Su Wan 🔥 37
@suwan
Chengdu girl who never got over the food. I chase festivals, night markets, old movies, all the little things nobody writes down. Come be nosy with me 🏮
28 Articles
2 Followers
Su Wan✍️
🔥 37
Every evening after dinner, this writer's grandmother puts on her dancing shoes and heads to the park square to dance with her friends — a small, happy scene repeated across China every night.
Culture
晚饭后，奶奶去公园跳舞
After Dinner, Grandma Goes to the Park to Dance
HSK 2 · 3 min read
Su Wan✍️
🔥 37
A grandmother takes her grandchild to a small neighborhood temple to light three sticks of incense — a simple family custom told in the plainest Chinese, and why it's three sticks, not more.
Faith
奶奶带我去烧香
Grandma Takes Me to Burn Incense
HSK 3 · 2 min read
Su Wan✍️
🔥 37
On August 27, Chinese families mark the Ghost Festival (Zhongyuan Jie) by setting out fresh food, incense, and paper offerings for their ancestors — a quiet, everyday scene of remembrance rather than fear.
Faith
中元节：一张给祖先的桌子
The Ghost Festival: A Table Set for the Ancestors
HSK 3 · 3 min read
Su Wan✍️
🔥 37
A new exhibition on horse culture, jointly presented by Beijing's Prince Gong's Mansion Museum and France's Chantilly Estate, opens to the public today and runs through late November — the museums' first collaboration, pairing bronzes and a Qing-dynasty saddle with a statue of the young Louis XIV on horseback.
Culture
中法马文化展在恭王府开幕
A China-France Horse Culture Exhibition Opens at Prince Gong's Mansion
HSK 4 · 3 min read
Su Wan✍️
🔥 37
Five Song-dynasty painted sculptures in Taiyuan's Jin Temple, worn down by nearly a thousand years, are undergoing a 14-month restoration under a "minimum intervention" approach.
Culture
晋祠圣母殿：宋朝的彩塑，开始十四个月的修复
Jin Temple's Song Dynasty Sculptures Begin a 14-Month Restoration
HSK 4 · 3 min read
Su Wan✍️
🔥 37
After visitors spotted typos and inaccurate wording in some museum exhibitions, China's National Cultural Heritage Administration ordered every registered museum, including those under the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, to overhaul how exhibition text gets approved and checked, with provincial reports due by September 30.
Culture
博物馆展览查错字：国家文物局要求全国核查整改
Typos in museum exhibits trigger a nationwide review
HSK 5 · 4 min read
Su Wan✍️
🔥 37
In Guangzhou, first-graders start the school year with an old-style ceremony called "Kaibili" — a red dot on the forehead, a big drum, and a single character written by hand.
Culture
上学第一天，老师点红点
First Day of School: The Teacher Marks a Red Dot
HSK 2 · 2 min read
Su Wan✍️
🔥 37
A 26-year-old woman in Hebei hand-makes a cloisonne plate as a wedding gift for her friend, part of a wider trend of young Chinese choosing handmade heritage crafts over cash gifts.
Culture
她自己做的结婚礼物
The Wedding Gift She Made Herself
HSK 2 · 2 min read
Su Wan✍️
🔥 37
On August 23, China's "End of Heat" solar term marks the last push of summer — and an old saying holds that whoever gives a neighbor duck that day brings health to every home. One grandmother's kitchen shows the custom still alive.
Culture
处暑到了，家家吃鸭子
End of Heat Arrives: Every Family Eats Duck
HSK 2 · 3 min read
Su Wan✍️
🔥 37
A Sichuan opera troupe performed at Kazan's Kamal Theatre for the first time ever, at a Russia-China forum — with three generations of performers sharing one stage.
Culture
川剧走进喀山：中国艺术家首登俄罗斯百年剧院舞台
Sichuan opera comes to Kazan: Chinese artists take a century-old Russian stage for the first time
Native · 4 min read
Su Wan✍️
🔥 37
This year marks twenty years since the Shoton Festival entered China's national heritage list — and in Lhasa its dawn ritual and Tibetan opera exhibition are still playing out.
Culture
雪顿节二十周年：哲蚌寺清晨展佛，藏戏展演仍在拉萨进行
Twenty years on the heritage list: Drepung's dawn thangka opens this year's Shoton Festival in Lhasa
Native · 4 min read
Su Wan✍️
🔥 37
A village teacher turned book editor became, at 80, the first Chinese illustrator to win children's literature's top honor.
Culture
中国画家蔡皋，八十岁拿下国际安徒生插画奖
At 80, Chinese artist Cai Gao wins the Hans Christian Andersen Award for Illustration
HSK 3 · 3 min read
Su Wan✍️
🔥 37
Marriage-registration appointments for Qixi sold out within days in several cities, even as the nation's marriage numbers for the year keep falling.
