” Hangzhou, the city where I live, is known for its mountains and water. The city has been praised throughout history as ‘its West Lake surrounded on three sides by soaring mountains with one side open to the City’. The lake is gentle and elegant, but we also have a roaring tidal bore on the Qiangtang, while other rivers run in all directions, creating Jiangnan’s famous scenery, typified as ‘water within the city and city within the water’. When I was young, our family lived on the Grand Canal, and we saw fishing boats from the countryside moored up nearby. I loved watching people catching fish, and I was sometimes invited onboard to play with the fishermen. Once I had so much fun I fell overboard and had to be rescued. It seems I have been inseparable from water since then. “

– Lie-Yi Shen