Notes from a small Chinese town — Yongkang, Zhejiang — written in English: building, driving, and daily life beyond the big cities.
I took this photo on a business trip to Russia. The whole side of an apartment building, covered top to bottom in air conditioning units — a hundred of them, maybe more. No balconies on that side. No windows you could climb out of. And I remember standing there thinking: how did anyone get these
Our estate started selling in 2008 — the year of the Beijing Olympics. My family moved in a year later, in 2009. The estate is mostly five- and six-storey buildings; only three towers are above eight floors, and we happen to live in one of them. So we have an elevator. And let me tell
Saw this in our village the other day — a black Mercedes-Benz S500 4MATIC, parked in a tiny alley between two old houses. The car itself is not surprising anymore; you see nice ones in our county town sometimes. But the license plate stopped me: 浙G·88888. Five eights in a row. I had to take
White powdery stains appeared on our new bricks — they wipe off like dust. Harmless, or a warning? Here is what I learned.