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 […]

Cats miaow, dogs bark, and frogs croak. Other animals riffle their feathers (peacocks), glow (fireflies), or release scents (skunks). Or they write poetry and buy flowers and paint (humans). All to create responses from others, in order to survive or make life more pleasant. Well. Herring gulls are mostly auditory (cawing) and physical: they have […]

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 […]

It’s now almost seven weeks since Chinese New Year’s eve, which for us marked the start of suddenly being forced to work from home. A big change from seeing each other at the campus every day. Here are three things on how we’ve coped, maintaining our sense of sanity and sense of togetherness. 1) Sharing […]

(Originally written for GoEast Mandarin.) I’m nearly finished with HSK3, starting from zero Mandarin skills just over a year ago. Here are 9 things I learned about language and myself. 1 — Learn to enjoy learning Don’t aim to learn faster and faster. Learn to enjoy learning, then everything else will follow. 2 — Keep […]

I can count on one hand the times I’ve cooked the last year, living in Shanghai. Thanks to coupons on food delivery APP’s, not only is it often cheaper to have food delivered than to eat it at a restaurant, it’s difficult to make dishes yourself in your own kitchen and compete on price with […]

Arne was the 17-year-old who we all looked up to, always seen in our street wearing white sport clothes, black shades, and headphones attached to his MP3 player. You know, the ones that go behind your head, instead of two loose cables. Arne was taller, faster, stronger — cooler than us. We were still mere […]

Virtue signaling is just as offensive as what it calls out, empathy is often narcissism in disguise, and nostalgia isn’t different than fear of future. Freedom means you can be hateful as well as happy, and positive thinking can be just as dangerous as negative thinking. Humility is no different than arrogance, for the man […]

Nearly two weeks ago, 1.4 million students in Shanghai started online classes, including the 30 that I teach branding at the Shanghai Institute of Visual Arts. We had three weeks in February to prepare, which was plenty, but my real learning (as a teacher) started when the classes did. Maybe this can help other teachers […]

Don’t worry, no spoilers. H is for Hawk by Helen MacDonald “Hunting makes you animal, but the death of an animal makes you human.” Helen Macdonald has written poetry before and it shows. She writes not just about things seen, but also things felt — intuitive thoughts and feelings we all have. Yet she is […]

I expected a business book but this is so much more. And it’s surprising, right away from the first page. Phil Knight writes well, and it’s obvious a lot of time has been put into the story of Blue Ribbon and Nike. There are the narratives of financing the company, the legal cases, and the […]

“We must prepare for the possibility that we cannot give offline-classes for several months.” 24th January, Chinese New Year’s eve. We had worked out several scenarios at GoEast, ranging from asking students to wash their hands and checking their temperature, to actually closing the campuses — which seemed extreme at that time. But we prepared […]