frauke at large

There’s nothing this country can do better than put on a big show. And similarly, there’s nothing it lacks more than to be able to create ‘atmosphere’. Restaurants, on the whole, consist of big square rooms that are usually fitted with huge big neon lights on the ceiling to scare away – well almost anything. Transactions of all sorts are, by and large, functional and even the weather in Ningbo switches from summer to winter and back to summer almost over night, leaving little room for the gradual change of nature that makes autumn and spring so attractive (like the smells of roasted chestnuts, decaying autumn leaves and the air getting colder). And so the notion of ‘atmosphere’, as we would know it in the West, is often entirely non-existent and lost on your average local person.

And yet, today feels very autumny indeed, despite it being 25’C outside. It’s a gloriously sunny day, but the sun is standing lower than in summer, so the light is less aggressive and harsh, the leaves from the Populus trees are slowly but surely falling to the ground – creating that dead leaf sound and autumn smell when you walk through them (sampled both during my run around campus) – and I have just bought my first bag full of Chinese sweet chestnuts. They are somewhat smaller than their European counterparts which you can buy at the Christmas markets … but the smell is the same: it has autumn written all over it. And the taste is fabulous too – deliciously velvety. Winter is just around the corner – watch out!

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