Strolling near Jinqiao (金桥镇). Pretty sure more people lived here, but they got pushed out by the highway. Ayi is busy planting corn, with more vitality than most people in the office. A shifu is heating some water. (License plate showed they’re from Anhui.) “Forbidden to swim”
I saw this message from Curt about how difficult it is to love Shanghai, and there’s some truth in that. Maybe it’s too big a city to love, and I just love some specific locations of Shanghai. Let me have a go. Ye Garden (叶家花园), a ~100-year-old park in Yangpu, hidden behind a hospital. Usually […]
I once read the poetic line: “If you like the sea, come to Shanghai and never look at it” Well, today we drove Nanhui New Town Beach (南汇新城海滩) all in the southeast of Shanghai in Lingang (临港). Not sure if this is worthy of the ‘beach’ moniker though. Concrete blocks protect the land against the […]
It’s the first good weather weekend without covid restrictions, in more than a year. The parks and streets of Yangzhou (扬州) fill with people. Dongguan Street (东关街) is 1146 meters long, filled with the smell of fried food from both sides and people everywhere. The cooking installations burst out of homes and onto the streets. […]
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 […]
About China, covid, culture, clashes…
Friend: “Never drink berry juice. It’s just no good.” Me: “Ah, why?!” Friend: “Last time I drank it, I lost my camera.” A guy with his girlfriend walking outside: He: “I’m one meter eighty tall!” She: “No!! You’re one meter seventy-nine!” ~10-year-old Chinese girl: “My skateboard is so sexy” (The sentence is spoken in Chinese, […]
I made the trip to some old buildings in the area after a tip from Historic Pudong, to see where the name of the area comes from ~ the contrast between a Ming dynasty pawn shop and today’s high-tech park in Shanghai. Several hundred years ago, a guy named Zhang Jiang (张江) opened a pawn […]
Working in Zhangjiang hi-tech park (张江高科技园区). Our latest portable prototype is missing, everybody panics. We watch the security camera. In the evening it’s charging on the edge of a table, but then falls on the floor as someone bumps against the table. Then in the early morning it’s thrown away by the ayi. The guy […]
I’ve just finished learning ‘Mastering Chinese, Listening & Speaking 6’ (会通汉语 – 听说6). It’s an OK language-learning book, on the upside there aren’t as many idioms as the Developing Chinese series (发展汉语). The first chapters are extremely difficult, the last few are just pure propaganda: An American lady who lives in Beijing complimenting how well […]