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.
In our new house, many appliances still get their power through a travel adapter. Eight years in China was long enough to not only put down roots and settle in, but also for everything we owned to end in a Chinese plug: my MacBook, the coffee machine, the rice cooker, the baby monitor. The appliances […]
In June we moved back to the Netherlands, six suitcases across 8000 kilometres, and after a brief spell at my parents’ place, we moved into our own home. This second move also involved putting down carpet, curtains, buying appliances and furniture — so that our new garage quickly filled with cardboard boxes and other packaging […]
Our new home in the Netherlands sits in a mundane residential area full of young families like ours. The street name comes from made (‘meadow’), still referring to a field that once lay here and now survives only in the name (just how the name Shanghai refers to a river that no longer exists). And […]
In eight years of living in China, taxi drivers or older colleagues loved to ask, “Which is better, the Netherlands or China?”, hoping for a single insightful answer that would explain everything. And now, back as a resident in the Netherlands, people ask the mirrored version: do I miss living in China? Neither question is […]
