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. 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 Ye Garden (叶家花园), a ~100-year-old park in Yangpu, hidden behind a […]

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 […]

I get into the taxi, as the driver looks at his phone to see the route. Driver: “What?! A six-kilometer drive, I only get 13 RMB?!” He looks over to me in the back seat. Driver: “How much do you pay? What does it say on the app?” Me: “16 RMB it says.” Driver: “Yesterday […]

After a dinner in rural Zhejiang, we walked to our guesthouse and we looked at the stars. And when you haven’t consciously seen the stars for over a year, well, — they look amazing. But in Shanghai, stars are largely invisible, drowned out by the light the city produces. For all of Shanghai’s amenities, ⁠it’s […]

A bike ride is always an adventure. If you keep your eyes open and are free to take any path you want, you’ll always discover new things. So today, I saw chicks, little alleys under construction, and an alley with rickety houses that are beyond repair, yet still have people living in them.

Initially, I was a big fan of Strava (an app to record your workouts), as it’s one of the few social apps used by both friends in China and the Netherlands — and it also felt like an extra push to cycle a bit more. But I quickly found out I was turning into exactly […]

After finishing moving and unpacking the boxes, I took a short walk outside the new area — on the edge of Tangzhen (唐镇) and Heqing (合庆). And I need to sometimes remind myself of what an adventure this life is, having grown up in a small city in the Netherlands to now live in China […]

I think it was a talk from Simon Aliband on how he arrived in Shanghai in the 80s, on a summer night sitting in a bus driving to his university dorms, through the dark city. After sunset, the people of Shanghai would leave their houses to cool down in the dark outdoor air, and he […]

I ordered a moving van (货啦啦) and a couple from Shandong showed up. Because these drivers spend the full day in the van, I figured she was just accompanying her husband for his work, to be together the whole day. But then she explained his back is bad. So the guy helped with things like […]

It’s Saturday night and I just threw away the garbage because the shushu leaves at eight and takes the bins with him. I cross the bridge next to our compound and on the crossroads are five or six food stands. They sell fried chunks of meat, cold noodles, jianbing, corn sticks, and cold draft beer. […]

Old place. New camera. This is yet another visit (1, 2) to this market where we buy vegetables, fruit, and meat (川沙十八铺农产品批发市场) in Chuansha, Shanghai. I am not sure how many years we will remain in China, maybe one, maybe ten. But I want to capture this place once more before we go back.  

We’re in Minghe Town (鸣鹤古镇), near Cixi (慈溪). It’s been raining the whole three-day holiday, and I figured this would provide a great photography opportunity on an otherwise crowded location, with people opting to stay home or in their hotel. But I was only half right. The alleys are indeed empty — we also had […]

Our cleaning lady: “I also clean in another office, they make socks. I always ask them for some socks. I have so many of them at home, I also gave some to the neighbours. I also got some for you, large size, you have big feet. Take them!” Me: “But so many, I don’t need […]

Today we’re in Dushi Village (独市村), part of Huzhou (湖州) but far away from it. Dushi is a village built around a 600-year-old ginkgo tree, a temple for women, and three key waterways connected by a few historic bridges. Nearly all houses are vacant as this town will be demolished soon, and the few residents […]

We’re in Zhuchuan (株川村), a small yet one of the most intact old villages we’ve ever visited in Zhejiang. The village is three hundred years old, and is really not much more than six ever-expanding rows of houses, set like an auditorium.  But everything fits so perfectly together. Many houses can be entered from the […]

We’re in Heqiao (河桥镇), a village in Eastern Zhejiang. Technically, it’s still part of Hangzhou, but it’s so far out it’s much nearer to Anhui. It’s a stunning old village. There are some newly built attractions aimed at attracing new crowds, but they are rusty and closed. Everyone here is coming for the old buildings. […]

Where does the name Shanghai (上海) come from? The simple answer is that it means “Above the sea”, but a better theory points to this place. There used to be two rivers, both tributaries of the Wusong River: Shanghai Pu (上海浦) and Xiahai Pu (下海浦), basically meaning Up the Sea River and Down the Sea […]

We’re visiting Zhouzhuang (周庄) near Suzhou. It’s a 5A attraction so I know I’m warned about the crowds, but on photos, it does look like a very nice Watertown, with original old buildings rather than cheap recreations. The historical village center is a gated off area, with hotels and restaurants build around it. The entrance […]

We’re visiting Dahong Village (大洪村), on the outskirts of Shanghai. The village belongs to Chuansha (川沙) in Pudong, but it’s its own entity — although soon to be swallowed up by new constructions. On Xiaohongshu, we found some photos of the Wu Family’s Old House (吴家老宅), and usually, that means there are more old buildings […]

As we start our little walk in Xiasha (下沙镇), a shushu standing in a doorway warns us it’s not as interesting here as it looks on Douyin: “Maybe in the 70s or 80s it was pretty here. But not anymore.” He uses the word 蹩脚, which means rubbish in Shanghai-hua: “Now, only the residential area […]

Lishu Village (蠡墅镇) in Suzhou is several hundred years old, although rumours of its name trace back two millennia. Warlords and rich merchants used to live here, their houses and courtyards built by eunichs, their money and trade earned in Suzhou. I don’t think this place has the refined attraction of Suzhou water towns like […]

杨思镇 (Yangsi Town) is described as a ‘城中村’ (a village within the city) and it’s an apt description. It’s an oddly shaped block of old and low, rickety buildings — on the east side of the Huangpu in Shanghai’s Pudong district, hunched against the small Yangsigang River (杨思港). Once you enter the area, you really […]

The hustle and bustle (烟火气) at this market in Chuansha (十八铺菜市场). One of my favorite places in Shanghai. Here are photos from a year ago, and here from half a year ago. Going home with a ton of vegetables and a cow-tongue biscuit (牛舌饼).

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 […]

We’re in a little town in Shanghai’s Pudong district, named 新港集镇 — which translates to something like New Harbor Market Town. It’s just a collection of houses, but this — and the 28°C weather — is all we need. It’s so quiet here, a rare thing in Shanghai. It’s as if everybody whispers, not to […]

The best thing to come out of Shanghai’s coffee boom is 一尺花园 (One Step Garden). Their restaurants/coffee stores are always housed in well-preserved old buildings with fantastic interior design, like this old kiln in Nanhui (南汇). (The weather doesn’t help taking pictures.) Or this one in Gaoqiao (高桥古镇): This one in Qingxi Ancient Town (青溪古镇): […]

We ask for the old city wall, and the shushu points to the back: “It’s raining, take this way.” And so we go through a garage, kitchen, and up the stairs — and suddenly we’re looking out over a canal and realize we’re on the old wall. It’s in the back of a huge temple […]

During every holiday trip, my mom and dad will light a candle in some church they encounter. A few days ago, they lit a candle in St Patrick’s Cathedral in Auckland, New Zealand. To be grateful for our family and everything we have. So why a church? It’s hard to say how religious they (or […]

We depart from Los Angeles for a five-hour drive. The desert we’re crossing slowly turns to night — and as we near the city, the glow from Las Vegas draws out the silhouette of the mountains in front of it. We’re driving underneath the stars and among other cars, and it feels like we’re going […]

I have no ambitions to become a travel advisor or anything, but here I’m sharing some of my experiences of hikes and mountains (or mere hills) around Shanghai. Also the ones I heard about but did not go to yet. I’ve also added some 古道’s: Ancient (Merchant) Roads. These seem to become more & more […]

Today we visited the Former Site of Songhu Garrison Command (淞沪警备司令部旧址) — or in the words of Ash who gave the tip “the former police building”. The place is around a hundred years old and recently renovated. There’s a gatehouse, an office, an interrogation/torture room, and places for guards and inmates to sleep. It’s part […]

We parked the car and crossed the river across a narrow stone bridge, and it’s as if we went back a few decades. Mass had just finished in the church, and both outside and inside were ayis and shushus finishing their lunch. A father came to us asking whether we too would like to eat […]

A good hike is like a good meal, as in that you can still recall most of it, and you’re just grateful you’ve witnessed it. Maling Ancient Road on Tuesday (alone) was like that, and today as well (with Eva). Shangqing Ancient Road in the Keqiao district of Shaoxing (绍兴柯桥区) is a more widely covered […]

There are dozens of ‘ancient roads’ (古道’s) scattered across the provinces of Zhejiang and Jiangsu. The moniker surely has some historic roots for some of these places, but is also romantic marketing aimed at attracting people. Zhejiang alone renovated or built over 1200 kilometers of walking road, installing toilets, bins, and signage — and properly […]

I have a deep gratitude for each Mandarin teacher who has taught me — and in many cases, I also feel attached to their hometowns, as those are often discussed when practicing new phrases — back and forth. Even more so with Clytie, because she filmed her hometown Changshu (常熟) nearly three years ago. Ever […]

This weekend is an island — as in that I worked every day for the past three weeks, and it looks like the next two weeks won’t be any different. It’s not so much that my body is tired, but my mind sure feels bruised. I hope to find some rest in Lili (黎里), an […]

I usually shop at the supermarket, everything wrapped with shiny logos or labels. But Eva likes the market — and I’ll agree with her, it doesn’t get fresher than this. Chuansha (川沙十八铺农产品批发市场).

When I lived in Rotterdam there was this story about German tourists who’d ask “Wo ist die Altstadt?” (Where is the old city?), apparently not knowing that ‘the Germans’ bombed it to the ground during the Second World War. The irony of course being that ‘they’ (those tourists) would somehow be responsible for that. And […]

I’m in my pajamas reading a book in bed in my parent’s guest room — back in the Netherlands after living in China for over five years now. My mom walks into the room and sits on my blanket for a chat, but I tell her that’s so gross because she has been wearing those […]

It’s the second day of the National Holiday and we’re in Zhoupu (周浦), not for the first time. Again we’re in ‘Little Shanghai Pedestrian Street’ (小上海步行街). I want to take in some of the crowds and chaos before going to the Netherlands, and look at the barbeque stands (but not eating anything there).

