Not doing what everyone would do, not taking what everybody would take. That’s strategy at heart, and there’s a Chinese tale that tells with surprising truth about a Mandarin who spent years fishing on the riverbanks, using a straight needle instead of a hook. People looked and wondered, and told everyone about that remarkable way of fishing. The story spread through the country, eventually reaching the emperor, who came to look for the fisherman himself. “What do you expect to catch with this hook?”, the emperor asked. The answer came serenely: “You, my emperor”, said the man.
After Zaotai Village, we’re driving around the Huangshan (黄山) area, which is surrounded by dozens of historical towns, and we’re trying to pick the least touristified ones. Today we’re in Yuliang (渔梁村), a village dating back to the Sui Dynasty (1500 years ago). What was a mere settlement started to become really wealthy around 600 […]
The road becomes too small for cars to drive on, so we park, pack our bags, and continue on foot. Two donkeys are waiting where the path starts, and they — like us, are going to the abandoned village of Zaotai (皂汰村). We departed in the morning from our hostel in Sanyang (三阳镇), a village […]
“We walk down the path in Xikeng.” Three years ago, I started a note with that sentence. We visited a row of villages in the south of Zhejiang, and Xikeng (西坑) was at the end of the day — the least touristified town of them all. The village had dozens of old buildings, sliced by […]
Today, I’m visiting Zhengyi Old Street (正仪老街) in Kunshan — a city wedged in between Suzhou and Shanghai. This old street is a leftover slice in between other parts properly planned by the city. On the horizon, I can see construction cranes, as if they are threatening the area; ‘we are coming to you next’. […]
