What I really look like

It’s not often people get to see me with my shirt off. It’s not that I’ve got anything to hide. It’s just that I suffer from benign British reserve. It’s funny how these cultural things work. You grow up surrounded by certain values and assumptions and – it’s hardly surprising really – you adopt them [...]

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A wet summer

The only time I get to sleep with my wife is when her ex-husband comes to stay. Last time she gave up her bedroom and slept with me in mine. This time I’m the one making the sacrifice. Matthias will have my bedroom for a few nights. At least we didn’t have any trouble with [...]

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A witchfire of madness

The Chinese have a word tóudà (头大) which means overwhelmed. Literally it means head-big and the idea is that your head is bursting with concepts too numerous and too difficult to contain. I was taught this word yesterday on a flight from Shanghai to London by a Chinese woman called Hui. She spoke hardly any [...]

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Old wounds

On Sunday England will be playing Germany in the World Cup. Such matches always arouse strong feelings in England. If you are German you had better stay indoors. My wife, who is German, doesn’t understand. “I should hang out a flag,” she said last night as we were walking along the river bank. She had [...]

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Better than Sex and the City

I adore Mingzhu. “You look so good in blue,” she told me the other week. “And you are so slim. You have no belly. There’s nothing there at all.” “That’s because Lanying keeps me on a diet of tofu, fish and bitter green vegetables.” “I couldn’t eat like that,” she said. “I love English roast [...]

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I’m Lonely

I hope I am not spreading myself too thinly. There’s not much of me to go round. But I have recently joined Goodreads (see sidebar) after prevaricating for a while. I decided I needed to broaden my horizon and find some recommendations for books from outside my narrow social circle. I particularly like recommendations of [...]

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Learning about sex at last

Disgrace is the kind of novel that can make you want to stop everything, find a quiet spot somewhere, and do nothing else till you’ve finished it. It can restore your lost love of reading. It can sustain you through other books that are not quite so good because you know books have the potential [...]

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Waiting for a spark

Tom thinks Mingzhu could be the one for him. She’s just his type. She has beautiful long black hair, big brown eyes and a tiny waist. She is worldly and witty, has an engaging laugh and always dresses with style, as you might expect from a woman raised in Shanghai.  Tom even thinks he’s in [...]

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She risked her life for tofu

Gao Yuanyuan in Shanghai Dreams When Lanying was eight years old her parents made her cook the rice every day for dinner. She was also sent to get the tofu.  Tofu, like all food in China in the early 1980s, was rationed, so she had to take her bowl and her coupons to the tofu [...]

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Up in the air

You are no doubt desperate for the sequel to Tom and Mingzhu’s girlfriend experience. Tom admitted to Lanying, the arch-orchestrator of the plot, that Mingzhu was exactly his type. “How did you know that she was exactly the sort of woman I like?” “I just know.” “The trouble is…” said Tom. “Please don’t take this [...]

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