I found on Xiaohongshu some pictures of Tangzhen (唐镇) taken in 1986, and realized some are on the road I cycle every day to work. So on National Day I set out to find these locations and if possible — reshoot them. Some locations are gone (or I couldn’t find them). Others were hard to […]

A ride to Datuan Town (大团镇) today, deep in Shanghai’s Pudong district. I saw a post on Xiaohongshu about it, but mostly the map made me curious, as a city block squared into tiny rivers hints at an old town. That’s not some professional knowledge I possess, but a fair guess. (But yes, Datuan was […]

I’m trying to count how many old villages I’ve visited in China, but the definition is too vague to get to a real number. Sometimes it’s a real old town, such as Shishecun or Ruyayang. Other times, it’s just an old street in a city, such as Gaoyou . Sometimes we simply visit a single building, […]

I close the door while my keys are inside. My passport Eva took. It’s 4:30 in the morning and I’ll see her at the end of my trip. There’s no way back now, as I leave Chuansha (川沙) for Haining (海宁). I remember the only other time I cycled such a distance. I watched the […]

Here’s a place — on the banks of the Yangtze in Taicang (太仓) — that reminds me of the one in Shanghai — which is simply about a hundred kilometers downstream. People try to catch a breeze and cool down after sunset. Others hunt for tiny crabs (螃蜞). Vendors sell snacks, cold drinks, and buckets. […]

On Xiaohongshu, a lady named Niu Er (汼二娘) walks through an old street wearing a long winter coat. After her example, we’ve traveled to the same place, but I’m wearing shorts, sunscreen, and the thinnest shirt I could find. We’re at Xijiao Street (西郊老街) in Taicang (太仓) in Jiangsu, and it’s 35°C. This street used […]

We’re in Fengyi (丰义村) this weekend. It’s a tiny village with just over 600 people — trying to get tourism going. It has all the ingredients for it. There’s a coffee place, a noodle restaurant, an ‘I Love Fengyi’ sign, and fake Dutch windmills around a mount that is in between a hill and a […]

Here’s a place I visited before: West Gate (西门) in Shanghai’s Jiading district (嘉定). Two years ago, I walked fifty meters from here, oblivious to this once-lively alley. It’s something-something about ‘you can’t step in the same river twice’. As you live in Shanghai and learn the language, you grow less reliant on Google or […]

Visited Luodian Town (罗店镇) today, after a tip from Ash. It’s super deep in Baoshan, beyond the Outer Ring Road, beyond some green patches, close to Taicang (太仓). It’s so far out that it doesn’t feel like Shanghai at all. The village is spacious and has lots of trees around the roads, apart from the […]

Zhuqiao Village (祝桥镇) in Shanghai. It’s scorching hot. I bought a 2.7 RMB icecream from Mixue (蜜雪冰城) and it was dripping down my wrist within a minute. Eva said it looks here like she remembers her childhood. The buildings off the main road are smaller, but the streets are cozy. There’s a dentist (牙科) and […]

Outskirts of Shanghai (上海三甲港海). It’s a dead-end street and planes fly over our heads to land on Pudong Airport. We’ve climbed across barbed wire and down the sea dike to mudbanks, full of tiny crabs (螃蜞). Some fishermen stand on the dike and take in the view. We tell them how they can get down: […]

Feels like another milestone in my now six-year-long Chinese learning journey: Two days of management meetings, all Mandarin. I could follow everything well, just had to check a few words in Pleco. I did survive mainly on coffee and felt my brains were pretty fried, but that was everyone’s sentiment really. This is West Lake, […]

After walking through the cozy but crowded University Road (大学路), my favorite thing to do is to climb to the top of Jiangwan Stadium. The stadium is a bowl, that also keeps the noise out, and it’s as if you enter a silent bubble. (Luckily it’s used for sports again.) I’ve been coming to this […]

We’re in Zhuanghang (庄行) for its 伏羊Fúyáng Festival. I don’t know whether the 羊 here stands for sheep or goat (the Chinese word does not distinguish between the two), so I ask the chef. “No idea”, he says and yells for the owner. I even show him a picture of both a sheep and a […]

My favorite place in Shanghai. Every visit feels spiritual. We all come to watch the river, to cool down our bodies. Most of the people here are migrant workers, but underneath the stars, we’re all the same, and the view is identical for everyone.   (Near 向阳村.) I saw another cyclist sitting down, a young […]

Chuansha (川沙) in the morning, before the heat strikes. Any calories I burned off while cycling, I probably more than compensated with this single oily scallion pancake (葱油饼).

There are a ton of application sites out there but I think they’re all horrible. I searched for jobs three times: 2014 (before graduation), 2016 (desire to change jobs in the Netherlands), and 2018 (desire to move to China) — and from those three runs I do not doubt that I’ve sent well over 100 […]

China is extremely safe and full of cameras everywhere — but the irony is that still people break the rules all the time. Some of these are laws, but most are just rules or norms. For example, some people (and I emphasize: some) are loud in the very early morning, at like 6 o’clock. Others, […]

The bell tower of Lujia Catholic Church (陆家天主堂钟楼), in the town of Zhelin (柘林) in Shanghai’s Fengxian district. It was built in 1891, and the wing was used for livestock in the late fifties, and destroyed a decade later. The tower was stripped of its bronze bell, but was spared because it had the word […]

The St. Francis Church of the Eastern Shi Family  (东施家圣方济各堂), built in 1896. Historic Pudong wrote about it before, but I never knew where it was. Then Eva cycled past it and sent me the location, but she didn’t dare to enter alone because of stray dogs. I couldn’t see those stray dogs today, but […]

I rarely share anything about my daily working life here. It’s almost like a double life I live. (Although I did share about working in Zhangjiang (张江) before.) But here’s perhaps something cool to share; how Pimax’s electronics are made, and for that matter, many of the world’s stuff. Last Tuesday, with a colleague, I […]

What is the oldest structure in Shanghai? On the bike, I was wondering about that, but back at home googling I discovered it’s a pillar in Songjiang. I wonder if this sea dike (南宋古海塘遗址) — albeit hidden in the water is in the top 10. I’m not sure why I’m drawn to this stuff — […]

We’re climbing a hill today and it’s warm. A fellow hiker is coming downhill, and Eva asks how much longer to the summit: “Twenty minutes”, says the lady. After ten minutes of walking, Eva asks another hiker, and it’s the same answer: “Twenty minutes”. Another ten minutes of walking go by as we pass an […]

We just randomly picked a lake on the map in Changxing (长兴) and somehow we ended up in a sort of Benidorm. Lots of seniors from Shanghai. The place is named 水口茶文化景区 (Shuikou Tea Culture Scenic Area), but locals here even refer to this place as 上海老人村: Shanghai Elderly Village. Lots of tea, herbs, and […]

Yixing (宜兴) is like many lower-tier cities, in that it has an old city center and then a new part. The two halves haven’t yet grown enough to be fully merged, so for now they still feel like two separate cities — despite sharing the name. Obviously, we’re visiting the older part. Shushan Gunan Street […]

Example of China’s hukou — or actually, school district houses (中国学区房) — in China. But it gets a bit complicated. Friend is a single parent, living in a house registered in his parent’s name (his parents live with him). His son goes to a primary school near that house. Let’s call it House A. Then […]

Taped posters in Chuansha (川沙) telling people not to create vegetable plots here. And yet people can’t resist or simply don’t care. In some unsighted areas, there are fresh crops. Eva pulls an ugly carrot out of the ground: “If they can steal the land, well, I think I can steal a carrot.”  

China is so big. Even though we’re just traveling in one corner of Zhejiang, new cities I’ve never heard of keep popping up on the map. It’s as if you could use A.I. to generate cities, and they keep appearing in a ton of variety. Today, Tiantai (天台), which is part of Taizhou (台州). And […]

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Quotations of Chairman Mao on a door in Shengkeng (胜坑村), about the Japanese enemy. It’s a pretty village, with flowers and stepping stones everywhere. Some houses are beyond repair, others maintained well. Mostly inhabited by seniors and swallows.

Near Linhai (临海), whole fields with rice noodles drying (小芝米面).

At first, I thought they were flowers on the trees, but it’s loquat fruit (枇杷), wrapped with tiny bags to protect against birds and insects. You see these trees like this all over Xiangshan County. In Suzhou, people use huge nets for the loquat trees.

Shepan (蛇蟠乡) is so small that even though it’s next to a highway, its exit is named after the service station — not the town itself. There are some boats, plenty of fantastic seafood restaurants, and a muddy shore full of tiny crabs, razor shells, and mudfish. I somehow love this place.

Wushan Grottoes (伍山石窟) on the border of Ninghai (宁海), a recommendation from Ash. It feels like I’m walking in some kind of MacOS wallpaper. Some of these quarries were dug over a millennium ago, and people worked here to mine stone slaps even some 70 years ago. It’s crazy the work that has gone into […]

We’ve been to Zhejiang so many times, but always inland. So whatever Zhejiang means in my head — mountains, tunnels, water reservoirs and more — it feels similar here but different. We’re in Xiangshan (象山县), a peninsula east of the province, bordering the East China Sea. As soon as we cross the bridge onto the […]

The commute to and from work (7KM) is a bit boring, but today on the bike everything looked different, magical, soft.

Today in Nanhui (南汇), a town in the far southeast of Shanghai. The outline of the old city center (and streets named after gates) still exists on the map, but we could find no sign of old city walls anymore. We did come across a great park though, 古钟园 (Age-old Bell Garden). And this is […]

To Qingxi (青溪古镇) and back again today. Watermelon on the way and scorched rice (锅巴) on arrival.

My sister’s China visit has come to an end. We went to Beijing, Suzhou, and Shanghai. In Shanghai we only had two days without pouring rain, but we saw went through a range from old markets with live animals, rich shopping malls (IAMP), as well as the 119th floor of the Shanghai Tower. According to […]

Lady laughing: “You take a photo? What is interesting about this place?” A market in Chuansha (川沙十八铺农产品批发市场). 10 RMB haircut on the bridge. “High or not?” And yeah it’s the highest baozi-tower I’ve ever seen.

We’re in the Forbidden City, and everything means something. Nails on the door in rows of nine by nine, two lions at the gate, water wells, a phoenix and a dragon, marble slabs, numbers, hierarchy, symmetry, symbolism. Getting in wasn’t easy. Each day only 40.000 tickets sell. We tried for Saturday, and the ticket sales […]

I must have seen the Great Wall a thousand times. In school books, Mulan, Age of Empires, Discovery Channel, murals, and cheap reproduction paintings. But now that I’m actually here (Jinshanling 金山岭), I can barely believe this has actually been built. The wall, despite being so massive, feels like a part of nature as well, […]

I visited Beijing before, but never got to know it. In 2019, I hastily went to the Forbidden City, a hutong, and the 798 Art Zone, and it reinforced my idea of Beijing as a historic city, housing the government and tons of museums and landmarks. It’s to Shanghai what Washington is to New York, […]

Just some random pictures from a sunny Saturday and Sunday in Zhangjiang (张江) and Chuansha (川沙), and why I love this area so much more than downtown Shanghai. A 15-minute wait for the crispiest scallion pancake (葱油饼) I’ve ever had. More hole-in-the-wall food. (I trust my stomach is strong enough for the food from these […]

We can finally call it a spring and as such these street vendors’ clientele has also improved. Kinda basic but it’s on the edge of Shanghai’s Zhangjiang Hi-Tech Park (张江高科技园区). Cycling to work I come across several of these. (When people say Shanghai has no more street food, they just mean the city center.)

