读书使人充实，交谈使人精明 shú shū shǐ rén chōng shí, jiāo tán shǐ rén jīng míng By reading we enrich the mind, by conversation we polish it Hangzhou was Marco Polo’s favourite city and today we are in conversation with two Italians who have followed Marco’s footsteps to what he called, “the finest and most splendid city in the world.” Surrounded by books, in the Hangzhou Technical Library, I am meeting two Milanese librarians, Mrs Barbara Tripodo, Head of the Quarto Oggiaro branch librar

I have just published this short story on Amazon. Its just £0.99p or $1.22. Cheap as chips, as they say. Preview: Day six was when it all went silent. I don’t know what the fuck happened but there was no more yelling, no more screaming, no more crash of shop windows going in and the rat-a-tat-tat of the machine guns stopped. For six days the world outside my front door went mad and started to eat itself. It all began on an ordinary Wednesday afternoon. Nothing ever happens on

This is an interview I wrote for a new expat paper here in Hangzhou,China. (Hangzhoufeel) The author pretending to eat the moon cake Be in harmony, yet be different. Confucius Around 1999 a young Dane named John F. Christensen was in China and felt peckish––he fancied a snack. He soon found out that finding a decent sandwich in Shanghai was blooming difficult. And so he opened a café – Wagas. As serendipity would have it, the venue for today's meeting with another European w