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!

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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.

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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.

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Books I read in 2022

For “best book of 2022”, I choose Uncle Tungsten by Oliver Sacks.

(It’s actually the end of 2024 now, so I don’t remember all 45 of the books I read in 2022 well enough to do a fair comparison. I’m choosing this one by Sacks because it’s always a pleasure to read his stuff, and I hadn’t read this one before.)

Other books I really enjoyed in 2022, according to the annotations in my log, include all six of Jane Austen’s novels, Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton, the entire Dragonwatch series by Brandon Mull, and Never Split the Difference by Chriss Voss with Tahl Raz.

See below for a complete list, book cover thumbnails, and thoughts on the quantity, format, and content of the books I read in 2024.

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Movies watched in 2022

I watched a ton of movies in 2022!

Whyyyy?

Partly it’s that I was having fun buying DVDs from a junk dealer in Chinatown for SG$1 each and arranging them on the massive new shelf in my living room—and thus of course also wanted to watch them.

The living room that was. (The shelves and movies are in storage now. Sigh.)

Partly it’s that watching a movie every Saturday online with my boyfriend Siqi was an important part of our long-distance relationship. (In December, I moved to China, so now we can actually watch movies together on the same sofa!)

See below for top recommendations and notes on some of the other movies I watched.

It’s not a complete list because I don’t remember much about some of them. It’s actually 2025 now, so these are movies I watched 2-3 years ago. If I don’t remember them, that’s why. Or maybe they’re just not that memorable. Or both.

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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.

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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?

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Hello, Hangzhou!

On December 12, 2022, I got on a plane (for the first time since January 2020) to fly from Singapore to Hangzhou, China, where I will be working at Zhejiang Lab.

I quarantined comfortably for 5 full days in central Hangzhou at the Merchant Marco Hotel. See below for photos of the hotel and the 17 meals I ate while I was there.

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What’s the best translation of The Nine Cloud Dream?

I’ve now read this book three times. I’ve read the 2019 Fenkl translation twice and the 1922 Gale translation once. I haven’t read the out-of-print 1974 Rutt translation. The Fenkl translation is more faithful to the original text, but the Gale translation is okay. For more information on all three translations, visit We Love Translations: World Literature in English:

» What’s the best translation of The Nine Cloud Dream?

See below for a list of characters in The Nine Cloud Dream.

I’ve given the character names as spelled by Fenkl and Gale and also the English meanings as given by Fenkl and Gale. Fenkl uses Chinese-style names using archaic-feel Wade-Giles romanization and Gale uses Korean-style names mixed with English names. I’m pretty sure Fenkl is using the same names that Rutt used.

(Scholars have determined that the original was written in classical Chinese, not Korean Hangul, but I think Gale was using a Hangul source text.)

Beware spoilers! Knowing who the characters are is a bit like knowing the plot.

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