Ordinary people (老百姓)

For example, I like to buy notebooks, especially beautiful and expensive ones. But I’m afraid of writing down poor ideas, not worth such expensive and thus wasting such beautiful notebooks. So actually, cheaper notebooks are more useful than expensive ones. Very expensive restaurants or hotels are a bit like this as well. If they’re expensive — I tell myself I can’t just simply eat or sleep there, I should forcefully enjoy it! What I mean is that ordinary things are sometimes better than exceptional ones, because the meaning is only the thing itself, nothing else.

Today I saw Liu Xiaodong’s painting exhibition, about the common people, and it was a good day. I don’t want a common life, but I like common days.

(This piece of text is the first piece of text I first wrote in Chinese, and then translated it into English, rather than the other way around.)

中文:
比如,我很喜欢买笔记本,尤其很漂亮又贵的。可是我怕写下来不好的主意,不值得而浪费那么漂亮的笔记本。所以在现实中,便宜的笔记本比贵的有用。很贵的饭店或者酒店也是有点儿这样,我告诉我自己我不能随便吃或者睡觉,我应该享受!我的意思就是,普遍的东西和事儿有时候比优秀的好,因为意义只是事物本身,没有别的。
今天骑自行车来回,看刘小东的画展,关于老百姓。好日子。我不要普遍的生活,可是普遍的日子我挺喜欢。

Latest

The Return of Magic

The Return of Magic

My first time in an airplane was in some Cessna 25 years ago. I had never imagined I’d ever sit in a plane, because that was something for rich people. But then after our visit to Legoland in Denmark, my dad decided we’d see the park from above. The whole was so inconceivable, not just […]
November 11, 2025
Toilet Egg Pancake

Toilet Egg Pancake

Sometimes a place or thing becomes super memorable not despite its odd name, but because of it. In Kunshan (昆山) there’s a place that sells ‘Toilet Egg Pancake’ (厕所蛋饼), because their original store was next to a public toilet. It has already moved on, but the name remains. While their pancakes are so good (and […]
November 10, 2025
These Same Roads Again

These Same Roads Again

My parents visited Shanghai for the first time in seven years, and even though the city has changed a lot, I dare say it has changed not as much as I have. Sure. On the surface of Shanghai, a lot of stores have come and gone since 2018, and large areas of the city were […]
November 5, 2025
To Taipei and Back in a Day

To Taipei and Back in a Day

I got the chance to travel from Shanghai to Taipei and back in one day. Rather impractical, very tiring, but still worth it. Because you could stay at home for ten weekends and watch fifty movies, and still not have as many impressions as this. I will refrain from acting as if now I know […]
November 3, 2025