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.
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 […]
My parents usually buy a travel book or borrow one from the library, but I typically read up on Reddit and Google. While Google is all ‘pristine white beaches’, Reddit had me kinda pessimistic about going to Vietnam. Beaches were supposed be littered in plastic, some villages full of Korean or Russian tourists, and traffic […]
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 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 […]
Circe sits in front of a mirror and holds a cup to Odysseus. It’s a painting by J.W. Waterhouse, and also the background of a classical music playlist on YouTube. I clicked on it because I saw Circe on the thumbnail — about who I had just finished reading the book by Madeline Miller. When […]
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 […]