This is a Sunday night, and I’m now back in Chuansha, after driving 800 km this weekend (Gaoyou and Xinghua). It’s a long time on the road, but it beats staying in Shanghai. Work is in the city, but to me, most fun is found where not everything has been optimized by big corporations. Although, […]

The 300-year-old Shangchizhai Pharmacy (上池斋药店) in Xinghua (兴化) in Jiangsu, still in use today. The tiles on the floor are said to be imported, I actually found this out later. I did not take a good look at the floor ones and now really regret it. (The ones on the counter caught my eye, as […]

The road and canal from Beijing to Nanjing used to have 46 post stations, and the 14th-century Yucheng station (盂城驿) in Gaoyou (高邮) is the best preserved one. This was for passing on letters as much as for letting the riders, boatmen, and horses rest. The station with its halls gives a great look back […]

This question pops up now and then on Reddit and Twitter, and I’ve no plans to fill this blog with travel advice — listing the top ten restaurants or hotels in Shanghai — but I did start to wonder for myself, what places I’d advise to friends coming over to Shanghai for a visit. First, […]

Häagen-Dazs on the left, Starbucks on the right. Big brands are now also coming for these old streets in tier 2 cities, such as Wuxi’s Nanchang Street (南长街), at the cost of local character and diversity. Peet’s, Manner, M Stand, Hey Tea, Dairy Queen, Manner, DJI, and even Xiaomi and DJI. A Luckin is under […]

Are you allowed to have fun in temples? Nanchan temple (南禅寺) in Wuxi today. People are trying to throw coins into the incense burner, or onto the top or second roof. If your coin lands on the roof, there’s a good chance it’ll come sliding down, taking more coins with it, so if you start […]

When I was back in the Netherlands last month, one thing I often heard was that people see China as a scary country. And I don’t want this to be some justification for all of China’s flaws — nor whether you should agree with it. If you’re a journalist, China can be scary — but […]

When flying back from the Netherlands to China, I watched ‘Up the Yangtze’ from 2007. It’s not a masterpiece but precious video material from China two decades ago. (And I’m always looking for more film material from the 90s and 00s.) The documentary follows several stories — the main focus being a poor Chinese family […]

I love the Chinese tradition of hanging up New Year Banners (春联). For me (and I guess for many) it’s not really about bringing fortune or warding off evil spirits. It’s more the signal of a season, to take part in something familiar that unites you with your past, as well as so many homes […]

PVG to AMS flight, another movie: Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains (春江水暖) from 2019 — shot in Hangzhu’s Fuyang district (富阳区). A slow but deep film that packs so much about a changing China and culture. Family, money, marriage, housing prices, the rising economy, taking care of elders.

My phone’s keyboard can auto-suggest names like Amsterdam or Canberra, and names like Spotify or Maserati — but it does not know nor auto-complete the name Chuzhou, despite four million people living here. Many Chinese cities are like that. They exist and they’re huge — multi-million populations — but auto-correct (as well as many people) […]

Another long flight, watched Chungking Express (重庆森林) from my laptop. A dreamy movie about loneliness and love — while I’m half the world away from mine, makes me miss her even more. 10/10 cinematography, every shot is an artwork.

We also stumbled on the Zhejiang Museum of Natural History (浙江自然博物馆) in Anji (安吉), expecting some tiny dusty museum in the middle of nowhere — the way rural things often are. (Anji is a county-level city that belongs to Huzhou (湖州) which is a Tier 3 city.) But no, this museum is massive, with a […]

I visited a shopping mall downtown for the first time in like half a year, and I felt like so overwhelmed. The noise coming from stores, from greeters in front of stores, people laughing, people yelling into the phone or yelling for their kids. You queue to leave the highway, queue to enter the parking […]

炸米花 (puffed rice) made on the street in Chuansha (川沙). Bring your own oil, sesame, and rice or corn, and put your bag in the queue. Great taste, especially when still warm. Crunchy and a tiny bit sweet. When the rice is almost ready, the pot-thingy opens with a big bang. Eva: “When we were […]

We’re eating our Christmas meal, two fish and four hairy crabs. Eva: “When I was young and some families married, we’d go to a restaurant, no hotel, and if they served crab, well such a family was really rich. But eating crab is too slow, takes too much time, so we first ate all the […]

Two out of three trees in Shanghai are London plane trees. City planners call it a supertree. Its secret is its peculiar camouflage-patterned bark, which peels off in quick succession, allowing the tree to ‘clean’ itself from pollution. As a result, it has a high tolerance to pests and diseases, and captures smog and carbon […]

I’ve now been working in Shanghai for over 5 years, and 14 months in a Chinese company using Mandarin as the main working language. So here I list the lessons I took from the past year — many things I should have done better, or things I’ve seen happen in other companies through stories from […]

Outside the office, we see lots of people walking with big boxes of toys and go to see what’s happening. Three ‘cowboys’ are standing next to a pile of stuff like fake Legos, Barbies, and bikes, yelling if you register for a free creditcard you can pick a box, even a bike! Lots of people […]

China-Europe Street in Shanghai (中欧街). Everything is deserted apart from a Starbucks, and a couple having their wedding pics taken. The storefronts of Hermes, Prada, Chanel, and Gucci are fake. Outside are dozens of food stands though, more popular at night. This place would appear in some kind of fever dream. The statues, they’re of […]

If Chuansha (川沙) — being outside of the outer ring — is on the edge of Shanghai, then this is the edge of the edge. No man’s land, just outside of Chuansha. Some live here in old buildings (but a dog barks me away), others grow crops, and others like me take a stroll. This […]

Trying to learn how to eat shell-on shrimp using only chopsticks, the way many Chinese people can. Eva is showing me: “So you put the shrimp in your mouth, bite off the head, then the tail, then this…” (everything is happening inside her mouth so I cannot see the key part) “And done! You spit […]

We’re walking at the quay and a single bird is hopping around, a Chinese starling. Eva, gnawing on a corn cob, throws a kernel, but the bird doesn’t bite. An old man behind us says: “She won’t eat that.” We’re all like “Ah, how do you know?”, and the man replies “She’s my pet, I […]

We walked the entire circumference of the old city wall (South-, West-, North- and East Gate Road), but found not a single brick or remnant — except for names and roads that still follow its former shape: a square around the city of Chengqiao Town (城桥镇). Actually, Chengqiao is still often called South Gate (南门) […]

I actually like moving. Yeah, it’s a bit of trouble, but you get a whole new neighborhood to explore. New roads to cycle, new shops to search for stuff on the shelf, and new restaurants with new dishes to try. Just by physically moving all your stuff (and throwing away maybe 20% each time), everything […]

A two-bedroom apartment in Shanghai for 3,400 RMB per month (472 USD), yeah it’s possible. A search through several apps, then a broker, then a pasted poster and haggling. I started our search on 自如 which has neatly furnished apartments, but they’re upwards of 5,000 RMB (if you include the service fee). On the 贝壳 […]

Again to Fengxian (奉贤区) today. It’s part of Shanghai, but maybe the fact it doesn’t feel that way is the best part about it. So in love with this place. I know my obsession won’t last, but there’s so much to explore. The museum bundles a lot of places we’ve already visited. There’s an exhibition […]

I’m pretty sure there are more fake Dutch windmills in China than there are real windmills in the Netherlands. Some photos that I can quickly find in my photo album: Shanghai, Shandong, Shanghai.

To Qingxi Ancient Town (青溪古镇) in Shanghai’s Fengxian District and back again, in total an eighty kilometers bike ride. I just randomly picked this on the map. It’s not a famous destination or anything, but that in itself is also relaxing. Apart from walking around, having a look, and some food, I’m expecting that much. […]

The Little Peach Garden Mosque (小桃园清真寺), and the one for women (清真女寺) next to it. They’re operating but just closed when we got there. The back entrance. Nanjing East Road. It’s been over two years since I last came here. These scratch-off lottery tickets seem more popular as of late. I think most people know […]

A bit underwhelming and this won’t get any ‘tech media coverage’ (I wrote about this before), but I just printed a document (in color) for 2 RMB by scanning & transferring & paying with my phone through WeChat. In the middle of a xiaoqu in Suzhou, with around 8,000 people living here, I think.

Apart from Huangshan, I’ve never heard anyone say they’re going on a holiday in Anhui. I often hear Chongqing, Changsha, Qingdao, Beijing, Sanya, and the nearby province of Zhejiang is popular for people in Shanghai — but never in five years has anyone said Anhui. All I hear about Anhui is that it’s poor. If […]

My parents never forced us to believe, and if they ever told us stories from the bible I don’t remember it. But we did have to go to church. No devotion was demanded of our minds, it was just our bodies that had to be there. We were all three baptized; my sister, brother and […]

Kantou Village (坎头古村落) lies in between a range of mountains in Anhui. Some guides speak of a mysterious and hidden village, but it is a popular destination for tourists — especially people riding bicycles and motorbikes. Kids playing in a litter. The village is pretty, but the best view is provided by a nearby hill. […]

I still remember Tommy and Øyvind, at least their names. My brother and I were dipping our toes into Norwegian meltwater and decided it was too cold to go in, then those two local boys showed up and jumped in without even testing the water, Øyvind wearing yellow swim fins. When we saw them we […]

In Anhui, leave a city, drive for half an hour, and leave the highway. Then drive half an hour on a long and narrow road into the mountains through tiny villages. You’ll encounter a dozen grey Wulin mini-vans. No restaurants, two tiny supermarkets. Park your car. Then walk two hours alongside creeks and waterfalls, and […]

Lower-tier cities in China always fascinate me, because they’re so anonymous and unknown, yet house hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people. (I wrote more about this phenomenon in an article about Danyang.) Anyway, today we’re in Ningguo (宁国) in Anhui, where 400,000 people live, and while Eva still sleeps I’m taking a quick […]

Thursday 28th of September, off work and leaving the house at 18:43: The holiday starts! Train tickets are all sold out, so first leg of the trip is 100 km cycling to Suzhou through the night.   Crossing the river. Oh Shanghai, you’re such a great city to arrive in, and such a great city […]

125km ride in drizzle today, one unwary moment, and my front wheel slipped. Scratched ankle, knee, hip & elbow. Across the road sat a shushu in his tiny wooden chair, he saw me go down but not a single reaction — not even a raised eyebrow. In the convenience store next to this I was […]

Friend: “One of my relatives owns a steel factory in Zhoushan. He earns so much money, he sells that stuff to companies abroad, but for his staff, it’s dangerous work. Sometimes one of his employees dies, they just give the family 200万 RMB and let them shut up. If they take the money, they cannot […]

Shops! Food! Animals! All of it in and around ‘Little Shanghai Pedestrian Street’ (小上海步行街), in Zhoupu (周浦镇). One ‘layer’ outside of the street you’ll find cheap hotels and family-owned businesses, like clothing, make-up, and tattoo parlors. One more layer out and it’s an old suburb, absorbed into the shopping area. The houses are so close […]

I moved to China in 2018 and have integrated pretty well, I think? But especially the 90s and 00s are a mystery to me, while my Chinese friends & colleagues did live through that period, grew up in it, shaped by it (as I was by the 90s and 00s in the Netherlands). It’s very […]

Cycled to Tongli and stopped by the ruins of an old bunker/tower. Built by the Japanese during WW2 to have a good look at the rail- and waterway. Inside the bunkers, someone graffitied the words 肾 (kidney) and 根治 (cure) — I’m not sure why, not even sure if it’s metaphorical in meaning or anything […]

Xinchang (新场) is Shanghai’s best old town. Second time there, back for some 蟹壳黄(Crab shell yellow). It’s hot, it’s packed, and shops are doing well — which is great to see.  

