You don’t need to come to Asia to encounter bamboo; it’s there on the steering wheel of the E-Type Jaguar, on umbrella handles, there on that corporal punishment device once kept behind teachers’ desks. Even edible bamboo was a concept familiar to me before I arrived here; bamboo shoots in tins were part of my English mother’s cooking in the 1980s. But, as with many things we already know about China, we’re not prepared for the abundance or the variety. The bamboo shoots that appear in Chinese dishes in the real...

Let me state that The Nanjinger has not paid for me to be here. Nanjing is far too far away and the expenses for such a glamorous patch could easily spiral beyond control. I write from Juan Les Pines on the French Riviera. You can almost skip a stone to Cannes in the west and Monaco to the East. Every town along here has significance to the grand tour, the lost generation or the jet set, but also to a contented local populace. This is still more French than...

I love games consoles. I own more than I care to admit. But (Marie Kondo, since you’re asking) every one of them sparks joy. The console is a well-named invention, providing solace that sometimes even tea can’t provide. I’m not the only one; retro gaming is as much of a draw for my generation as steam trains for my father’s. An industry surrounds console nostalgia, with restorations, re-releases, emulation and excavation. But in focusing so much on the games console, the home experience of games, the nostalgia is neglecting another great...

Dressing up schoolwork as a toy. It’s such a hoary old cliché it might just work. I’m hoping to coax out some actual written words from my students by inviting them to play with the paper itself; dirty it up a little for display purposes. Harper Lee herself describes it as a “filthy piece of paper”, the note that two children try to post through the broken slats of the Boo Radley house, “Boo” being the nickname of the mysterious recluse in To Kill a Mockingbird.  If successfully coaxed, my students will...