My first time in an airplane was in some Cessna 25 years ago. I had never imagined I’d ever sit in a plane, because that was something for rich people. But then after our visit to Legoland in Denmark, my dad decided we’d see the park from above. The whole was so inconceivable, not just […]

Sometimes a place or thing becomes super memorable not despite its odd name, but because of it. In Kunshan (昆山) there’s a place that sells ‘Toilet Egg Pancake’ (厕所蛋饼), because their original store was next to a public toilet. It has already moved on, but the name remains. While their pancakes are so good (and […]

My parents visited Shanghai for the first time in seven years, and even though the city has changed a lot, I dare say it has changed not as much as I have. Sure. On the surface of Shanghai, a lot of stores have come and gone since 2018, and large areas of the city were […]

I got the chance to travel from Shanghai to Taipei and back in one day. Rather impractical, very tiring, but still worth it. Because you could stay at home for ten weekends and watch fifty movies, and still not have as many impressions as this. I will refrain from acting as if now I know […]

Set an alarm to 05:00, take a taxi to the train station, get onto the train, switch in Hangzhou, and get off in Tonglu (桐庐), take another taxi — to arrive 4 hours and 330 kilometers away from home. For a hike. Maybe it’s crazy, but the alternative is to stay home. You’ll have plenty […]

We’re in Qibao (七宝古镇) — an old water town swallowed by the city of Shanghai, now turned into a tourist attraction. In the center stands a moon bridge, surrounded by heavily renovated buildings that now house shops selling fridge magnets or bites such as ⁠tangyuan, scallion pancakes, red bean cake, and parts of pork or […]

If you squint your eyes, you can still see a busy little street here. The shops on Wangxin Road (王新街店铺) near Gaoqiao (高桥) in Pudong, were built in the late Qing Dynasty but now face an uncertain future. They’re not labeled for demolition (the character 拆 isn’t shown), but there are many tags of landlords […]

I saw this message from Curt about how difficult it is to love Shanghai, and there’s some truth in that. I’ve now lived here for over seven years, and I think most tourist attractions are boring, or I have grown out of them. Or maybe Shanghai is too big a city to love. But below […]

On Xiaohongshu, I searched for village names in the area where we live on Xiaoshongshu and found an old decaying house from the Qing Dynasty that caught my eye — just seven kilometers away! The uploader mentioned that the building — named the Gulu Guandi Temple (顾路关帝庙) — was built in 1910, to be used […]

I’m trying to cancel my China Mobile broadband subscription. I call China Mobile and I tell them I want to cancel, they say “sure, done!” One day later I get a call back: “You wanted to cancel broadband? You need to give back the router and modem back to cancel.” I learn that I can […]