I want to be vulnerable, not strong

There’s a parallel that when you sport and you get bruised, it won’t hurt until after the football match, or the day after the run. There are stories of motorcycles losing a foot on a bend armco, and they won’t notice it until they stop riding and want to use that foot to stand on. […]

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In Jiangshan: Three peaks and a railway station

I picked a random city on the map and bought high-speed train tickets. The whole country is off during the Middle-Autumn Festival (中秋节) and the last thing I wanted was crowds. Plus, China’s high-speed trains are really fast, its rails span far & wide —so all I wanted was a city with a station connected […]

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Ye Garden in Shanghai

This secret place is only a stone’s throw away from my home and @goeastmandarin. For the past half year I’ve passed by “Ye Garden” every day, but never noticed it, hidden behind the hospital. But this park is older than the hospital in front. Look at this photo from 1927. Actually, I first saw it […]

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This is me, in Chinese.

Two and a half years of learnings. I started in November 2018, but I took a half-year break in 2019 (I should not have done that). In two and a half years, I took 500 class hours, and around a dozen of books. I’m both proud and encouraged by my Chinese progress. By no means […]

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Photography exhibition GoEast

Exhibition initiated & curated at GoEast Mandarin. Planned June 2021, photographed July & August 2021, exhibited September 2021.   In Michelangelo Antonioni’s documentary Chung Kuo, an Italian camera crew travels through China in 1972, and all they do is point the camera at things and people, and film. Antonioni remarks on Shanghai: ”It has changed […]

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Oracle Bones review

I love books like this. Written with love for stories, and build on stories upon stories. And it makes you reflect on your own life too. While I was reading this, I thought: Wow, Hessler lived in China in such an amazing time, from 1995 to 2006 (when this book was published). There were no […]

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The One Minute Sales Person review

The book is a bit full of typical American self-help advice, and some of its exaggerated ‘pump-yourself-up’ self believes don’t land — but despite this, I still rate it five out of five. I read it about 6 years ago and I bought it again in China to read it again now. Key points for […]

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