The small town that sparked a lifelong love of China: memories of teaching English in Anji, Zhejiang, where Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was filmed

Before she was Lonely Planet’s China editor, Megan Eaves lived in Anji, a small town far from any tourist trail, where she worked as an English teacher in 2006

‘Small towns are wonderful everywhere … but I’ve never felt so connected to a community as while living in small-town China,’ she writes

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Megan Eaves

Published: 9:15am, 20 Feb 2022Updated: 9:56am, 20 Feb 2022

One of my most vivid memories is of riding a fixed-gear bicycle through the streets of Anji, a town in northern Zhejiang province. It was 2006 and I had moved to China to take a job as an English teacher at a public vocational college. It was my first time living in China and I was completely hooked.

I had been given the bike by my school. It was painted ice blue with the words “Royal Voyager” written on the frame. It had a basket on the front, which I often filled with vegetables or groceries, or sometimes fast food, which I ate during severe bouts of homesickness. Most mornings, I pedalled a few streets from my apartment to the school, where I was the sole foreign teacher.

The scene was always a chaotic maze of pedestrians, cyclists, motorbikes, mopeds, tricycle rickshaws, taxis, cars, microvans and truck-like contraptions that came in varying shapes and sizes, often sputtering thick, black smoke.

One of these home-made trucks – which looked like it might have originally been a minivan, with a bed haphazardly cut into it – was used by a vendor who set up shop on one particular corner. In the summer, the truck was full of cantaloupes and watermelons with curling stems; in winter, there would be great bags of kumquats or stacks of leafy da baicai – Chinese cabbage. All of this produce was grown in and around Anji – the five-mile diet was simply a way of life.

Megan Eaves in Anji, Zhejiang province, in 2006. Photo: Megan Eaves

Small towns are wonderful everywhere in the world – in part because a quality of life and a closeness to other people and nature can be, indeed needs to be, maintained – but I’ve never felt so connected to a community as while living in small-town China.