Three Tips for Visiting Singapore
It WAS NOT a mistake to spend the last two weeks in Singapore, reconnecting with a city that I love. 🇸🇬🥰
But it WAS a mistake to wait until the end of my trip to post photos. Thank you to everyone who could make it for a reunion. And sorry to those I missed, I physically couldn’t squeeze in one more thing!
3 key points I’m glad I remembered:
1️⃣ Don’t be in a rush. You’re on the equator.
2️⃣ Don’t eat spicy laksa wearing anything white.
3️⃣ Dry between your toes. This place is fecund.
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250,000 Downloads
I want to take this opportunity to mark the halfway point of Season 03 of the Mosaic of China podcast, and to celebrate surpassing 250,000 downloads since the project’s launch in 2019.
Thank you to all fifteen guests of the season so far, I look forward to releasing the next fifteen episodes over the coming weeks and months ahead. And thank you to each and every listener to the show, it has been my pleasure to be part of your cohort.
To mark the occasion, I’ve released a special bonus episode of the show featuring the one and only Denny Newell. To listen, search for 'Mosaic of China' on your favourite podcasting platform, or head to: https://mosaicofchina.com/season-03-bonus-codependency.
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Eighteen Days in California
The theme of our California trip has been: over-stimulation.
We spent most of 2022 under a bit of a cloud. Despite everything, we’ve managed to keep happy for the most part. But maybe it’s been the kind of happiness that requires a lot of effort, and a sprinkling of self-delusion. So to be thrust out into the elements of California has been an assault to the senses. Speaking for myself, people would have either met an excited bouncing clown (usually soaked in gin, let’s be honest), or a confused mole-man who has recently been introduced to society and clearly needs to do more work on their social skills. But it has been our mission to jam in as much into the last three weeks as we have lacked these last three years. Mission accomplished.
We now begin our return to Shanghai. And we have been re-introduced to a feeling that we have missed these last few years: being happy to come back to our home. We live a comfortable, privileged life and we enjoy the adventure of being in a place that challenges us every single day. But we also know what we are missing by living on the other side of the world to so many family and friends. So a massive thank you to everyone who we met for a brief time on this trip. I am one happy clown/mole-man. 🤡🐀
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The Great Escape
It’s been almost 3 years, but we’ve finally made The Great Escape from mainland China! We still can’t believe it’s real. 🤩
We’re spending a week in Hong Kong to decompress, before heading on to California for Christmas and New Year. We’ll be back to Shanghai in January, and if everything goes to plan we hope to do a similar trip to Europe next Summer. 🤞
The first adjustment is definitely the language. It feels bizarre not to be surrounded by Mandarin, and I need to stop reflexively saying ‘ni hao’ and ‘xiexie’. And from now on I need to remember not to curse so brazenly, lest I receive a well-deserved slap in the face.
On second thoughts, who cares? SLAP ME HONG KONG, WE’RE BACK!!! 🇭🇰💚
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Onwards and Upwards
I swear I used to be 177cm tall. But these days I’m a solid 176. 🤷♂️
This won’t do. My life has shrunk enough over the last 3 years, I refuse to let the same thing happen to my height. 😡
So I got myself a fresh new haircut, and now I’m up to 178. 🙌
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Just Call Me Master
Writing a postgraduate dissertation about modern China - as a foreigner, living in China, at a Chinese university - isn’t exactly easy these days. But creativity will always find a way.
I’m happy to have threaded the needle, and have finally received my Masters in Philosophy. Big thanks go to my supervisor, my professors, and everyone in the School of Humanities at Shanghai Jiao Tong University.👨🎓🎊
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I’m So Sorry, Bugs Bunny
As part of a Mosaic of China podcast recording in Chengdu back in early March 2022, I was told by my delightful guest that 300 million rabbit heads are eaten in Sichuan Province every year. So I figured… I should at least try it once.
