The last mosque in Suzhou. Before 1949 there were over ten mosques in the city. Among small restaurants and butchers, Taipingfang 太平坊 was restored in 2018 — made anew and more turquoise — and it now offers a spot to pray for local and visiting Muslims. Shifu gave us a tour, even though non-muslims aren’t […]
三年在中国，我回到起点。街道变了一点儿，我变了更多。我现在可以看懂标志而能和中国人沟通。 Three years in China. The street changes, but not as fast as me. Taikang Road next to Tianzifang, for me the starting point in Shanghai. I try to go back once a year, even though now it’s far from my home and work.
She looks south and seawards and always. Putuo Shan is the dojo for Guanyin Bodhisattva. She’s originally the patron saint of seafarers, but she now gives an audience to anyone who comes with wishes. And listen she does. The three characters that make up her Chinese name (观世音 Guānshìyīn) literally means ‘the one who hears […]
In Chinese they describe it as “净化心灵”, meaning ‘purify the soul’. We stayed on the farm ‘椿庭朴门’ nor far from Shanghai, with 大熊 (Big Bear) and his wife Moqi & their two daughters. The place is far from a typical Chinese rural farm. Here, everything is made from bright wood bend into various shapes, fit […]
The new home. 同和, two characters meaning ‘harmoniously together’. It’s the international compound next to Fudan University, even though there are barely international students now. It’s also near GoEast Mandarin and surrounded by dozens of cheap restaurants that are rather hit or miss. I love this part of Yangpu, it’s like a small village surrounded […]
A year ago, Shanghai was on lockdown. Everything closed except a few supermarkets with empty shelves. The humid cold seeped into our bones, along with the fear of the unknown virus. All the stories are surfacing now. A friend who lived in the Yangpu district had the first corona case in Yangpu reported in their […]
“14:00 this Sunday?” someone asks in the WeChat group. Our chat is named ‘五人小场群Wǔ rén xiǎo chǎng qún’ (Five people small field group) and holds 36 guys from the neighborhood, including me. We play football without a schedule, usually weekly. Someone mentions a time, and critical mass (ten or more) either does or doesn’t form. […]
When I search for tier-3 or tier-4 cities on Google or Baidu, I’m always looking at the same kind of photos: grey skies above a wide river, a park with leafless trees, and maybe an aerial photo of a harbor or monotone residential area. And other hits on Google would be a blog from a […]
Lots has been written on apps like WeChat or Tmall, but rarely articles zoom in on details. I’ll pick four functions here showing how well everything works together. These apps are not thrilling, but extremely functional. Mind you, these functions are used daily — not just by people handy with phones but most people between […]
Photography for GoEast Mandarin, an online/offline Chinese language school based in Shanghai, China. All colleagues photographed, as well as some students and notebooks.