The Great Wall of Shanghai? Sort of. This is the Huating seawall (华亭海塘) in the Fengxian district of Shanghai. 3.9 kilometers of stones are left — built centuries ago to keep floods and Japanese pirates out. Actually, I’m not sure which stones are original. The history is fuzzy and long; different segments built by different […]

Shanghai often feels to me like a GTA map or Azeroth: Massive with distinct areas and yet so many tiny places and sidequests to explore. Today I went on a sidequest, to see the site of China’s first rocket launch. (Thanks to Historic Pudong for the tip.) On the site now stands a pillar, with […]

I recently got a Garmin watch (Nevu 2 if you’re wondering). It’s just a piece of tech, but feels like a lot more, because my brother also uses it in the Netherlands. This way we can sort of sport together. (He mostly runs, I mostly cycle.) Actually, Garmin/Strava are one of the few apps both […]

This month I rewatched the original three Indiana Jones movies — which was a blast, as even today these movies are timeless thrills. I do vaguely remember seeing these movies as a kid, as the holy grail face-melting & eating from monkey skulls left deep imprints in my memory. Archeology was a fascination. Not just […]

The playing, the rider, and the painted (Songjiang today). I’ve sinned a bit. 4A and 5A tourist attractions in China are horrible, but we did go to Guangfulin Relics Park (广富林遗址) today, which classifies as 4A. It was good though. Lots of old buildings on the huge premise, most if not all reproductions & a […]

Wednesday 2nd of August Evening ride in Pudong (向阳村). There’s a nice breeze alongside the Yangtze, and people are watching fireworks, fishing, snacking, chatting — being together. Friday 4th of August Back today, really love this place. We all come to watch the river. No matter how much money you make, which car you drive, […]

Every hike is its own little story. Today, Luyu Ancient Road (陆羽古道) in Huzhou (湖州) with friends & ten thousand mosquitoes. A two-hour drive from Shanghai and you’re in a totally different scenery. (Two hours back and you’re surrounded by glass, concrete & coffee stores again.) We only took the 6KM trail but with a […]

We went to see 长安三万里 (Chang’An), a movie about Li Bai and other poets, as well as a part of Chinese history. The movie is a beautiful animation though I’m not sure who it’s made for. I guess the cartoonish looks made many parents believe this is for kids, but the dialogue, story & three-hour […]

Songxicun (嵩溪村) today, with buildings from different centuries. Lots of history here, but we didn’t really study all the plaques or Baidu, we just had a quiet day in between the rain showers. Amazing woodwork here in this temple. No visitors around, just corn left to dry. The village has two creeks coming together, one […]

Cooling down near Yiwu (义乌) today, at Songpushan (松瀑山). It’s a tiny mountain with a waterfall. It has only 58 reviews on Dianping so I didn’t expect lots of people, but actually it was crowded, in a good way. Everyone’s sweaty faces full of smiles. Also watermelons are hot. Yiwu in the distance.

This tiny museum has stones with markings on them that look like Chinese characters (or animals). Eighteenth National Congress (十八大): Shanghai (上海):   Divide the world into three parts (三分天下):   Also animals and the Chinese zodiac: Horse (马): I asked the baoan where these stones were found: “Just in the direct area here.” Either […]

(New photos from 2025 beneath.) We visited the Old Baoshan (老宝山) in the north of Pudong, after a tip of Historic Pudong. Baoshan is also a district on the other side of the river. It has the same Chinese characters, but there’s no proof that the names are related to each other. (It’s not too […]

We accidentally stumbled on what might be the area with the most preserved old buildings in Shanghai: Gaoqiao (高桥古镇), in the far north of Pudong. Gaoqiao is pretty unknown and has a pretty unimpressive Dianping page: just over 1000 reviews, and a really badly picked photo on the top. The buildings (perhaps a hundred of […]

The harbor in Pinghu (平湖市), with self-made cargo boats being assembled and entering the water continuously. “This type of boat is the only way”, but later I’m not sure if the shifu meant the costs or technical specs. (I regret not asking them whether they can swim! Most people in China cannot swim, unlike in […]

“Our neighbors left, the house next to theirs burned down and it also ruined their roof.” Had he not told me this, I might have not noticed the charred beams. We’re in Pinghu (平湖市钟埭老街) and the man lives in a house alongside the Corridor Shed (廊棚), which was built about a century ago when China […]

A trip to a deserted old movie set today, in the far southeast of Shanghai. Dongxu Village (东旭村) will probably soon be wiped off the map, but movies like Green Snake (青蛇) were filmed here, over 30 years ago. I found it when looking for old towns on Xiaohongshu, including a tip to find the […]

Wanghong hell at floor 52 (out of 128). Taitai really wants to see this bookstore, but the reservation spots (all free) were already gone. So we pick a date next week, take a screenshot, and in Photoshop change the date to today, and mess a bit with the QR code so it’s unreadable. The guard […]

Here we are, Pudong. I’m about to fly home to the Netherlands. First time seeing my parents, sister, and brother in almost four years. I couldn’t sleep last night, I’m so excited, but also sad it has taken this long. China has given me so much these four five years, but not long talks sitting […]

A 27-kilometer ride with Eva through Pudong. Shanghai has these places if you look for them, and if you choose to escape the massive city center. Finished with some sweet melons!

I’m going to meet a lot of family and friends in the Netherlands in June. I know they’ll all ask how China is, but I find it really hard to answer anything. “What is China like?” is impossible to answer. It’s such a big area, and actually, I’ve mainly only been in Shanghai and the […]

Seventy kilometers in your leg, the salt on your skin, cheap peanuts from a convenience store. Some of these things I don’t think AI can replace.     The outdoor advertising here hits different than in the city. (Pretty sure CurtExplores was here before, we keep going to the same places despite never having met […]

We’re in a restaurant known for its fried potato chips/cookie things. (Oily but good!) One customer is having a jest with the owner. Both ladies of around the same age. The customer ordered a quarter of a chicken that comes served in chops, but shows her plate: “So much neck! There’s no meat on that! […]

A shushu grabs my bag, tries to stop me: “Where are you from?” I’ve no idea where this is going, but I say I’m from the Netherlands, to which the man replies: “Oh, bordering Germany and Belgium. 40,000 square kilometers.” I admit to him that don’t even know that last part. (Later I google it: […]

The city Haiyan (海盐: literally Sea Salt). Kids are playing in the mud, trying to catch tiny crabs, and fishers (men & women) are reeling in their nets.

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. […]

We’re somewhere in between Shengzhou (嵊州) and Yuyao (余姚). The hills are dotted with 枫叶: red maple trees. We make our way to the hills of the Fuzhi Mountain (覆卮山), with its terraced rice fields. One part of the valley is an old glacier, and it’s a thing to climb the rocks, even though the […]

This weekend I went to Ningbo for a Chinese language study trip with GoEast Mandarin, and for the first time I took my bike with me on the highspeed train. It’s allowed when you can put it inside a bag, and it’s a total game-changer. I arrived in Ningbo and set out to the village […]

Today, visiting the company’s second office, in Hangzhou. Quite far from the city center in the newly opened ‘5G Innovation Park‘. Not a lot of people here yet, as it’s still half under construction. Many companies have a huge reception or exhibition area on their first floor, then staff working on the second floor. Or […]

Sunqiao Town (孙桥镇) in Pudong. Only about 15km from the famous towers in Lujiazui (陆家嘴), or 20km from the former French Concession. But here no Starbucks, McDonald’s, Nike or FamilyMart. People wear different brands (meaning: no brands), and more than half of the cars have license plates from other provinces. People without a car rely […]

A friend gave me a peak into a female-only WeChat group for preparing/planning pregnancy, named “Queens” (in Chinese). “It started with only three people, but now we’re over fifty. Not just in Shanghai anymore.” They’re encouraging each other and sharing so many details openly with strangers. “When we fell in love it was so romantic, […]

Interviewed ten young Chinese people for two positions last month at Pimax (designer & copywriter). Nearly all applicants changed jobs or roles last year as companies went bankrupt or downsized due to covid restrictions: “The company doesn’t need a writer now, my manager told me to either leave or become an account manager.” “We used […]

Today, a walk through Shanghai’s Yangpu district (杨浦区, pronounced as Yángpǔ qū). Fuxing Park on Fuxing Island (复兴岛). The park houses ‘白庐’, where Chiang Kai-shek stayed in 1949, before forever leaving Shanghai, and shortly after that mainland China. The interior is totally destroyed to make way for government propaganda. The air conditioner pours out hot […]

When I was in art academy, the vaguest class we had was on concept development (‘workshop activity’, or in Dutch ‘atelier practicum’), and one part of it was just collecting pictures, which we’d then discuss personally with the teacher. This was always on Mondays and the continuous struggle of it is burned in my mind. […]

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 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) […]

We’re in Shen’Ao (深澳村) near Tonglu (桐庐). The average age of the tourists is around thirty, while I’m sure the average age of the local residents is nearly double. Most buildings are over a century old and in pretty bad shape — although I do think this used to be a comfortable village to live […]

Long waits for chargers during the Spring Festival holiday. We’re near the border of Jiangxi & Anhui, and we cannot find a battery swap — so we need to charge as well. We’re already charging but the new cars arriving have no space to queue and randomly find spots. It’s a funny spectacle. The Tesla […]

Today brings us to Shishecun (石舍村) in Zhejiang. We’re here after a tip from Ash, but we’re not the only non-locals — despite this place not being on Dianping. There’s an attraction to off-the-beaten path locations, especially during the last days of the Spring Holiday break. And Shishecun is beautiful. Some buildings here were built […]

