Specimens in the middle of nowhere

We also stumbled on the Zhejiang Museum of Natural History (浙江自然博物馆) in Anji (安吉), expecting some tiny dusty museum in the middle of nowhere — the way rural things often are. (Anji is a county-level city that belongs to Huzhou (湖州) which is a Tier 3 city.) But no, this museum is massive, with a […]

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Out of the city and into other things

I visited a shopping mall downtown for the first time in like half a year, and I felt like so overwhelmed. The noise coming from stores, from greeters in front of stores, people laughing, people yelling into the phone or yelling for their kids. You queue to leave the highway, queue to enter the parking […]

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Rice with a bang

炸米花 (puffed rice) made on the street in Chuansha (川沙). Bring your own oil, sesame, and rice or corn, and put your bag in the queue. Great taste, especially when still warm. Crunchy and a tiny bit sweet. When the rice is almost ready, the pot-thingy opens with a big bang. Eva: “When we were […]

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Two fish and four hairy crabs

We’re eating our Christmas meal, two fish and four hairy crabs. Eva: “When I was young and some families married, we’d go to a restaurant, no hotel, and if they served crab, well such a family was really rich. But eating crab is too slow, takes too much time, so we first ate all the […]

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Trees of Shanghai

Two out of three trees in Shanghai are London plane trees. City planners call it a supertree. Its secret is its peculiar camouflage-patterned bark, which peels off in quick succession, allowing the tree to ‘clean’ itself from pollution. As a result, it has a high tolerance to pests and diseases, and captures smog and carbon […]

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How to survive in a Chinese company

I’ve now been working in Shanghai for over 5 years, and 14 months in a Chinese company using Mandarin as the main working language. So here I list the lessons I took from the past year — many things I should have done better, or things I’ve seen happen in other companies through stories from […]

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Cowboys in Zhangjiang

Outside the office, we see lots of people walking with big boxes of toys and go to see what’s happening. Three ‘cowboys’ are standing next to a pile of stuff like fake Legos, Barbies, and bikes, yelling if you register for a free creditcard you can pick a box, even a bike! Lots of people […]

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A place from fever dreams

China-Europe Street in Shanghai (中欧街). Everything is deserted apart from a Starbucks, and a couple having their wedding pics taken. The storefronts of Hermes, Prada, Chanel, and Gucci are fake. Outside are dozens of food stands though, more popular at night. This place would appear in some kind of fever dream. The statues, they’re of […]

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The edge of the edge

If Chuansha (川沙) — being outside of the outer ring — is on the edge of Shanghai, then this is the edge of the edge. No man’s land, just outside of Chuansha. Some live here in old buildings (but a dog barks me away), others grow crops, and others like me take a stroll. This […]

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Learning how to eat shrimp

Trying to learn how to eat shell-on shrimp using only chopsticks, the way many Chinese people can. Eva is showing me: “So you put the shrimp in your mouth, bite off the head, then the tail, then this…” (everything is happening inside her mouth so I cannot see the key part) “And done! You spit […]

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