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 […]
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 […]
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: […]
Update: As of March 1st, 2025, this route is no longer accessible. We’re in Anshan Village (安山村), a two hours drive south of Shaoxing (绍兴) in Zhejiang. There’s an old walking path here (安山古道) here that’ll soon be flooded by the placement of a dam — so a colleague advised me to walk it, now […]
In 2017 I decided I wanted to move to China and I started to prepare myself, trying to understand the culture and market. I had nobody to really guide me, so I read books from several categories; Online media on how to do marketing in China. Most of these books were kinda nonsense that didn’t […]
Sometimes, a person does great things abroad and makes history — all while remaining virtually unknown in her or his home country. I guess this happens to some vloggers or gamers now, but my best example would be Henk Sneevliet (马林), who in 1921 guided the formation of the Communist Party of China. Except for […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]