The crowds at Qiandao Lake (千岛湖, literally meaning ‘Thousand Islands Lake’) today. We sit on the boat, and over the intercom we get some background of the human-made lake, but people only start paying attention when the lady introduces lunch options and prices. A shushu proudly says his daughter studies in Germany, and opens his […]

We’re in Jiangwan (江湾) in the Jiangxi province. “Ayi, why don’t you use a laundry machine?” “This water is free.” “It’s not cold?” “We got used to it.” We drive up a random mountain with a nameless road (the map shows 无名道路). All the houses are built with white walls and black tiles; the Hui […]

We visited two villages today, Chenjiapu (陈家铺) and Xikeng (西坑). Both are north of Songyang (松阳) and ‘touristified’ (for instance, Chenjiapu has a ‘design’ hotel & book store), but you can still see the original village in between the cafes & hotels, with lots of houses made of rammed earth (夯土). Chenjiapu (陈家铺) The freedom […]

A five-hundred-kilometer drive to Yunhe (云和县) today. Very little traffic, the only real ‘traffic jam’ recharging near Jinhua (金华). Following a friend’s advice: “Don’t eat anything at these rest stations, on the road you don’t want an upset stomach (拉肚子).” Famous Jinhua ham (金华火腿) is on sale here too. We drove to the famous Yunhe […]

Snow in Nanxiang (南翔镇), an over thousand-year-old town in northwest Shanghai, home to the xiaolongbao (小笼包). So of course we have some. (Plus fried xiaolongbao, first time seeing that. Had an American restaurant done this to xiaolongbao it’d be blasphemy, but this was from a 120-year-old local restaurant.) Only a single city block remains of […]

I wanted to go to the old village of Hengmian (横沔古镇) in Shanghai Pudong, but couldn’t really find it. Still a nice walk along old buildings, gardening plots, highways, and power lines. These buildings will be gone in a decade, driven out by modernization. I think these places are infinitely more interesting than modern high-rises […]

A Christmas card addressed to me has arrived at my parent’s home, to go into a box with other envelopes. My mom told me about that box. I’ve never seen it, but I can feel its existence, nine thousand kilometers away. One mourning card and two birth cards are in it too, like a parallel […]

So these sesame buns are called 蟹壳黄(Crab shell yellow), not because there’s any crab in it, but because it looks like a crab shell. Plenty of food to try in Xinchangzhen (新场镇), Shanghai Pudong.   The scene: English homework, made years ago (book shows it was published in 1996);

Covid is ripping through China like wildfire. Many colleagues are at home with covid now, although luckily not too sick. Just a few of us left in the office now, the heating has already been turned off. Getting coffee downstairs:

China is letting go of its zero-covid policy. A 24-year-old who works at a school in Suzhou shares: “For over two years the school has forbidden us to go anywhere except absolutely necessary places. Now they advice, not forbid, us to go anywhere. A long pause, and then a big smile: “So I’m going to […]

If there’s ever a post-apocalyptic world, I think it’ll look like the outskirts of Shanghai’s Pudong district. On my ride, I see fishers, goats, highrises, and empty playgrounds. One access road to the river bank is barricaded, another is under construction. Buildings are rusting away or are slowly being taken back by nature. The area […]

Fearing potential lockdowns, some areas in Shanghai, as well as the US Embassy, instructed people to stock supplies for at least sixty days. The fear and stress are quite telling of Shanghai in 2022, and I wonder. I can get fruit and vegetables in a tin, but do I meet more with friends now because […]

So I just moved across the river in Shanghai, from Yangpu to the edge of Zhangjiang in Pudong. Leaving the compound & apartment with our stuff in the van was a big relief — to leave behind this place where we spend the 60-day Shanghai lockdown. Every time I entered the apartment I still got […]

The whole of the months of April & May were spent in lockdown, as were two days in July, and now this week I was locked down again for two days, because of a positive case in our compound. On Tuesday morning the gate was flooded with people bringing reasons to leave — work, school, […]

Autumn in the Jiangsu city of Zhangjiagang (张家港). Because of the rain we have the park (香山) almost for ourselves. Still, there’s a sign warning against PDA. First time I’ve ever seen one and it almost reads like a joke? The second part of the translation should be: “Refuse intimate contact.” In the Buddhist temple, […]

The visitors are outnumbered by staff, who are busy swiping Douyin. But of course, it’s only a rainy Thursday in Zhenjiang (镇江). What made me go here is Xinjindu (西津渡), an old navy harbor named after where the ferry would cross the Yangtze river, a long long time ago, connecting the southern Wu kingdom with […]

These days, the annual post-Double Eleven piles of deliveries can be seen on the streets again, although they’re less high as previous years. For the first time, Alibaba is not disclosing full sales results for the event. Before, each year a new sales record was boasted — which always felt political; the message to the […]

I think the value of photos changes as you age. In your twenties, a decade in the future is off the horizon, but in your thirties you can look ten years in both directions. The younger me saw life as an all-or-nothing state, but now I see it as a slow process. Time slowly consumes […]

I’m moving to Zhangjiang (张江) in Pudong soon, across the river — so I’m looking for a new apartment. Loads of different options but I’ll share three very different ones. The first apartment I looked at is also the cheapest. You also see a lot of these self-built (自建) houses in rural areas in Shanghai and […]

Bit of a Twitter crossroad today, a walk with Dan to 白林寺 in Yangpu after a tip from Ash. The place has an interesting name, because “White Forest Temple” isn’t a temple, but rather a remnant of the Japanese textile industry in Yangpu, Shanghai. Built in the 1920s, it was probably named after a temple […]

Quick walk around the block to compare the cameras of the Xiaomi 12s Ultra (left) with my Huawei P40 (right), which suddenly feels ancient.

These tiny three-wheeled cars have become increasingly common in the last few years in Shanghai, but they also receive scorn. People in our xiaoqu complain they park in stupid places and block the road, or occupy parking spots for cars while they’re not paying any parking fees. They’re named 残疾车 (vehicle for people with disabilities) […]

Another trip to Laoximen today. The area of old Shanghai is under demolishment, and although it’s been a slow process of already five years now, some parts are already gone, others vacated, while other parts still have people living in them. The longer the demolition goes on, the less meaning Laoximen has — apart from […]

Yesterday on foot, today on wheels (still in Ninghai 宁海). First time using an electric sharing scooter. Works perfectly (but I think a ‘sharing helmet’ is a bit dirty). 10 RMB for an hour. It actually suddenly stopped. The scooter started speaking, and I got an automated call on my phone as well: “You’ve driven […]

I’m reading The Lord of the Rings for the first time and today in Ninghai (宁海) I felt much like Frodo (I’m even wearing a khotan jade ring (田玉) from Xi’an, albeit with a different purpose. Ninghai (宁海) is a small city in Zhejiang (not to be confused by Haining (海宁) in the same province), […]

Yeah covid dominates all the conversations in Shanghai, so I wanted to share about a park near where I live that re-opened after a long renovation. It’s beautiful and packed with happy people, but when I was about to leave all the gates were suddenly closed and nobody allowed in. 10:30 (AM) on a Thursday. […]

Downtown gets the wanghongs but my heart is in Yangpu. Why I love this district of Shanghai so much, all from a ~2 hour walk today. Living rooms extend onto the streets… and so do shops… It feels more relaxed, too. HEMA (盒马) delivery drivers having a lunch or waiting for their next ride. The […]

Dongbei stewed meal 东北炖饭. The experience is fun but the taste is a bit meh; it’s just throwing everything into a broth. (The things on the side are corn cookies.)   My favorite and maybe the best thing I ever ate in China: Huaiyang steamed fish with pork on the top (淮扬菜鱼), extremely tender and […]

We stayed at Nanbei Lake (南北湖) which is a nice (yet a bit touristic) lake on the edge of the Zhejiang province. It’s all new roads and bridges, and newly planted trees and flowerbeds. Plus 美女 being photographed. Hellobike (哈啰单车) is also expanding to these sites. Family bikes and even electric ones you can simply […]

My first time on a green train, the famous (infamous?) 绿皮火车. I didn’t even realize it when buying the ticket, I should’ve bought a hard seat because I read so much about that in books about China. The old lady only spoke about her Shanghai house and how much it’s worth per square meter, and […]

Friend lived in this neighborhood 30 years ago, and we go back to everyone’s favorite wonton store. Someone recognizes her and yells: “Hey! Going to eat wonton?!” The store is +50 years old, has no logo, yet you need to queue to get your dish. Plus 15RMB for a bowl of pork wonton isn’t super […]

路上，乡下，中国 Long rides on the National Day of the PRC are becoming a ritual. 136 km from Shanghai to Nantong today. My favorite part is always the ferry. Cars can choose one of two huge bridges, but not so much for bicycles. The Yangtze river is massive — and because all the passengers walk around […]

Goujian (who from 496–465 BC was the king of Yue) walked these hills a long time ago. The legend goes that a tiger jumped at him, roared three times and led him to this cave — declared a holy place by Goujian — now known as Tiger Cave (老虎洞) in Wenyan (闻堰镇) near Hangzhou. The […]

We’re in Heshang (河上镇) — which basically means ’town on the river’ — and we’re here for the most famous of its 28,042 citizens: Mister Zhufa (朱法). Zhufa is 86 years old but still works every day, and he’s so famous that people drive from nearby provinces to get his advice on Traditional Chinese medicine […]

“I used to work on a boat and we often ate turtles. And I kept several as a pet. One I had for 50 years, but he grew so big and ate so much. Meat. Too expensive. I didn’t want him anymore, I just ate him. What would you do? Oh, release in the wild? […]

Met again with my former design students in the old town of Sijing (古镇泗泾) in Shanghai’s Songjiang district. With the help of the local government, the area is being renovated into a cultural hub with their studio at the center. My former students may still call me 老师 (teacher) but we’re equals now. They’ve graduated, […]

Chinese characters allow for elegant naming. Just take a character from each destination and add what it is. The highway from Jiading to Songjiang: 嘉松公路 (JiaSong Highway). The bridge from Suzhou to Nantong: 苏通桥 (SuTong Bridge). And there’s the HuiHang Ancient Road (微杭古道). The Hui is from Huizhou (徽州) in the Anhui province, the Hang […]

A friend told me her parents, during the 70s, buried gold jewelry to hide it from the Red Guards. Really deep in the ground. They dug for it decades later but couldn’t find it. Their house is now set to be demolished, so they’re about to make a final dig, and see if they can […]

When you take a PCR test in China, it’ll take 3 to 12 hours before the result comes out, so before our trip to the Shandong province, I several tests in Shanghai to ensure I always had a 24-hour result when I left my living compound, took the train to Suzhou, and to take the […]

