After riding the metro in Beijing and Shanghai, I remain convinced that Hangzhou’s is the best and most comfortable.

Because Beijing is the capital, its metro system spans an enormous range of eras. Many so-called “same-station transfers” are really old and new stations stitched together. The trains themselves are blind boxes too: old and new mixed at random.

Shanghai reportedly has the largest metro network in the world, but I cannot understand why I could not see the current stop anywhere. (Perhaps the particular trains or lines I used simply lacked displays? Either way, deeply uncomfortable.) A person wearing headphones has to stretch his neck like a giraffe just to determine whether he has missed his stop. Deeply uncomfortable.

Ah, ten percent off from the first ride, free transfers to buses—Hangzhou really is wonderful.

So, Wanda North Road, when are you finally going to finish construction and open?

Enough about metros. Once I laid out everything I had in Hangzhou, it truly covered every available surface! I thought for ages and could not remember when I had bought some of it, yet every gift from another person remained vivid in my mind. In any case, I could not bear to chuchu my treasures—to list these precious things on Xianyu and sell them! So began the endless moving-things-around and giving-things-away mode. If you happen to meet me and receive a gift, please do not give me anything in return. I am clearing inventory (

Never mind all that. At this point, food comes first. Mom was delighted to hear that I was eating lunch at Grandma’s, then learned that Grandma had invited me and immediately switched into reminder-and-advice mode: “You need to take the initiative and contact your family,” and so on. “Forget all that. I am simply going to mooch until full,” I thought. Since I failed to clear my plate at lunch, I left the rest for dinner—and predictably failed to clear it again. (The black hole’s position has been challenged.) Now I am wandering outside with the distinctive gait of someone who ate too much. With nothing else to do, I have decided to begin caching!

The following is excerpted from my QQ Space:

A Record of a Night Tour in Shangcheng District

On the night of June 24 in the year twenty-five, I had eaten my fill and wished to return, yet suddenly felt overfull, so I rose and walked with delight. Thinking there was no one with whom to share the pleasure, I went to GCB4TQE in search of Nano. Nano, too, had not retired for the night…

I had a completely unplanned meetup with @なのナノNano! It began when I mooched too much food from relatives and went outside for a walk, then started caching while I was there. The cache happened to be directly below the building where Nano worked. My QQ message received no reply, but the moment I found the cache downstairs, Nano noticed with remarkable speed. (Me: compared with reaching Nano through QQ, finding one of his caches is clearly the easier way to find him.)

With Nano as my guide, I found several caches he had revived or hidden. One multi was incredibly cool and felt exactly like a puzzle hunt. Truly magnificent! I also saw an astonishing number of TBs—trackable souvenirs that circulate among geocachers, roughly speaking. I took two that wanted to travel abroad and will carry them to the next people fate selects, hehe. Nano showed me caches of every imaginable form that he had found in Japan, which opened my eyes completely. Some camouflage caches look so natural that you simply cannot see them!

A wonderfully complete day, and I even caught the metro successfully afterward.

Somehow the two of us did not talk about puzzles very much? I had planned to learn a few techniques from the Great General Who Rolls the Curtain. Curse it (