I’m so sorry, Bugs Bunny. 😵🐰
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The Mosaic of China Podcast Enters its Third Season
Like many of us in Shanghai, I’ve been feeling thoroughly displeased for the last few months. But I’ve decided that it’s time to come out of mourning for ‘life before COVID-Zero’ and to start living again. Or at least to enjoy whatever window of freedom we have been granted for this moment.
Luckily, I found 200 people who felt the same way, and we gathered in Shanghai to celebrate the Season 03 launch of the Mosaic of China podcast. With a fantastic slate of 30 new guests coming up over the next 30 weeks, this season is the reminder we all needed that there are still some amazing people under our noses, representing 30 unique perspectives on what it’s like to live and work in China. A true Mosaic.
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An Unexplored Corner of Yunnan Province
We explored a part of Yunnan Province that’s not often visited by international tourists. In all eight years of living in mainland China, we’ve never heard stunned exclamations of “老外! [lǎowài - foreigner]” as often as in the last six days. 😮😯
Things to watch out for in the vid:
👨🍳 Sexy butcher
🪷 Lotus season in Yunnan
🇫🇷 French Indochina railway architecture
🧺 Massive fishing basket
🛕 China’s answer to Gaudi
🐴 Working horses, in a village without cars
⛩ The 2nd-largest Confucian temple in China
🍚 Red rice, which is only grown in this region
🇲🇳 Mongolian village 2000km south of Mongolia
👨✈️ Communist cosplay
🐘 ‘Elephant Tusk’ local vegetable
👩🌾 The Hani, one of 25 Yunnan ethnic minorities
💦 Slow-motion splashing
👨🍳 Did I mention the sexy butcher?
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The Humanising Effect of the Well-timed Selfie
I’m posting this photo from an excursion I took in South-West China just yesterday. Before raising my camera, the people on this tourist bus were keeping to themselves. Afterwards, the whole bus erupted into joyful waves and shouts of “hello” in English.
Yes, the timing of this photo coincides with the Chinese government’s belligerent response to Pelosi’s provocative touchdown in Taiwan. Yes, there is a strand of disgusting ugly nationalism that is on the ascendancy in China, just as it is in many other parts of the world. But I’m posting this for the simple purpose to remind everyone that we should never equate a regime to its people. And we should never let the shrill voices of populists and isolationists deafen us to the humanity of others.
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Alamak! SPR RIP 2006-2022
Alamak! Today marks the end of my status as a Singapore Permanent Resident. SPR RIP 2006-2022. 🇸🇬🙏
Filing my final paperwork here at the Singapore Consulate in Shanghai, I couldn’t help but reminisce about what this status has meant to me over the years. Buying and selling two properties, setting up two companies, getting a driving license, employing three domestic workers, raising two dogs, the list goes on.
I haven’t lived there since 2012, but I will always consider Singapore to be a home from home. I will always have unquenchable cravings for mee siam, nasi padang, roti prata and ais kacang. And I will always remember the meanings of MRT, ERP, CBD, PIE, HDB, PAP, LTA, and - now most importantly - CPF.
As a fitting accompaniment to this event, Shanghai offered up a blazing 39℃ afternoon. So I marked the occasion with a sweaty walk home in the sun, a smile on my face and a twinkle in my eye.
Wa seng zao liao! See you again soon, Singapore.
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The Stars are Out
At last some positive news, China's newly-updated COVID-19 Control Protocol has removed the * on our ‘Green Arrow Codes’.
Theoretically, this means that travel will become unrestricted within the Chinese mainland. Until now, the * has denoted that you have been in a ‘Medium Risk Area’, which curtails your ability to travel to certain places. At one point earlier this year, I had collected three of them, and needed to quickly return home to Shanghai before my luck ran out.
Let’s see how this plays out, since the surprise announcement just came out today, and it might take a while for certain Provinces to change their policies. But for now, it’s a small step in the right direction.