We saw plenty of cicadas in the forest and Weihai — louder and bigger than in Shanghai. In many parts of Shandong, cicadas are eaten, and we spotted several people ‘angling’ for them — using a rod with some dough on the top — to be taken home to be fried. Everyone asked said they’re […]

After a few days in rural Shandong, Weihai (威海) hits different immediately as we get off the train — people and suitcases everywhere. It’s full of an obvious type of people: tourists. And immediately I wonder if the people in those rural areas who cited covid for the lack of tourism are just wrong, and […]

The Great Wall of China was built over centuries and one of the oldest segments ran through the Shandong province, from Jinan (济南) to Qingdao (青岛): Great Wall of Qi (齐长城). It lacks the fame of the Great Wall in Beijing built in the Ming Dynasty (this is the one that comes to your mind […]

Mount Tai (泰山) dwarfs the city of Tai’an (泰安) and is the central attraction. In the park we take the bus to somewhere midway — cheating, I know — but it’s already passed noon and several people told me the whole trip takes ~8 hours. In the bus we’re with other couples, mostly university students (sitting together […]

We tried to visit the 贺九岭 temple in Cangshu (藏书) Suzhou (famous for its lamb meat), but it was closed. Because of covid? Because of it being Saturday? Not sure, but we couldn’t go in to burn some incense. Next to it is a mountain though. Eva decided to stay in the air-conditioned car but […]

The many hairy crab fishers of Yangchenghu (阳澄湖) in Suzhou — or at least their boats. Casually refueling their jerry cans while smoking. It’s late in the crab season and there aren’t any big ones left — just “June yellow” (六月黄), the younglings with a thin shell, and lots of yellow meat (tomalley). In the […]

Shenqiaocun (沈桥村) on the edge of Suzhou is a little town caught between two highways. I like the scenery, but Eva doesn’t. We ask a guy who walks passed us what life is like: “外地人多，偷东西呀” (Lots of non-local people, steal stuff.) Lots of the house owners don’t live here anymore and rent their houses to […]

Before getting off work last Tuesday, I was informed we have a close contact in our building and that we need to be locked down again. So I immediately bought some fresh food, and brought coffee & books from the office (as many things as I could carry), because although our compound says we just […]

Foreigners often lament the loss of old areas in Shanghai (or anywhere in China) — most notably Laoximen — but we do so with a luxury that many Chinese people don’t have. We’d like these old buildings to stay around for us to look at and understand better the China of old, and perhaps the […]

Recently, my friend’s mom has been gravely ill, so last Saturday I decided to burn some incense at a temple, thirty kilometers outside of Suzhou (太平禅寺 in Taiping Town). And all the time while doing this, I wasn’t sure whether I actually believed this works, but I also wasn’t sure whether that mattered or not. […]

This week, I removed all antigen test photos from my phone. For over two months, we had to do self-tests and share them in the building’s WeChat group, and cleansing my phone of them felt almost therapeutical. It’s not just our phones that are healing, so are we. Now we have our freedom back for […]

I haven’t traveled to the Netherlands now for almost 3 years, hindered by 1) insane flight ticket prices 2) two or three weeks of quarantine 3) insecurity of whether I can make it back to China if I get covid abroad. Compared to if I’d be living in the Netherlands, of course this influences my […]

There’s this famous anecdote of a professor who fills a glass with rocks, pebbles, then with sand, and then adds water, and there’s some life lesson in that. Well, I think Shanghai is such a jar as well. Everything is decomposed on the ladder of wealth. On the top people are buying mansions and supercars […]

An old guy says: “The top one, give me a big one. No no no, the one to the left”, to which an old lady yells: “C’mon it’s all the same.” The next person wants half a roasted duck: “A small one please”, but when the staff shows a tiny duck she’s: “No no no […]

Today we had sushi, walked, and cycled. The best part is seeing everyone outside & friends sharing photos on WeChat and knowing that they feel the same relief. It’s only shot with my phone, but I wanted to document the streets, even if only for myself: Being back very quickly feels normal — familiar at […]

And just like that, we’re out after 61 days. The baoans have been letting people slip out — hours before midnight — saying “Don’t go too far”. People are on the street, energized, happy, looking at everything for the first time. Stores are open or stocking up for tomorrow’s opening. It feels monumental, the way […]

Day 50 and I got a rare “临时出门单”, so I walked around the Yangpu district for a few hours, which is the hardest-hit area in Shanghai now.   Main roads have some traffic, but curbs are empty — except for around the area of two hospitals I passed. I saw many seniors who had to […]

Day 46 of the Shanghai lockdown is about to end and yet we wait for our release. We’ve had our freedom severely limited, further still — to the point where we cannot buy food ourselves and have to rely on rations, whatever the powers higher up are deciding to send our way. One of the […]

Many Shanghai-based expats (like me) have seen their Twitter accounts grow — explode — in terms of impressions & followers. There’s a lot more to talk about Shanghai than during normal days. The strict lockdown has given us and everyone we know new challenges, which are not just different for each district, but also change […]

I was curious about the many dabai’s in Shanghai and found one in my compound who was happy to sit down with me to tell me why he signed up & more. I think we were both a bit nervous — he for maybe saying something wrong — me of his leader coming around the […]

Day 24. At night I dream of my brother who treats me to some Dutch food, the familiar place in our hometown. I want to pay him back my part but for some reason cannot. I doze off and I dream that a positive case lives in our bathroom. It has no shape, I just […]

Living abroad puts you in the middle of two countries, a bit of both but neither whole. I’ve been living in China for four years now, and it’s easy to dismiss my opinion or views from all sides. People from the Netherlands will ask me how I can possibly enjoy a country with such a […]

Tuesday the 12th of April, day 12 of our lockdown. We receive self-tests and need to share the photos in the WeChat group of the building. There are 5 floors, about 4 households on each, so about 60 people live here — 39 of which are in the group. We’ve already been photographing our self-test […]

Mandarin version by Misaka Clover | Japanese version   The first time I came to Shanghai, in 2017, I was amazed by how developed the city was. My only other Asian experience was Mumbai, and compared to that, Shanghai was clean and organized. I was amazed by how you could pay for a laundrette with […]

This piece of calico from Wuzhen is still waiting to meet my mom. I never know what to buy her, but I think she’ll like this, a piece of tangible China bought in June, 2020. Now I’m moving houses again, and again this piece is going with me, waiting, just like me. 搬家。我还没有机会给我妈这块乌镇蓝印花布。我明天又搬家，这块又陪我去一套新的房子，它正在等待，就像我一样。

Zero covid China: cases rise and everyone gets nervous. All over the city, living compounds, malls, schools, offices, are locked up with residents, shoppers, teachers, staff all inside. Sometimes a delivery guy is extremely unlucky and runs into his proverbial Hotel California. It’s not really good or bad, it’s just the situation here that suits […]

I first watched “Her” nine years ago and loved it then: a science fiction movie, yet on a much more intimate level than pew-pew laserbeams or spacetravel. “Her” shows how difficult love is between humans, and how easy it can be between a human and a conscious yet bodyless operating system. When the movie ends, […]

Written for Dao Insights Last week, a colleague told me she’s from the same hometown as Zhou Enlai (周恩来 the first Premier of the People’s Republic of China): Huai’an (淮安) in Jiangsu province (江苏省). I had never heard of that place, and it’s the same thing when people tell me they’re from Kaifeng (开封) or […]

Three characters in the wild: “油坊 Yóufáng” (Oil mill). In the back of the building was indeed an oil press. Eva tells me about her grandpa who also had a 油坊 business, how people can bring nuts or something and then for a tiny fee her grandpa would turn it into oil. The second one […]

The paper faces of Mao and Qin Shi blacken and deform as fire takes the bills. I never knew burning money to be so beautiful, even though this money is fake, burned to honour ancestors. Eva’s dad twists the poke and turns over more unburned ghost money (冥纸 Míng zhǐ) into the flames. Half an […]

A world map that is upside down is just as correct as the one we’re used to. In China they use these kinds of world maps, with China in the middle. China’s Chinese name, 中国, Zhōngguó, means middle country. If you now think “OMG but why are they so arrogant they have to put China […]

The museum in Taicang (太仓) shows the city’s history, how 1000 years ago — during the Yuan and Ming Dynasty — it was one of China’s richest cities, thanks to its position next to the Yangtze River. But the link between that city and today’s Taicang remains unclear to me, apart from some excavations and […]

“Did you grow?”, “No? What do you mean?”, “Well, I meant you maybe have grown fat.” A lady pruning flowers with all the patience in the world. She puts them in a vase before deciding they should be cut a bit shorter: “This is too high over the edge.” Another lady wears a green hat, […]

“可是”, which means ‘but’, was my filler word in Chinese, until Eva started making fun of me I started to change it. Every time I said 可是 she screamed “BUT!!!!!” Like: “It’s not perfect 可是 we can still go there” “BUT!!!!!” “This thing is that 可是 that thing is this” “BUT!!!!!” “It’s raining 可是 it’s […]

My first speech in Chinese after learning for 3 years with GoEast Mandarin! I didn’t speak perfectly, but I’m pretty satisfied! It’s a bit above my language level, and I rehearsed pretty hard for this, the new vocabulary and sentence structures. This speech was given Saturday 4th of December 2021 in Shanghai — during the […]

Written for Dao Insights You might have come across lots of fruits produced by Alibaba’s PR labours, parading its sustainability efforts done for this year’s Double 11, which coincided with COP26. CampaignAsia wrote Double 11 was less about the discounts and that sustainability is top of mind. Other English media outlets such as Reuters, SMCP, […]

Together with art collective RunShi (润识), GoEast is exhibiting Banana Wang (王香蕉)’s colorful bulldog paintings. Here we sit down with Banana to ask her about her work. Jaap: Do you think art should have a higher meaning or purpose? 你认为你更高的艺术理想是什么？ Banana: Hmmm. I want to put myself in the history books. As for the message, […]

Description + telephone. In our increasingly complex society, I really like this type of simple advertising. Three numbers for a 船中介 (Shipping company) in Kunshan — all sorts of things in Beijing — and 有事买 & 打深井 & 卖空调 (Stuff to buy & dig deep & sell air conditioners) in Nantong.

