(Original interview in Dutch with MarketingTribune.) In conversation with MarketingTribune about our marketing and the impact of the corona crisis in China. What exactly does GoEast Mandarin do? GoEast Mandarin offers Chinese language lessons to foreigners in many variants: daily and business Mandarin, private and group lessons, from beginner to advanced. This from two campuses […]

Here’s a Dutch word. Heem. Similar to home, referring to the town or country you grew up in. Your dad’s music, the books your mom used to read to you. The trees under which you played, the streets and bridges you cycled on, your native language — the place you come to hide, the place […]

Today, while millions of students take their life-deciding college entrance exam (gaokao), I got my own experience of tests in China. The driving theory exam is provided to foreigners in English, but the absurd logic and translations are verbatim from the source material — so it’s a near requirement to memorise the specific answers to […]

Here are my mini views into Chinese life. Anecdotal, generalizing, not-special, etc etc — simply my observations of life in Suzhou and Shanghai. It’s what you’d never read in Western media. (To be updated over time.) 1 — Nearly every kid wears a special child smartwatch. They call their classmates and also their moms if […]

A younger more cynical me would have said it’s all fake. But these recently-built pagodas and temples are just as much part of today’s Chinese culture as the old ones are. No need to lament the original ones, now often gone. These new ones (all over China) find their way in the background of selfies […]

More than any city I’ve lived in, Shanghai unfolds the longer you stay in it — like reading the book for a second or third time. I keep returning to old spots and seeing new layers — literally — on the ground or ten floors above the streets. I now speak the language and I’m […]

(Originally written for GoEast Mandarin.) My hometown Hattem has around 11,000 citizens, with on the north the river the Ijssel, and on the south the biggest forest of the Netherlands, the Veluwe, teeming with life and fields thick of heather. There are two bus stops, with a bus every two hours — but not on […]

Today marks two years in China. All these days have stretched time and have given me much more than two years would justify. Highs and low, for which somehow I’m both grateful. Time slowly consumes you, until it wins. And yet it’s measured in experiences, not in years alone. Thank you China.

I keep reading about how our behavior and deeply rooted beliefs will be permanently changed by covid19. It’s worth pointing out that Shanghai is totally back to normal, except for some measures (schools closed, wearing facemasks, temperature checks). Kids & parents playing outside, people spending the money they saved in Feb/March on clothes and bubble […]

Lao Zhou sits on the courtesy seat of the subway with a bag of spinach and pork between his feet. For the past six decades, his life was lived around the creek and the buildings next to it. Sepia-tinted memories of a thousand bicycle rides alongside the water, girls, and French Phoenix trees — the […]