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. […]
About China, covid, culture, clashes…
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 […]
If you walk, you’ll always discover something new. But actually, as soon as I got off the train in Huai’an (淮安) in the Jiangsu province, I start to wonder if that’d be true this time. All I see are empty plots and modern highrises, and I know that if I’ll walk ten kilometers here, I’ll […]
Maybe it’s because I’ve just been on a long trip, but watching ‘A touch of Sin’ (天注定) made me feel like being on one as well — to a place I cannot go back to now. China in 2013: Shanxi (山西), Chongqing (重庆), Hubei (湖北) & Guangdong (广东). Regardless of whether the story grabs you […]
Chicken soup & (very oily) stir-fried niangao (年糕), made by a half-drunk chef in Lishui (丽水). Pickled cabbage (雪菜) and pink white sugar cake (白糖糕). Red braised pork belly with meigan cai (梅干菜红烧肉) in Jiangwan (江湾). Not sure if I ever had meigan cai before, it’s pickled, dried, and steamed vegetables from the Shaoxing (绍兴) […]