Culture
七夕登记约满，但今年结婚的人变少了
Qixi wedding slots are full — but fewer people are marrying this year
HSK 4 · 5 min read
Su Wan✍️
🔥 37
Eighteen new measures, a brand-new city office, and a rule aimed straight at delivery apps.
Culture
北京发新政策，保护「全聚德」「稻香村」这样的老字号
Beijing issues new rules to protect old brands like Quanjude and Daoxiangcun
HSK 3 · 3 min read
Su Wan✍️
🔥 37
A power outage plunged the Terracotta Army's excavation pits into darkness at the height of the summer rush, and days later the national heritage bureau ordered every museum in China to overhaul its emergency plans.
Culture
兵马俑停电之后，国家文物局紧急部署博物馆暑期应急管理
After a blackout at the Terracotta Army, China's heritage bureau orders museums to shore up summer emergency plans
HSK 5 · 3 min read
Su Wan✍️
🔥 37
A university lecture, a new Cantonese-etymology dictionary, and a Guangzhou government report that this year called the dialect a heritage worth protecting.
Culture
广州人说粤语，却不会写：一场讲座，一部新字典
Guangzhou speaks Cantonese but can't write it — a lecture, and a new dictionary
HSK 3 · 2 min read
Su Wan✍️
🔥 37
On August 8 a 3-kilometre street in Sichuan became a river of fire — the peak night of a festival that belongs to the Yi, not the Han majority.
Culture
西昌航天大道点燃86堆篝火：彝族火把节的狂欢夜
86 bonfires on Aerospace Avenue: the Yi Torch Festival's carnival night in Xichang
HSK 4 · 2 min read
Su Wan✍️
🔥 37
Two 2,000-year-old "T-shaped" silk paintings from the Han-dynasty Mawangdui tombs are swapping places in the same Shanghai gallery this month, and the museum says the first one may not be shown again for a long time.
Culture
马王堆两幅T形帛画上海"接力"展出，一号墓帛画8月16日后或长期不再亮相
Two Mawangdui silk paintings take turns in a Shanghai gallery — after Aug 16, the original from Tomb 1 may vanish from view for years
HSK 5 · 5 min read
Su Wan✍️
🔥 37
A month after opening, Shanghai Museum's exhibition on ancient Mexico and Peru has drawn over 100,000 visitors and 10 million yuan in merchandise sales, part of a wider summer surge in China's museum-going.
Culture
上海博物馆美洲文明大展一月吸引观众超10万人次，中国文博消费持续升温
Shanghai Museum's ancient-Americas show draws 100,000+ visitors in a month, as China's museum economy heats up
Native · 6 min read
Su Wan✍️
🔥 37
The oldest thing anyone still does on this night: look up. Written for a first-year reader, with nothing left out.
Culture
中秋节：家人和月亮
Mid-Autumn: the family and the moon
HSK 3 · 2 min read
Su Wan✍️
🔥 37
Why the date moves every year, why this year needs no make-up working day, and what to send a Chinese friend.
Culture
今年的中秋节是九月二十五号
This year Mid-Autumn falls on 25 September
HSK 2 · 2 min read
Su Wan✍️
🔥 37
The summer's biggest film is a joke twenty-five years in the making — and the Cantonese original is not telling the same jokes as the Mandarin one.
Culture
这个夏天，中国人在看什么电影
What China watched this summer
HSK 4 · 6 min read
Su Wan✍️
🔥 37
Four regional styles, one flavour the internet loves to hate, and the rule that stops a box of cakes costing more than a phone.
Culture
月饼到底有多少种
How many kinds of mooncake are there?
HSK 3 · 2 min read
Su Wan✍️
🔥 37
A Ming official who translated Euclid, an observatory that warned the East China Sea of typhoons, and two brick spires that came down in 1966 and went back up in 1980.
Faith
徐家汇天主堂：上海的一百多年
St Ignatius, Xujiahui: a Shanghai century
HSK 5 · 2 min read
Su Wan✍️
🔥 37
Seven hundred million people move in one week. Two habits — the swapped working day and reverse tourism — explain how anyone survives it.
Culture
十一黄金周：中国人怎么放假
Golden Week: how China takes a holiday
HSK 3 · 2 min read
Su Wan✍️
🔥 37
The date is usually not the one you grew up with, the services are split across a working weekend, and there is an Orthodox church still standing in Harbin.
Faith
复活节在中国的教堂里
Easter, inside a church in China
HSK 4 · 6 min read
Su Wan✍️
🔥 37
Why the cup is only seven tenths full, why people tap the table, and the old signal that meant it was time to leave.
Culture
客人来了，先倒茶
A guest arrives: pour the tea first
HSK 2 · 2 min read
Su Wan✍️
🔥 37
Most of the world's Christmas decorations are made in one Chinese city — where 25 December is an ordinary working day.
Faith
中国人怎么过圣诞节
How Christmas is spent in China
HSK 3 · 6 min read
