Don’t Pay for Your MBA review

This book is based on the genius idea that you can assemble your own MBA, low-price and high quality, and it offers practical tips to pick courses and what to do with it, for instance, how to explain to a future employer the difference between your self-assembled MBA and a traditional MBA. This core is great, but it’s surrounded by so much filler, either obvious truths passed on as insights, or constantly rehashed material, chapter-after-chapter. I wish editors or publishers would stop wasting my time in order to push a book to 200 pages. This should really have been a 20-page essay for which I would have gladly paid the same.

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Secret Listening #6

Secret Listening #6

This series is called ‘Secret Listening’, from the Chinese word 偷听Tōutīng. I know this can be — and should probably be — translated as ‘eavesdropping’, but secret listening captures it better and adds a bit of jest. These little stories or remarks stood out to me, and show a more personal side of China away […]
December 27, 2025
Chosen Streets

Chosen Streets

A week ago, I saw a nearby old lane (小湾老街) on Xiaohongshu — but when I wanted to take a look there, I found it was already demolished and turned into some kind of factory. I checked back on Xiaohongshu and saw that indeed, the last posts were from early 2024. There was a feeling […]
December 21, 2025
Thirty kilometers out

Thirty kilometers out

When I moved out of Shanghai’s city center, the differences were obvious to me, but now three years later I start to see the similarities again. The area in Shanghai that we live in now — the border of Heqing (合庆) and Tangzhen (唐镇) — is full of non-Shanghainese people. Many come from lower-tier cities in […]
December 15, 2025
Ways to harmony

Ways to harmony

In Shanghai, cars, scooters, or bicycles in public are exposed to the impulses of opportunistic advertisers. So while you’re asleep or at work, they may place cards or stickers — fancy designs promoting services ranging from fake diplomas to ladies of not-so-virtuous nature, as well as housing funds. I’ve been annoyed dozens of times by […]
December 8, 2025