Making a move

Much has happened since I made the move to go freelance. I’m continuing to write about life in China on my new blog, please sign up if you’d like to continue to receive my blog posts. Scroll down and leave your email address in the ‘subscribe’ box.

Apart from moving blogs, I’m also about to move into my new old house. The renovation is almost finished. More about life in a Chinese village can also be found on the WenLan blog.

Wish you all a good close to this strange year, and much health and happiness in 2021.

New entrepreneurial (ad)ventures

Ventures? Yes, I’m now officially an entrepreneur, in China!

Change and chance

I’m not sure if I mentioned this before on this blog, but I have a favourite definition of crisis:

The moment that change becomes inevitable

I think we can safely say that a global pandemic is a crisis. The Covid-19 situation has brought interesting perceptions, and not all of them were bad, such as the realization that reduced travel and consumption is doing a whole lot of good for the planet.

Personally, I learned a lot about what I’m made of. I stepped up to the challenge at hand and became the centre point for the international community of Kunming, providing fact-checked information on GoKunming.

Another big result of this particular crisis was that it offered a chance to reflect on my life in China. Until Spring Festival – the moment that China effectively went into lockdown – I was working my head off for the Best of Kunming awards and all the other ongoing tasks that I took on since becoming editor-in-chief in the previous summer. All of that hectic activity ground to halt end of January.

This has resulted in some profound realizations and dramatic changes. My last job has been an amazing opportunity to learn, to move into a direction that I like (writing!) and to get to know a lot of interesting people in Yunnan, many of whom have become close friends.

But, in other ways the job held me back. No time to study Chinese, no time to enjoy the great outdoors on my doorstep, and a lot of stress caused by a crazy workload and continuous changes within the company.

Which has led to the only logical conclusion: starting my own business in China. Because that is obviously a good idea – enter a life of financial insecurity in a global crisis, in a country that is globally vilified because of its atrocious politics. I also have zero experience as an entrepreneur, always having worked as an employee.

Yet, I am hopeful: extremely motivated, nervous, excited, buzzing with ideas, loving the positive feedback from all my connections here after I announced my solo (ad)venture. So far I love the feeling of endless options, the freedom to live and work wherever and whenever I want, to develop my own ideas, to have full control of all the admin such as work permit and bookkeeping.

Welcome WenLan

WenLan, or 文兰, is my Chinese name. The ‘wen’ part means culture and comes from an ancient oracle bone character depicting a tattooed man or shaman. The ‘lan’ means blue, and is also part of the Chinese word for the Netherlands – 荷兰he lan.

It is also my one-woman show here in Yunnan. The plan is to find a part-time online writing job, and use the other half of my working hours to develop and produce cultural projects here in Yunnan. One of my goals has always been to facilitate cultural exchange between China and the rest of the world. Perhaps I’m naive, but I do believe that an artistic dialogue between people from different nationalities will hopefully effect some change.

The WenLan website is where I will continue to blog – about the trials, tribulations and top-of-the-world moments as a female entrepreneur in southwest China. If you’d like to stay updated, please sign up for the WenLan newsletter, or follow me on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or LinkedIn.

Thanks all for your ongoing support. I hope you are all well and happy and also getting something good out of the current crisis. If you want to work with me, please reach out!

My first Chinese poem

Many moons ago, sometime in the beginning of this millenium, I bought a small poetry bundle by famous Tang dynasty (618-906 CE) poets, contemporaries and friends, Li Po and Tu Fu. Goodreads says this:

Li Po (AD 701-62) and Tu Fu (AD 712-70) were devoted friends who are traditionally considered to be among China’s greatest poets. Li Po, a legendary carouser, was an itinerant poet whose writing, often dream poems or spirit-journeys, soars to sublime heights in its descriptions of natural scenes and powerful emotions. His sheer escapism and joy is balanced by Tu Fu, who expresses the Confucian virtues of humanity and humility in more autobiographical works that are imbued with great compassion and earthy reality, and shot through with humour.

The poetry by these two friends was one small and early attempt at enjoying and trying to understand Chinese history and culture.

Li Po, having a jolly good time.

Building character(s)

Yesterday my friend Yu Li came to my house, for my weekly writing class. I have been studying Chinese on and off for the last three years now, characterised by enormous ups and downs in motivation and effort. It’s a frustrating process, mostly because of my chronic lack of time. Learning Chinese takes unwavering dedication and lots of hours of plodding away, it’s not a language you just absorb by being immersed in it. But, it’s a beautiful and rich language and recently I started again, with fresh motivation and two new teachers.

Yu Li is first of all a friend, but she’s also a very good writing teacher. Until now I hadn’t bothered with trying to write, as I can type Chinese on my phone and on my computer. But as I’m learning more characters, I found I needed a better way to memorize them. Plus, they are beautiful. The homework of endlessly repeating characters is very relaxing, like meditation, and I’m getting much better at recognizing recurring components. I already had a vocabulary of about 600 characters. Now I’m learning how to write them, scribbling like a five-year-old.

Poetry without boundaries

Yesterday she wanted to try something new. She had written out a poem for me, by Lï Bái (李白). Jìng yè sī (静夜思), or ‘thoughts in a quiet night’ is the best-known classical poem in China. Here it is, with pinyin and a translation:

床前明月光 / Chuáng qián míng yuè guāng / Bright moonlight before my bed

疑是地上霜 / Yí shì dì shàng shuāng / Seems like frost upon the floor

举头望明月 / Jŭ tóu wàng míng yuè / I raise my head and watch the moon

低头思故乡 / Dī tóu sī gù xiāng / I lower my head and think of home


As we are practising it I get a bit emotional, as the restrictions on travel have just been extended until at least October. There is no way I’ll be able to go home this year. Only two weeks ago I went on a short trip, for the first time since the Covid-19 restrictions were imposed on us months ago. Finally, I was outside Kunming, alone, in the countryside, listening to croaking frogs and crickets, and seeing a gigantic full moon rise over the hills. So yes, I get the sentiment in the poem, even if it is sweltering hot right now and the poem was written some 1300 years ago.

Then the penny drops – this Lï Bái is the same person as Li Po, who I read so long ago. Back then, I was longing for Asia, having just returned from a stint in Thailand. Now I am in China, and longing for home. Same poem, different circumstances, similar feelings.

Yu Li and me end the class by sitting on my balcony and talking about Leonard Cohen, listening to Jacquel Brel’s ‘Le Plat Pays’ (cue more homesickness) and reading Rilke’s Herbsttag in German. Sentiments like these are the same the world over and throughout the centuries. Yu Li and me are both delighted – and a bit emotional – that the other truly ‘gets’ their beloved poets from home. Art truly connects people across cultures, but so does language, so I have to get back to my Chinese homework.

Liu Kuo Song – Metamorphosis of the moon
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