Kunshan is where the high-speed way train stops to unload passengers, where people refuel their car, or where an English teacher first starts working in China before realizing there’s nothing to do there and moves to a better place. Kunshan’s biggest benefit is often described as; “well, it’s close to Shanghai”, or; “yeah, there is […]

Most talk about cultural differences is pretty superficial. So in the Netherlands, it’s rude to keep your coat on while visiting people’s home, while Chinese people don’t like to shake hands as much as Dutch people do — let alone how French or Italian people touch cheeks. You should not wear a green hat in […]

I was watching Scott & Ella from Fragrant Mandarin in this video where Ella speaks Mandarin and Scott simply replies in English. It felt so natural. I looked for multi-language poems but could find nothing. Then I used the article ‘Heem‘ because it’s short, simple sentences and the meaning fits this nicely. I tweaked it […]

When I pushed open the gate he said the church was closed, but when I replied in Mandarin he became more welcome to me: “Ok, have a look”. We spoke about churches in the Netherlands, and I told him that in the middle of every Dutch village, no matter how small, stands a church. I […]

Most sports journalists ask dumb questions, like they’ll ask an athlete “Do you look forward to the match?” — and travel writing often lacks specifics, stacking superlatives: “The waterfall was amazing, and the forest stunningly beautiful.” Each way of writing or topic has its own problems. China writing is often caught in one of two […]

‘Nine dikes port’ (九圩港) lays on the outskirts of Nantong, cornered by highways and the ever-expanding industrial harbor of the city. The area is a collection of vegetable gardens and rural houses, tied together by one-car-width roads, and it feels a bit like a campsite. Everyone who enters changes. They soften up, forget about work, […]

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 […]

This secret place is only a stone’s throw away from my home and GoEast Mandarin. 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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

With the move to the new campus in Shanghai, we designed new coffee cups with wordplays or simply encouragement.

For example, I like to buy notebooks, especially beautiful and expensive ones. But I’m afraid of writing down poor ideas, not worth such expensive and thus wasting such beautiful notebooks. So actually, cheaper notebooks are more useful than expensive ones. Very expensive restaurants or hotels are a bit like this as well. If they’re expensive […]

I won’t be teaching any marketing this semester because my visa doesn’t allow it. I won’t miss the two-hour inner-city travel from Yangpu to Songjiang, I won’t miss the meager pay, and I won’t miss the weekends spend working on Keynotes and homework. But I will miss all 24 students, enthusiastic and cleverly crazy, each […]

This month I watched two nationalistic war movies, which use nationalism not just as a backbone to a story, but also because it sells. First; ‘Operation Red Sea’ (红海行动) is a Chinese war movie from 2018, and stands part for a larger phenomenon, namely China’s newly found identity and its nationalism which it no longer […]

Interior design for GoEast at their new campus on Changle Lu in Shanghai. From this whiteboard sketch, to reality.

Shirts designed for GoEast Mandarin, with Pinyin: Hanyu Xuesheng (Chinese student) And Hanzi characters 请跟我说汉语 (Please talk Chinese with me) 一心一意学习汉语 (Studying Chinese with heart & soul) As well as simply a logo.  

If you read media like SupChina, Sixthtone or ThatsMag, you’ve probably run into some of these headlines: “Proposed immigration changes spark racist backlash in China” ‘Draft law sparks online racism’ “Immigration plans spur hateful comments” “Netizens outraged over proposed permanent residence rules” “Backlash in China over draft rule on permanent residency for foreigners” We would […]

爽Shuǎng in Chinese means ‘feel good’, and since the new GoEast Mandarin campus is on Shanghai’s 长乐路 (Road of Eternal Happiness), I replaced the four X’s with four infinity signs (∞), so it’s like `infinite feel good` (无限爽). Scary to paint on a wall though!

GoEast Mandarin is a top Chinese language school, online and in Shanghai — with effective and fun teaching. I studied there, but felt that their communication lacked behind the quality of their teaching, and looked all the same as all language schools in Shanghai. My time was primarily spend on three things: Optimizing existing assets […]

Photography for GoEast Mandarin, moving to its new campus in Shanghai.

GoEast holds events, offline in Shanghai and online (since the start of covid).

Money is the invisible friend (or foe) that appears in every story. Janet, born in the 1970s Janet teaches about foreign-invested joint ventures in China at Fudan University. At the start of her lecture, she introduces herself starting from present to past. She now travels around the world advising big multinationals — but her roots […]

I’ve driven a NIO ES6 for a few thousand kilometers in between Shanghai & Suzhou, across highways, parking garages, and little alleys. I’m not an expert car reviewer, but I’ve driven (not owned) other full-electric and hybrid cars. Last updated, September 17th 2020 Pros of the NIO ES6: The NIO ES6 is big. Especially the […]

The last mosque in Suzhou. Before 1949 there were over ten mosques in the city. Among small restaurants and butchers, Taipingfang 太平坊 was restored in 2018 — made anew and more turquoise — and it now offers a spot to pray for local and visiting Muslims. Shifu gave us a tour, even though non-muslims aren’t […]

三年在中国，我回到起点。街道变了一点儿，我变了更多。我现在可以看懂标志而能和中国人沟通。 Three years in China. The street changes, but not as fast as me. Taikang Road next to Tianzifang, for me the starting point in Shanghai. I try to go back once a year, even though now it’s far from my home and work.

She looks south and seawards and always. Putuo Shan is the dojo for Guanyin Bodhisattva. She’s originally the patron saint of seafarers, but she now gives an audience to anyone who comes with wishes. And listen she does. The three characters that make up her Chinese name (观世音 Guānshìyīn) literally means ‘the one who hears […]

In Chinese they describe it as “净化心灵”, meaning ‘purify the soul’. We stayed on the farm ‘椿庭朴门’ nor far from Shanghai, with 大熊 (Big Bear) and his wife Moqi & their two daughters. The place is far from a typical Chinese rural farm. Here, everything is made from bright wood bend into various shapes, fit […]

The new home. 同和, two characters meaning ‘harmoniously together’. It’s the international compound next to Fudan University, even though there are barely international students now. It’s also near GoEast Mandarin and surrounded by dozens of cheap restaurants that are rather hit or miss. I love this part of Yangpu, it’s like a small village surrounded […]

A year ago, Shanghai was on lockdown. Everything closed except a few supermarkets with empty shelves. The humid cold seeped into our bones, along with the fear of the unknown virus. All the stories are surfacing now. A friend who lived in the Yangpu district had the first corona case in Yangpu reported in their […]

“14:00 this Sunday?” someone asks in the WeChat group. Our chat is named ‘五人小场群Wǔ rén xiǎo chǎng qún’ (Five people small field group) and holds 36 guys from the neighborhood, including me. We play football without a schedule, usually weekly. Someone mentions a time, and critical mass (ten or more) either does or doesn’t form. […]

When I search for tier-3 or tier-4 cities on Google or Baidu, I’m always looking at the same kind of photos: grey skies above a wide river, a park with leafless trees, and maybe an aerial photo of a harbor or monotone residential area. And other hits on Google would be a blog from a […]

Lots has been written on apps like WeChat or Tmall, but rarely articles zoom in on details. I’ll pick four functions here showing how well everything works together. These apps are not thrilling, but extremely functional. Mind you, these functions are used daily — not just by people handy with phones but most people between […]

Photography for GoEast Mandarin, an online/offline Chinese language school based in Shanghai, China. All colleagues photographed, as well as some students and notebooks.

I’m in this old Shanghai house, four apartments on each of five floors, with a kitchen housed in the stairwell. I had to interrupt this gentleman cutting his bok choy to get through. The whole place breathes life, from the sound of my feet on the worn wood, to his smile gifted to me as […]

David is partly a tour guide, partly a comedian, partly a philosopher. Confucianism, he sums up, is “Respect the elders, take care of the young”. Another important rule is that you do not impose on others what you do not want yourself. The story he tells is about a family — father, mother, a son […]

Western companies looking to expand their business often underestimate the competitiveness of the Chinese market. Often, what stands in the way of success is a lack of understanding on what Chinese consumers value and how they shop. But then there are some that have done their research, made local partnerships, made necessary changes, and earned […]

Ground zero. My mind can barely comprehend the human chain that is covid-19, that droplets from mouths right here have spread to bodies all around the world within 12 months. I’m at the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan, which feels like being at ground zero in Hiroshima, or the former site of the Twin towers, […]

This is the Sihang Warehouse (四行仓库) at Shanghai’s Suzhou Creek. In 1937 during the Japanese invasion of Shanghai, it mainly stored bags of sand, corn, and beans, until the 452 men of the 88th division of the Chinese army retreated into it. The Japanese armies invaded further into the city and the 88th was ordered […]

It’s hard to say how popular books really are in China. Shanghai has many stores, on- and offline, and even an English book (Siddhartha) was delivered within 10 hours. But so too are there millions of people (24 million in Shanghai), so it’s hard to say if book reading is really popular. Even Suzhou has lots […]

Even though I initially thought of it as a gimmick, I’ve come to really love the Oriental Pearl Tower. Built on the corner of the Huangpu River, it’s visible from many places in the city — sometimes as a surprise, like accidental eye contact. And every time you see it, it whispers you: “You are […]

Construction workers sleep with six per room in bunk beds in modified shipping containers, and often live hundreds of kilometers away from family, and perhaps see their wife and children once a year. I guess life’s stripped down to the mere basics. Work, eat, sleep, accompanied by conversations. And the harder the work, the deeper […]

Without exception, the demographics of my twenty-eight marketing students in Songjiang, Shanghai are: Aged 18-22 year old Female Lives in Songjiang, Shanghai Studies at an art academy You’d think that these four points precisely describe a group of people, but we did an exercise in the class today and it turns out they mostly disagree […]

There’s a lot of talk about filial piety (Confucianism!!) in China but few examples of what it really means. I see parents being challenged by their children just like anywhere else. In many ways, Chinese children are more spoiled than any children on the planet. I see kids crying their eyes out when their dad […]

(Original interview in Dutch with MarketingTribune.) In conversation with MarketingTribune about our marketing and the impact of the corona crisis in China. What exactly does GoEast Mandarin do? GoEast Mandarin offers Chinese language lessons to foreigners in many variants: daily and business Mandarin, private and group lessons, from beginner to advanced. This from two campuses […]

Here’s a Dutch word. Heem. Similar to home, referring to the town or country you grew up in. Your dad’s music, the books your mom used to read to you. The trees under which you played, the streets and bridges you cycled on, your native language — the place you come to hide, the place […]

Today, while millions of students take their life-deciding college entrance exam (gaokao), I got my own experience of tests in China. The driving theory exam is provided to foreigners in English, but the absurd logic and translations are verbatim from the source material — so it’s a near requirement to memorise the specific answers to […]

Here are my mini views into Chinese life. Anecdotal, generalizing, not-special, etc etc — simply my observations of life in Suzhou and Shanghai. It’s what you’d never read in Western media. (To be updated over time.) 1 — Nearly every kid wears a special child smartwatch. They call their classmates and also their moms if […]

A younger more cynical me would have said it’s all fake. But these recently-built pagodas and temples are just as much part of today’s Chinese culture as the old ones are. No need to lament the original ones, now often gone. These new ones (all over China) find their way in the background of selfies […]

More than any city I’ve lived in, Shanghai unfolds the longer you stay in it — like reading the book for a second or third time. I keep returning to old spots and seeing new layers — literally — on the ground or ten floors above the streets. I now speak the language and I’m […]

(Originally written for GoEast Mandarin.) My hometown Hattem has around 11,000 citizens, with on the north the river the Ijssel, and on the south the biggest forest of the Netherlands, the Veluwe, teeming with life and fields thick of heather. There are two bus stops, with a bus every two hours — but not on […]

Today marks two years in China. All these days have stretched time and have given me much more than two years would justify. Highs and low, for which somehow I’m both grateful. Time slowly consumes you, until it wins. And yet it’s measured in experiences, not in years alone. Thank you China.

