Villages above the clouds in Zhejiang

We visited two villages today, Chenjiapu (陈家铺) and Xikeng (西坑). Both are north of Songyang (松阳) and ‘touristified’ (for instance, Chenjiapu has a ‘design’ hotel & book store), but you can still see the original village in between the cafes & hotels, with lots of houses made of rammed earth (夯土).

Chenjiapu (陈家铺)

The freedom to blast fireworks, that’s one thing big cities don’t have.

Remnants of the slogan ‘吉祥如意’ (May all your dreams come true).

Xikeng (西坑)

The temple from the outside…

… and inside.

Goodbye to Guanyin

It’s a Saturday morning, and we’re in a taxi on the way to the airport. My clothes cling to my body and already reek of sweat, and that’s even before our 12-hour flight has started. Today I woke up at 5:30 to get up early and throw away the last furniture and items we used […]

June 30, 2026

Half a Jin, Eight Liang

Learning Chinese, or any language, makes you more aware of language in general. And one thing that surprised me is that, despite Mandarin being so different from my mother tongue (Dutch), both languages reach for the same units when weighing things: the kilogram (公斤, gōngjīn) and the half-kilogram (斤, jīn). It’s a small thing, but […]

June 24, 2026

Cake and Timepieces

There are multiple ways to define Shanghai. There’s the more modern version, with beautiful lanes full of expensive yoga studios or artisan coffee shops, lined with the London Plane Tree (法国梧桐) and the Wukang Mansion (武康大楼), and renovated parks like the North Bund (北外滩) and West Bund (西岸). There’s also the Shanghai as the international […]

June 23, 2026

A candle in Minnesota

It’s Wednesday morning, and I’m in Saint Paul, Minnesota, attending the morning mass at St. Bernard’s church. It’s about twenty years since I last attended a mass, and the first time I’ve ever done so voluntarily. I’m sure I’m drawn to this church near my Airbnb, compelled to go in, but I find it hard […]

June 14, 2026