Year: 2025

How to Train Your Dragon (2010)

I didn’t see this 2010 movie for the first time until 2014, and I’m not sure I fully appreciated it at the time. It is probably one of my top five favorite movies ever.

It has a dragon who is unbelievably powerful and cool but also catlike, silly, and adorable; it has a geeky underdog protagonist with a gratifying self-actualization plot; it has a romantic subplot featuring an immensely capable and hardworking girl; it has an awesome soundtrack; and it has the best aerial joyrides!

Siqi put in the DVD of HTTYD to test our new living room audio setup: he connected a new (used) pair of speakers behind the sofa, so now our system is 5.1 instead of 3.1. Pretty awesome! 🙂

Five tigers Chinese inside-painted glass ball

Item description / significance
This is an inside-painted (inner-painted, reverse painted) glass ball depicting five tigers.

Bought where
in China on Xianyu, the Chinese second-hand marketplace app (from a seller in Shijiazhuang, Hebei Province, northern China)

Age and origin
Painted in 1992, according to the inscription, probably Hengshui, Hebei Province, in northern China

What I like about it
The facial expression of the tiger looking at the viewer is what sold me! I also like the fact that there are five tigers, and one is white. And of course, the quality of the painting (the level of detail) is high.

See below for photos of this sphere, including photos from the seller.

Continue reading Five tigers Chinese inside-painted glass ball

Exposed (2016)

This was advertised as a Keanu Reeves movie, but he’s not really the main character. The movie’s original title, “Daughter of God,” better reflects the fact that the movie is mainly about a young Catholic Spanish-speaking woman who has a strange experience late at night on a subway platform and starts seeing angels.

The movie turns out to be about rape and child abuse, not, as the standard summary claims, “police corruption.” So it was very heavy, with one particularly disturbing scene. You could argue that the movie has a happy ending, but the net effect of watching this movie was definitely the opposite of happiness. I would unwatch it if I could.

Incidentally, this movie is an interesting case of the use of unreliable narration in film. If it weren’t so disturbing, I’d want to watch it again and look for clues that what we’re shown initially isn’t what happened. It’s clever. But I hate the story.

Journey to the West Chinese inside-painted glass ball

Item description / significance
This is an inner painted (inside painted, reverse painted) glass ball depicting the character of Monkey from the beloved Chinese classic Journey to the West. It is an adaptation of one of the “Havoc in Heaven” series of 8 paintings by Liu Jiyou. In this painting, Monkey has escaped from a furnace.

Bought where
in China on Xianyu, the Chinese second-hand marketplace app (from a seller in Nanjing, Jiangsu, eastern China)

Age and origin
Painted in 1996, according to the inscription, probably Hengshui, Hebei Province, in northern China

What I like about it
What attracted me is the quality of the painting (the level of detail)—and the low price, to be honest! Now that I am more familiar with the Liu Jiyou paintings, I like it more than I did originally.

Other notes
The seller also sent a tassel with an inside-painted hulu gourd on a tassel:

See below for information about the inscription and the painting this adaptation was based on, as well as photos of the sphere, including photos from the seller.

Continue reading Journey to the West Chinese inside-painted glass ball

12 Chinese zodiac animals inside-painted glass ball

Item description / significance
This is an inside-painted (inner-painted, reverse painted) glass ball depicting the 12 animals of the Chinese zodiac (rat, ox, tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake, horse, goat, monkey, rooster, dog, pig).

Bought where
in China on Xianyu, the Chinese second-hand marketplace app (from a seller in Yingkou, Liaoning, northeast China)

Age and origin
Painted in 1996, according to the inscription, probably Hengshui, Hebei Province, in northern China

What I like about it
What attracted me is that the quality of the painting (the level of detail) is high, and the fact that the subject matter is the 12 zodiac animals. Many inside-painted balls are similar to each other (there are lots depicting the Qingming festival, for example), but this is one of only two I have ever found of the zodiac animals, and the other one is not, shall we say, an attractive quality level. (See for yourself.)