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Surly Teenagers in a Mall
I’m posing like a surly teenager whose parents have allowed them to go to the local mall. Because that’s exactly how it feels like to be in Shanghai right now. We’ve been granted more freedom, but we still don’t have any agency, and there still isn’t much to do. So you end up mainly shuffling around like listless teenagers, bemoaning authority figures and their stupid rules. Some of our friends keep getting ‘grounded’ at home, and the same might happen to us, for reasons our teenage brains can’t process. It’s, like, so unfair.
So when people ask me how I’m doing, I usually find myself answering just like a teenager. I mumble something about being ‘OK’, while it’s quite clear that I’m being antisocial, short-tempered and petulant. But putting one foot after the other and ‘getting on with it’ is how I survived my teenage years, and that’s what I’m doing now. It’s an awkward phase I’m going through.
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An Impressive but Unsustainable Spectacle
So we’ve received a ticket which allows one person per household outside our residential compound for a few hours each day. And what greets us there is a facsimile of normal life. The streets are beginning to fill with people, one or two shops have started to open, and makeshift hair salons have popped up on every other corner. Back at home, things are also looking a little closer to normal. As supplies have started to become easier to obtain, we’ve slowly been emptying the fridge of ‘essentials’ and letting it fall back into its natural state: as a receptacle for alcohol mixers and neglected jars of condiments.
It feels like we’re finally coming to the end of our Shanghai lockdown story. When the dust has completely settled on the world’s response to the pandemic, we can have a grand debate about the chaos of freedom versus the tyranny of protection. But right now, the key verdict on the last three months is that China remains in zero-rush to relax its zero-COVID policy, exhibiting zero-interest in reintegrating into the rest of the world. So international folks will continue having a tough time trying to keep one foot in China and the other elsewhere. At this point we’re all Jean-Claude Van-Damme doing the splits on two slowly diverging Volvo trucks. An impressive spectacle, but not one that can be sustained forever.
For the last few weeks, I’ve been focusing most of my creative energy on writing these Shanghai updates for Denny and me. I’ve taken pains to strike a personal and balanced tone, being truthful to our own experience while trying not to misrepresent the experiences of others. This phase is now coming to an end, and I will soon pivot back to my usual creative outlet of producing the Mosaic of China podcast. I’m much more comfortable being a conduit for other people’s voices rather than dominating the full bandwidth with my own. But what will remain constant are the details about life in China that you usually can’t find anywhere else. Thank you for following our lockdown story. Hopefully from now on I’ll be back to posting with a little more variety, a little less frequency, and a lot less intensity.
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All the Feline Feels
You may have heard reports that Shanghai has ‘opened up’ following its harsh citywide lockdown. Let me quickly explain what this means.
There is a patchwork quilt of realities. Some lucky people have indeed already received 临时出入证 (temporary exit/entry passes), allowing them to leave their compounds, usually for a short time once a day. Others have been allowed out, only for that permission to be immediately revoked once some unknown local official begins to feel nervous about the optics of people exercising their right to freedom. And for residents whose compounds remain in total lockdown, they have the exotic torture of being congratulated on their freedom while sitting under continued house arrest.
In our case, the local neighbourhood committee has opened the lock on our gate, but has not removed it. So it continues to hang ominously, silently proclaiming: “We can easily lock you up again, whenever we want”. We haven’t received any official passes, so our notion of freedom is entirely synthetic. But we took the chance to take an unofficial walk around the block, and the cat in the window of this local pet-shop sums up our emotional longing all too accurately.
The logical interpretation of an open lock is that it’s a ‘hopeful sign’. Maybe it is, and maybe we will receive our official 临时出入证 soon. With no residents in our compound testing positive for COVID-19 in all 64 days of lockdown, we’ve been conditioned to not seeing any correlation between hopeful signs and happy outcomes. And for the time being, shops, restaurants, and even parks all remain closed. So the best case scenario is that we can visit this cat through the glass again tomorrow. 🐈🪟
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