John Guise is a Canadian who came to Shanghai on a whim — and for a girl — after been laid off from his newspaper job in August of 2003. Four years later and he’s no longer with the girl (she moved to Japan and he found love with someone much better) but he’s has become pretty good at Mandarin, seen a large portion of the country — including a lot of factories — and spent nearly three years working at an advertising/trade media company as a copywriter for the workshops of the world. He currently does marketing for a consulting firm in Shanghai. You can find his thoughts on living in China and everything else here. He is also a contributor to LostLaowai.com