See below for information about the inscription, the Chinese characters that accompany the animals, and photos of this sphere, including photos from the seller.

Continue reading 12 Chinese zodiac animals inside-painted glass ball

Big Qingming Festival Chinese inside-painted glass ball

Item description / significance
This is an inside-painted (inner-painted, reverse painted) glass ball depicting an adaptation of the Song dynasty handscroll painting “Along the River During the Qingming Festival.”

Bought where
in China on Xianyu, the Chinese second-hand marketplace app (from a seller in Beijing)

Age and origin
Painted in 2000, according to the inscription, probably in Hengshui, Hebei Province, in northern China

What I like about it
What attracted me is that the quality of the painting (the level of detail) is high. Also, the seller discounted the price, haha. But, get this: I have another inside-painted glass ball depicting this same scroll, and it was painted by the same guy!!! This one was painted 8 years later, has more detail, and (I think) is bigger.

See below for more photos of this sphere and the other one I bought before, photos from the seller, and photos of other spherical renditions of this painting.

Continue reading Big Qingming Festival Chinese inside-painted glass ball

Two wood bears

Item description / significance
These are two small painted carved wooden bears, one white, one black.

Both were described as hand-carved, but I’m a little suspicious about that. The listing for the white bear said it’s made from beechwood.

Bought where
in China on Xianyu, the Chinese second-hand marketplace app

Age and origin
New!

What I like about them
The lifelike poses. I’m not an expert on bears, and these are a little abstract, but they still seem to contain an accurate kind of bear spirit somehow. These bears seem friendly and curious. (I would not approach a “friendly and curious” bear in real life!)

Other notes

So apparently now I have a collection of 3 wooden bears, including the Japanese bear I bought in Longquan, Zhejiang, China.

See below for more photos of these two, including photos from the sellers.

Continue reading Two wood bears

Notable vehicles (Q1 2025)

Ever since arriving in Hangzhou in December 2022, I’ve been noticing stuff about cars here, and I’ve been meaning to share my observations.

Therefore, here are some facts about the automotive landscape in China (especially Hangzhou):

In addition to imported vehicles and vehicles produced in cooperation with foreign automakers, China has a lot of domestically produced car brands. I’d heard of them because I edited news articles for China Knowledge, an English-language news portal offering business, financial, and real-estate news about China. But to see all the different designs in person is dizzying. Never knew there could be so many different shapes of taillights. (LEDs have changed the world.)

There are “cars” on the road that are tiny, some with only three wheels. These glorified golf carts are mysteriously ubiquitous despite not being road legal. (Apparently, they have recently been officially banned in Beijing.)

Some courier vehicles have no driver. These may start to replace the much more numerous three-wheeled courier vehicles that do have drivers. (But who unloads them, I want to know??? Seems like you’ve still got a last-mile problem.)

There are many consumer model vehicles with AI self-driving features. “Already today, a quarter of all newly registered vehicles in the Chinese market are equipped with a Level 2 driving system for highway scenarios.”

There are often mechanical shelves for cars in underground parking garages to increase capacity. (They are super annoying to park in because you have to back in, and you have to do it very precisely, because there’s only about 6 inches of space on either side of the car. Miss and you damage your tire or rim—happened to Siqi twice.)

There are no vanity license plates, but sometimes the license plate kinda spells something by accident. My brain constantly wants the alphanumeric inscriptions to be real words; they’re usually not. Electric and hybrid cars have green/white license plates, whereas petrol cars have blue license plates. There are a lot of EVs in Hangzhou, maybe 20%-30%. (Here’s a 2022 report with some statistics.)

The highway infrastructure continually amazes me. It’s new, it’s massive, and from what I’ve seen, there’s no graffiti.

Intrigued? See below for 25 photos of vehicles and vehicle infrastructure.

Continue reading Notable vehicles (Q1 2025)