It is a book by Frederick Forsyth, but it is no ‘The Day of the Jackal’. Some parts are lecturing, some parts feel more like a summary rather than fiction, and other parts are so testostorone drenched that it feels like I’m reading a script of a Jason Stratham or Sylvester Stalone movie. That said, […]

We tried to visit the 贺九岭 temple in Cangshu (藏书) Suzhou (famous for its lamb meat), but it was closed. Because of covid? Because of it being Saturday? Not sure, but we couldn’t go in to burn some incense. Next to it is a mountain though. Eva decided to stay in the air-conditioned car but […]

The many hairy crab fishers of Yangchenghu (阳澄湖) in Suzhou — or at least their boats. Casually refueling their jerry cans while smoking. It’s late in the crab season and there aren’t any big ones left — just “June yellow” (六月黄), the younglings with a thin shell, and lots of yellow meat (tomalley). In the […]

This book isn’t easy for readers for who English is a second language (especially the middle part, or the religious ramblings), but 63 years after being published, it still feels like an important and relevant book. Science-fiction nowadays is usually about some rebellious A.I., but here it’s about nuclear warfare and humanity’s inevitable quest for […]

Shenqiaocun (沈桥村) on the edge of Suzhou is a little town caught between two highways. I like the scenery, but Eva doesn’t. We ask a guy who walks passed us what life is like: “外地人多，偷东西呀” (Lots of non-local people, steal stuff.) Lots of the house owners don’t live here anymore and rent their houses to […]

Before getting off work last Tuesday, I was informed we have a close contact in our building and that we need to be locked down again. So I immediately bought some fresh food, and brought coffee & books from the office (as many things as I could carry), because although our compound says we just […]

Foreigners often lament the loss of old areas in Shanghai (or anywhere in China) — most notably Laoximen — but we do so with a luxury that many Chinese people don’t have. We’d like these old buildings to stay around for us to look at and understand better the China of old, and perhaps the […]

Recently, my friend’s mom has been gravely ill, so last Saturday I decided to burn some incense at a temple, thirty kilometers outside of Suzhou (太平禅寺 in Taiping Town). And all the time while doing this, I wasn’t sure whether I actually believed this works, but I also wasn’t sure whether that mattered or not. […]

I’ve done over 600 class hours learning Mandarin Chinese, the vast majority with teachers from GoEast, but also with several from other schools, freelance teachers, or simply Chinese people functioning as teacher but without the proper education for it. Throughout these lessons, I’ve been making notes about my learning observations and my relationship with teachers. […]

Before moving to Shanghai in 2018, I went through a dozen books about China to prepare myself. Several of those books belonged to the genre of ‘Westerners in China who write a book about their friends’, such as ‘Street of Eternal Happiness’ (Rob Schmitz), ‘Wish Lanterns’ (Alec Ash), and ‘Young China’ (Zak Dychtwald). It’s an […]