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 […]

To teach marketing, and at the same time work in marketing, is something I’ve struggled with. In my marketing classes at SIVA (上海视觉艺术学院), everything I tell is simple, structured, and proven: Step A, B, C — a tidy, bullet-point reality. But when I look at what I do at my full-time job at GoEast, I’m […]

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 […]

18 months and 200 class hours ago I remember other students carrying HSK4 and HSK5 books, and I never imagined that I could once be at that level as well. But here’s to HSK4上 finished! I think the trick for me (as someone who was always bad with languages and started learning Mandarin with low […]

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 […]

Here’s just a reminder that media are entirely funded by clicks, and that outrage and fear are most profitable. Many outlets simply list all the horrible things happening in the world or horrible things that could happen. And any time we calm down, the media will need to get more extreme: more dividing, more fearful. […]

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 […]

‘The Gardener and the Carpenter’ should have been a long blogpost. I’m reminded why I dislike most non-fiction so much: every essay is being dragged out to 250 pages because then it can be sold as a full book. I’d be happy to buy these books for the same price if they’re shorter — but […]

Like everyone I’m overexposed to screens, so to practise Chinese characters on paper is surprisingly relaxing — absorbing in writing the right strokes to form radicals and components. Colorbooks for grown-ups have a similar stress relieving purpose. I don’t believe you can learn Hanzi with your eyes alone, as they come with such crual similarities […]