Lishu Village (蠡墅镇) in Suzhou is several hundred years old, although rumours of its name trace back two millennia. Warlords and rich merchants used to live here, their houses and courtyards built by eunichs, their money and trade earned in Suzhou. I don’t think this place has the refined attraction of Suzhou water towns like […]
杨思镇 (Yangsi Town) is described as a ‘城中村’ (a village within the city) and it’s an apt description. It’s an oddly shaped block of old and low, rickety buildings — on the east side of the Huangpu in Shanghai’s Pudong district, hunched against the small Yangsigang River (杨思港). Once you enter the area, you really […]
I am not sure, which or who changes faster; cities or people. Cities never change all at once, but rather block by block. This is how cities keep their character, although they constantly evolve. And maybe people aren’t so different. People say Shanghai changes so fast, but its DNA hasn’t changed in over 150 years. […]
The hustle and bustle (烟火气) at this market in Chuansha (十八铺菜市场). One of my favorite places in Shanghai. Here are photos from a year ago, and here from half a year ago. Going home with a ton of vegetables and a cow-tongue biscuit (牛舌饼).
In the summer of 2018, I moved to Shanghai and back then I only planned to stay maybe two years in China, so I didn’t consider it necessary to learn Chinese. In Shanghai, it’s OK to get by without speaking Mandarin. You either point at pictures or show the translated sentence on your phone. For […]
We’re in a little town in Shanghai’s Pudong district, named 新港集镇 — which translates to something like New Harbor Market Town. It’s just a collection of houses, but this — and the 28°C weather — is all we need. It’s so quiet here, a rare thing in Shanghai. It’s as if everybody whispers, not to […]
The best thing to come out of Shanghai’s coffee boom is 一尺花园 (One Step Garden). Their restaurants/coffee stores are always housed in well-preserved old buildings with fantastic interior design, like this old kiln in Nanhui (南汇). (The weather doesn’t help taking pictures.) Or this one in Gaoqiao (高桥古镇): This one in Qingxi Ancient Town (青溪古镇): […]
We ask for the old city wall, and the shushu points to the back: “It’s raining, take this way.” And so we go through a garage, kitchen, and up the stairs — and suddenly we’re looking out over a canal and realize we’re on the old wall. It’s in the back of a huge temple […]
During every holiday trip, my mom and dad will light a candle in some church they encounter. A few days ago, they lit a candle in St Patrick’s Cathedral in Auckland, New Zealand. To be grateful for our family and everything we have. So why a church? It’s hard to say how religious they (or […]
My parents usually buy a travel book or borrow one from the library, but I typically read up on Reddit and Google. While Google is all ‘pristine white beaches’, Reddit had me kinda pessimistic about going to Vietnam. Beaches were supposed be littered in plastic, some villages full of Korean or Russian tourists, and traffic […]