I keep reading about how our behavior and deeply rooted beliefs will be permanently changed by covid19. It’s worth pointing out that Shanghai is totally back to normal, except for some measures (schools closed, wearing facemasks, temperature checks). Kids & parents playing outside, people spending the money they saved in Feb/March on clothes and bubble […]

Lao Zhou sits on the courtesy seat of the subway with a bag of spinach and pork between his feet. For the past six decades, his life was lived around the creek and the buildings next to it. Sepia-tinted memories of a thousand bicycle rides alongside the water, girls, and French Phoenix trees — the […]

(Originally written for GoEast Mandarin.) I’m nearly finished with HSK3, starting from zero Mandarin skills just over a year ago. Here are 9 things I learned about language and myself. 1 — Learn to enjoy learning Don’t aim to learn faster and faster. Learn to enjoy learning, then everything else will follow. 2 — Keep […]

“We must prepare for the possibility that we cannot give offline-classes for several months.” 24th January, Chinese New Year’s eve. We had worked out several scenarios at GoEast, ranging from asking students to wash their hands and checking their temperature, to actually closing the campuses — which seemed extreme at that time. But we prepared […]

The rain turns streets into oil paintings. Tuesday rush hour in Shanghai Yangpu, under the coronavirus. The streets aren’t all empty, but quiet for this time of the day.

Learning Mandarin is often described as something deeply cultural or spiritual. Yes, it’s interesting that the character for home/family (家) originates from a pig underneath a roof, because livestock used to be in every home, or that 目 (eye) coupled the water radical becomes 泪 (tear). But it’s pure trivia, just as interesting as that […]

Why is so much education, even in 2019, still held in classrooms and not on screens? You could take the world’s best teachers on any subject, pay them like a rockstar, and simply record seminars. The quality (in theory) should be much higher, always available across the world. Maybe the first law of thermodynamics applies […]

For Freunde von Freunden I was asked to interview workers in a clothing factory, three hours outside of Shanghai. First I had to shoo away the manager who was looking over my shoulder — because it made the workers nervous and all the answers fabricated: “I love my job, and my boss is very good […]

Hengshan Road Patrick from Historic Shanghai tells a story about the American School, which was located on Hengshan Road from 1923 to 1941. On its 100th anniversary, some years ago, 6 ‘boys’ and 6 ‘girls’ — now aged in their 80s or 90s — visited the location again in which they had grown up. And […]

That was 9 weeks of teaching at the Shanghai Institute of Visual Arts & DeTao Academy. Up until the last day, teaching made me feel honored (“Wow, they asked me for this”), but at the same time feel nervous and inadequate (“Who the hell do you think you are, teach branding?”). The students were nice, […]

A basketball pitch used for drying crops, an empty clothing factory, a low-tide hydro lake, a Buddist temple among hostels and farms, and koi fish in the river. The village of Tonglu is made of many layers, each concealing something else.

Search ‘massage’ on Google and you’ll find pictures of beautifully relaxed people. Massaging, as a verb, means ‘to treat flatteringly’. But the Western notion of massage is limited. Chinese massage is different, and its name (按摩Ànmó) more honest: press stroke. We went to a Chinese spa for the latter, but I still had the former […]

This morning in Historic Shanghai’s WeChat group I saw a photo from 1995 with People’s Square and the Shanghai Museum being constructed. When I see those photos I feel sad I wasn’t in Shanghai back then, thinking it would have been amazing (yet now impossible) to walk through those alleys now-gone, to talk to people […]

In Amsterdam’s busiest shopping street is a big wooden door that opens into a corridor which leads into a church. Few shoppers notice the door, let alone pass it. But the transition is wonderful: you go from a crowded street, a cacophony, into the silence of a church, and leave the shopping street behind, if […]

It’s a fair price to pay to live in Shanghai, but being so far from the Netherlands makes me long for it a lot. The feeling arrives suddenly. I thought I’d be immune to it but no. I walk through familiar streets in Google Street View, I look back at last year’s pictures, and I […]

‘Old Captain Bar’ (老船长) at 168 Gaoyang Lu in Hongkou is my kind of sad place. It has shiny brewing tanks in its interior, five eager staff in turquoise jackets and a singer doing hits from the 90’s and 00’s, but not too loud, so you can still talk. The television shows figure skating – […]

I decided to enter this art deco building at 505 Dong Changzhi Lu, as it seemed totally deserted when I entered. Inside I discovered it to be be an old seamen’s hospital, built by colonialists in 1934. As I explored more inwards — and just as I sent a photo to my friend — I […]

(Originally posted on Seventy-Magazine.) I’d like to give an insight on China’s ‘silver generation’, because while China’s younger generations are often in the spotlight, its senior citizens are largely ignored — despite its 150 million ‘members’ having a combined annual income of around 300-400 billion RMB. But instead of some board generalisations, here’s a slice of life […]

Photos from Suzhou, a large city (+10 million people) close to Shanghai. Taken during 2018’s ‘Golden Week’.

This vinyl record made it to Shanghai and that’s a miracle. It makes me wonder about how this music was composed around 250 years ago in a candle-lit room in Germany, and played over 60 years ago by an Englishman visiting a small city in post-war Netherlands. I wonder about the church that was built […]

I’ve now taken two months of Mandarin classes, and last week our teacher taught us the words for cat (māo) and dog (gǒu) — and as a sort of fun extracurricular, she also explained the sounds they make: “miaow” and “wang” — or rather; how those sounds are perceived by Chinese. In the Netherlands, a […]

(A version of this also appeared on China Daily.) I find debates on objective reality not in the least useful, because eventually you arrive at the question whether all of the truths on which we base ourselves are true. And the answer has to be yes. Even if the truths we hold true would be […]

(Originally posted on Seventy-Magazine.) It’s hard to imagine how different China was only fifty years ago. Chinese people largely dressed the same, ate the same food in cantinas and decorated their homes in similar fashion. Few brands were known, most originating from before the Japanese Occupation, the civil war and the tumultuous 50s, 60s and […]

(Originally posted on Seventy-Magazine.) When you look down at the city from the 121st floor of the Shanghai Tower, it’s as if you’re looking at a computer simulation. The view that houses 24 million people is insane. Across all horizons, the skyline is filled with exotic skyscrapers and thousands of high rise apartment buildings, nearly […]

There’s anonymity in crowds. The urban cacophony of Shanghai creates a wall of sound that absorbs everything. It’s pleasant, like a big café. And with a population of 24 million citizens, you never have to worry about onlookers, because you’re likely to never see them again. When someone cuts you off in traffic, there’s no […]

Last week was China’s ‘Golden Week’, when the country goes on a collective holiday. Traffic jams and popular tourist destinations are filled with crowds. So too on Nantong’s Mount Lang, its pagoda providing a view across the city and the Yangtze river. I explored the place and behind the facade, I found this trashed frame with […]

(Originally posted on Seventy-Magazine.com, translated in Dutch for MarketingFacts) Around ten years ago, when you used a urinal in a popular bar or cinema in Europe, chances were you had an advertisement poster in your view, with a big QR code in the lower right corner. Western marketeers used the QR code primarily to redirect […]

(Originally posted on Seventy-Magazine.com, and in Dutch on Marketingfacts) When we think about China, we often reduce nuances to black-and-white absolutes. Either China is a country with oppressed people and smog-filled skies, or it is the juggernaut that will inevitably rule the world’s economy. Neither of these views is particularly useful, and rather than debating […]

(Originally posted on Seventy-Magazine.com) With 300 million rich Chinese consumers, China’s takes an 8.9% share of the global luxury market — although it’s probably more if you consider Chinese tourists who buy luxury products outside of China. On the surface, luxury advertising in China is similar to that in the West. There are all the […]

These photos we taken near a shopping mall in Shanghai, called Joy City. The shopping mall has all kinds of shops from global luxury brands, and even a ferris wheel on the roof. This area, next to it, is one of the many old low-rise neighbourhoods that’s demolished in Shanghai, as in other big cities […]

The mind is a mysterious place. We can never fully understand what goes on in the mind of someone else. We can never see and feel what others think or feel. Nor can we ever share our own thoughts and feelings without first translating them into words or actions, by which they’ve lost most of […]

(This was later also published on China Daily.) In moving to China, what surprised me most is the lack of a culture shock. Sure, Chinese history, language, culture, food, media and smartphone usage, and tons of thing are very different — and on my website I’ll continue to write aplenty about other peculiarities. But the […]

97 years ago today, the Communist Party of China held its first congress in Shanghai, to unify its branches across the country and plot its course through history. It was in fact a Dutchman, Henk Sneevliet, who had urged the Communist to gather for a national meeting. Sneevliet, also known as ‘Maring’, was a seasoned socialist […]

Earlier trips to Shanghai already taught me that looking at China with an air of Western superiority is ill-advisable. While rural areas are still developing, urban areas are so far ahead in some aspects that at times, Shanghai felt like science-fiction. In moving from Amsterdam to Shanghai and started as a strategist at Seventy Agency, […]

Next Tuesday, I’m taking a one way ticket to China to start as strategist at Seventy Agency Shanghai. For months I’ve been looking forward and preparing for this. Yet there’s only so much I can learn from this side of the fence, and even in China I’m a foreigner and I’m not expecting to be able […]

I’m about to leave the familiar and by-now slightly comfortable church of KesselsKramer, as well as the safety net of having colleagues way more experienced (and in many ways more talented) than me. ‘Why am I doing this to myself?’, I’m asking. Throughout my four years at art academy, I didn’t dare to dream to […]

Taken at the end of January, 2018.

June 2017

Minds are lonely places. We can never share our thoughts and feelings without translating them into words or actions, nor can we ever look into those of others. The best thing we can do, is to assume that the complex workings of our minds are also present in those of others. But it is precisely […]

June 2017 — A trip to West Lake, Hangzhou.