Hangzhou Tollbooths

This tollbooth in Lin’an is exactly what you’d expect a Chinese tollbooth to look like, isn’t it? Well, they don’t all look like this.

And they don’t all look like the viral photo of a huge traffic jam at a very wide tollbooth. That’s a photo taken during Chinese New Year, which I imagine causes the most and biggest traffic jams anywhere on the planet. Chinese New Year, known in China as Spring Festival, is when Chinese people all go back to their hometowns. (If you’re American, imagine Thanksgiving traffic, with about four times as many people involved.)

See below for more photos of tollbooths. The third one will surprise you! Continue reading Hangzhou Tollbooths

Hangzhou City Balcony

I arrived in Hangzhou in winter with a pair of breathable sneakers suited to the summery weather in Singapore, a pair of somewhat worn but comfortable heeled leather office shoes, and two other pairs of office shoes, one of which broke and the other of which didn’t fit as well as I thought. Since arriving, I’d acquired a pair of casual leather boots, but they didn’t fit me as well as I thought either. So Siqi took me shoe shopping.

There’s a fantastic underground outlet mall at a place called City Balcony, near the spherical Intercontinental Hotel and Hangzhou Grand Theater in Qianjiang New Town in Hangzhou. After thoroughly exploring the mall, we were blessed by the shoe gods with no fewer than four well-fitting pairs of shoes, one from Hush Puppies and three from Columbia; two for me and two for him. (Also, I took down the product number of another pair I wanted to buy from Hush Puppies, and bought those later, when the weather got warmer.)

By the time we finished our subterranean shopping, it was night. We emerged and enjoyed the lights across the river:

Continue reading Hangzhou City Balcony

How do you like your eggs?

If you’ve travel(l)ed at all, you are of course aware that things are different in different countries. Among the most obvious differences are buildings, clothes, language, and, above all, food. Ya gotta eat. For most tourists, eating in local restaurants is a normal part of the travel experience, but not everybody goes shopping in a local market or supermarket. Perhaps they should. It’s an experience full of unknown unknowns.

Who would have guessed that the sale of eggs in China could be so gloriously chaotic.

Continue reading How do you like your eggs?

West Lake Boat Trip

My boyfriend Siqi and I took his parents to Xi Hu (Hangzhou’s famous West Lake) to see the scenery. We walked around and also took a boat ride across. We saw the famous “three pools mirroring the moon”. Kinda.

I like mountains better than lakes, but the sky over the lake was gorgeous when the sun started going down! I’ve selected the best few photos out of the many many many I took.

Continue reading West Lake Boat Trip

Qiantang River Bridges of Hangzhou

When I lived in Singapore, I mostly walked and took trains and buses (sometimes taxis). Now I’m in a bigger city, one that has a big river cutting through the middle of it, and (at least for now) I’m traveling by car from one half to the other for work. That means I’m crossing lots of bridges. Since I’m not driving, I can take photos!

They look different depending on the time of day and weather. For example, the butterfly-shaped Jiubao Bridge (which China Daily claims is the ‘most beautiful’ bridge in the city), is white in the daytime but changes to a shifting rainbow at night. I’ve got gifs to prove it!

Continue reading Qiantang River Bridges of Hangzhou

Editorial Office of Intelligent Computing at Zhejiang Lab

On January 3, 2023, I started work at Zhejiang Lab at the editorial office of Intelligent Computing: A Science Partner Journal.

My role, as a native speaker of English with a background in Computer Science and experience in academic publishing, is to help strengthen the reputation of the journal.

Zhejiang Lab (之江实验室) is a research institute established jointly by the Zhejiang Provincial Government, Zhejiang University, and Alibaba Group in September, 2017. (The name of the province is 浙江. That is, it uses a different ‘Zhe’ but the same ‘jiang’; the name of the lab is sometimes spelled ‘Zhijiang’.)

Intelligent Computing, launched in 2022, is an English-language Open Access Science Partner Journal published in affiliation with Zhejiang Lab and distributed by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

Want to know what my workplace is like? See below for some maps and photos of the lab campus.

Continue reading Editorial Office of Intelligent Computing at Zhejiang Lab

Tea at Xixi Wetlands

I joined Zhejiang Lab just before Chinese New Year. I went with my department to Xixi National Wetland Park to drink tea (outside in the cold!) to celebrate.

The park is a huge green historical area with canals, ponds, old buildings, cobblestone pathways, and stone bridges. Its name means “west creek”. It has museums and shops and restaurants. We didn’t do a lot of exploring, but we bought some persimmons and nian gao (sticky starchy “year cake”) on our way to have tea and snacks, and we visited a longquan porcelain shop and climbed up a pagoda on our way back.

Continue reading Tea at Xixi Wetlands

Sisyphe Books

There are English quotes and signs throughout this shop in a mall in Hangzhou, but I’m not sure I saw any books in English. I saw bilingual editions of the Harry Potter books, and LOTS of recognizable books translated from English and other European languages. I enjoyed looking around and soaking up the quiet atmosphere of words in ink on paper.

So many books!

西西弗书店 (Xīxī fú shūdiàn)
Founded in 1993, this chain of over 360 shops in 80 cities across China is named after Sisyphus in the Greek myth. The website explains:

What Sisyphus is engaged in is a continuous movement, without purpose, without success or failure, good or evil. This action seems to be ineffective, but it contains awesome power. In the sense of stoicism, and with a touch of sacrifice, we hope to be the Sisyphus of the book and culture industry.

I suppose that’s inspiring. Selling physical books in physical shops in the 21st century does seem like a thankless task, though Barnes & Noble seems to have come back from the brink.

Lin Feng Mountain

On New Year’s Eve, my boyfriend Siqi drove us up one of the tea mountains just outside of Hangzhou. We visited a lookout tower, marveled at patches of melting snow, and watched a magical sunset.

Having relocated from Singapore where it never gets cold, I have mixed feelings about winter, but I love living in a place surrounded by beautiful mountains!

See below for the best of the photos I took with my smartphone.

Continue reading Lin Feng Mountain

What’s the best translation of Demons (aka Devils aka The Possessed)?

There are five in-print translations of Demons, seven in total.

  1. 1914 – Constance Garnett (various publishers)
  2. 1953 – David Magarshack (Penguin)
  3. 1962 – Andrew R. MacAndrew (Signet)
  4. 1992 – Michael R. Katz (Oxford)
  5. 1994 – Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (Everyman’s Library, Vintage)
  6. 2008 – Robert A. Maguire (Penguin)
  7. 2017 – Roger Cockrell (Alma)

It took a while to figure out how many there were because they’re not all called Demons. Why not?

Continue reading What’s the best translation of Demons (aka Devils aka The Possessed)?