I need to take back what I said the other day – about never wanting to live in smoggy Beijing. For a change, this week I would need go to the capital to breath properly. Right now air pollution in Shanghai has gone off the charts, for the [more]

While having dinner at a Shanghai hotpot restaurant last night I couldn’t help but take a paparazzi shot of this couple (sorry guys): She is watching a movie on the iPad (next to the bowl with the salad), he is doing whatever on his iPhone. The perfect date, [more]

Unless someone/something forces me so, I would never move to Beijing. I consider this city as unhuman and unliveable. Needless to say why: The traffic + the air. Friends in Beijing keep calling me ignorant and refer to the intellectual scene and the cozy hutong bars. They are [more]

“What’s life like in Shanghai?” I am often asked by friends in Europe. It’s everything at the same time: fast-forward and backwards, exciting and depressing. It’s hard to nail it. And much easier to tell with pictures. I really like “Shanghai Blink”, a new coffee table book by [more]

I’d like to share two reads that give a quite depressing insight on corruption in China. Since Xi Jinping took over, the government has been launching a nationwide campaign against corruption that, on the surface, seems to be effective: Media reported that luxury sales dropped and posh restaurants [more]

Another blog about malls. But then again, Asians really take the whole concept of a shopping to the next level. Yesterday I came back from a trip along the coast of Myanmar where I barely saw any people for a week. I made a 24-hour-stop in Bangkok and [more]

And here we are. What a gift for the Chinese propaganda ministry. State television CCTV explains with pleasure why Merkel being a “Handykanzlerin” makes her an easy target for the NSA. China Daily has to say: […] Chinese experts said the disclosure shows the United States is making the most of its intelligence capabilities to secure its supremacy in the world, and the scandal will weaken its global credibility. […] Shi Yinhong, a senior expert on US studies at Renmin University of China, said, “Perceivingitself as a superpower, the US holds the arrogant attitude that it is not a big deal to steal othercountries’ information”. […] Guo Xiangang, vicepresident of the China Institute of International Studies, said Washington […] will never give up surveillance of other countries, including its allies. […]

Winter is coming soon and that means “super smog” is back in Beijing. This picture was taken on the Tiananmen Square in Beijing, probably recently. I don’t know the time and photographer, found it today here.

I wouldn’t be surprised if top party officials at Beijing’s government headquarter Zhongnanhai are toasting each other these days with ridiculously expensive French wine over the fact that Merkel’s phone has been bugged by the NSA. A decent bit of Schadenfreude should be involved: The more international media [more]

I live in downtown Shanghai. In the past two years that I’ve been here I get the feeling my neighborhood is slowly turning into one single luxury shopping mall with a couple of luxury hotels, a streets and office/resident blocks in between. Within a circle of three kilometers [more]

There is a certain coolness about Chinese grannies that I’ve always admired. These Shanghainese ladies for example gang up in my neighborhood every day – they just sit, drink tea, sit, play mahjong, chat and sit. After dinner they go a public square and dance to old Chinese folk [more]

Going to North Korea for holidays has become fairly popular in China these days. I guess for many Chinese, it’s a bit like visiting a cousin in prison who you were really close with but at one point winded up on the wrong path in life: You kinda [more]