I know you can't read these words I write in Chinese. All the same, at this moment I just want to thank you, with true thanks from my heart, for your love and your patience. I want to tell you, even though it's autumn now, and even though it's thunderstorms that you love, your gratitude and your praise are like the pitter-patter of soft spring rain, like the babbling of a spring-fed brook watering the fields of my heart. Even in my dark valleys, I always have the rain of your gratitude, the spring of your praise. I thank God deeply for you! And it's my hope and prayer that such gratitude and praise would flow through every family in the world!!

That, I think, even survives a redneck translation.

What I keep trying to tell her, is that it's easy to be good at praising her -- all I have to do is just tell the truth.