Sweaty Shaoxing

32 degrees and the heat is soaked up by the stone roads and stone houses, and ultimately our bodies. It’s sweaty Shaoxing. We head to 八字桥 (Character Eight Bridge), because it looks like the character ‘Eight’ (八).

Nearby is the St. Joseph’s Church (八字桥圣若瑟堂), built in 1871 but today mostly used for photos & basketball.

Despite my reluctance to go to any 5A or 4A attractions, Eva really wants to visit 三味书屋 (Three-Taste Book Room). Nearly all Chinese people learned about this in primary school; the famous school of the writer Luxun (鲁迅).

Of course, all photos are lies. It’s actually like this.

The place is packed. You actually need a reservation (which we don’t have and of course all slots are booked), but we just queue and get through the gates by saying “Yeah our group is already inside, there they are!”

Latest

Twenty-three years

Twenty-three years

In June we moved back to the Netherlands, six suitcases across 8000 kilometres, and after a brief spell at my parents’ place, we moved into our own home. This second move also involved putting down carpet, curtains, buying appliances and furniture — so that our new garage quickly filled with cardboard boxes and other packaging […]
August 29, 2026
Searching for meadows

Searching for meadows

Our new home in the Netherlands sits in a mundane residential area full of young families like ours. The street name comes from made (‘meadow’), still referring to a field that once lay here and now survives only in the name (just how the name Shanghai refers to a river that no longer exists). And […]
August 5, 2026
Degrees of wealth

Degrees of wealth

In eight years of living in China, taxi drivers or older colleagues loved to ask, “Which is better, the Netherlands or China?”, hoping for a single insightful answer that would explain everything. And now, back as a resident in the Netherlands, people ask the mirrored version: do I miss living in China? Neither question is […]
July 11, 2026
Goodbye to Guanyin

Goodbye to Guanyin

It’s a Saturday morning, and we’re in a taxi on the way to the airport. My clothes cling to my body and already reek of sweat, and that’s even before our 12-hour flight has started. Today I woke up at 5:30 to get up early and throw away the last furniture and items we used […]
June 30, 2026