I decided to enter this art deco building at 505 Dong Changzhi Lu, as it seemed totally deserted when I entered. Inside I discovered it to be be an old seamen’s hospital, built by colonialists in 1934. As I explored more inwards — and just as I sent a photo to my wife — I started […]
The rarer nature becomes, the more distant we become of it
This is one of the many paragraphs from ‘H is for Hawk‘ by Helen Macdonald that stood out for me and still lingers in my mind weeks after reading it: “I think of what wild animals are in our imagination. And how they are disappearing — not just from the wild, but from people’s everyday […]
My Chinese parents
(Originally posted on Seventy-Magazine.) I’d like to give an insight on China’s ‘silver generation’, because while China’s younger generations are often in the spotlight, its senior citizens are largely ignored — despite its 150 million ‘members’ having a combined annual income of around 300-400 billion RMB. But instead of some board generalisations, here’s a slice of life […]
Suzhou, Jiangsu province
Photos from Suzhou, a large city (+10 million people) close to Shanghai. Taken during 2018’s ‘Golden Week’.
Zwolle in Shanghai
This vinyl record made it to Shanghai and that’s a miracle. It makes me wonder about how this music was composed around 250 years ago in a candle-lit room in Germany, and played over 60 years ago by an Englishman visiting a small city in post-war Netherlands. I wonder about the church that was built […]
Take a photo of your supermarket
This morning I watched Michael Palin visiting Shanghai in 1988. He just walks around the city of 12 million people and it’s fascinating. At three minutes there’s a car trying to get through a narrow street. At five minutes, a Chinese medicine store. At six, a Chinese duo speaking English and telling Palin they like […]
The difference between “wang” and “woef”
I’ve now taken two months of Mandarin classes, and last week our teacher taught us the words for cat (māo) and dog (gǒu) — and as a sort of fun extracurricular, she also explained the sounds they make: “miaow” and “wang” — or rather; how those sounds are perceived by Chinese. In the Netherlands, a […]
H is for Hawk review
Helen Macdonald has written poetry before and it shows. She writes not just about things seen, but also things felt — intuitive thoughts and feelings turned into words. Macdonald writes about taming a hard-to-handle goshawk as an escape from the world and the loss of her father — and even though the subject is very […]
Through the open doorway
(A version of this also appeared on China Daily.) I find debates on objective reality not in the least useful, because eventually you arrive at the question whether all of the truths on which we base ourselves are true. And the answer has to be yes. Even if the truths we hold true would be […]
China’s young identity market
(Originally posted on Seventy-Magazine.) It’s hard to imagine how different China was only fifty years ago. Chinese people largely dressed the same, ate the same food in cantinas and decorated their homes in similar fashion. Few brands were known, most originating from before the Japanese Occupation, the civil war and the tumultuous 50s, 60s and […]