The Accidental Exile: Stories of Cities, Strangers, and Silence

Set among tree-lined streets, art galleries, and passing strangers with unreadable pasts, this is a portrait of someone unforgettable — and a reminder that even the briefest encounters can shape our journey. In this intimate spoken-word excerpt from Unravelling China, Finlay reflects on a magnetic meeting with Anna, a woman whose poise and presence seem stitched into the fabric of Shanghai’s Frenc...

What does it mean to fall in love with a place — not for what it is, but for what it remembers? In this evocative reading from Unravelling China, artist and writer Finlay Cowan walks through Shanghai’s legendary French Concession on a warm Saturday night. It’s not just a place — it’s a mood. A memory. A city within a city, where colonial villas lean behind high walls, cafes bloom overnight, and si...

✴️ In this episode: Cross-cultural burnout and quiet breakdowns. How a simple question opened something profound. A reflection on foreignness, selfhood, and meaning The subtle emotional language of ChinaI was standing in a corridor that smelled like despair, staring at a dirty mop and a dying houseplant in the Hangzhou equivalent of Dagenham. Everything in me was asking: why am I here? The answer...

It wasn’t a spiritual retreat. It wasn’t a plan. It was a cracked hillside, a plate of spicy fish, and a pot of summer tea in a tiled-backroom restaurant in Wenzhou — a city most people haven’t heard of, but whose people you’ve definitely met. ✴️ In this episode: What it means to be truly present in the accidental places A portrait of Wenzhou — its food, history, and wanderers The weird wisdom of...

It started as a passing thought — one of those background flickers you almost don’t notice. I was standing in Shanghai’s M50 Art Zone, waiting for someone, sipping the perfect coffee, staring at cracked tiles and old air conditioning units when I realised I was being photographed. Not once. Not twice. But constantly. Every thirty seconds or so, someone would stop, raise a phone or a camera, and ta...

✴️ In this episode: A Christmas Eve encounter in Shanghai. The emotional resonance of brief connections. Art, intellect, seduction, and saying what we mean. How some moments become memories the instant they happen. In a dimly lit café in Shanghai’s French Concession, I met Emily. She had a sharp bob, a wicked smile, and a copy of John Berger’s Ways of Seeing open on the bar. What followed was an a...

✴️ In this episode: A fleeting encounter that opened a lifetime of memory. Reflections on abandonment, empathy, and intuition. How transit spaces awaken the unconscious. The thin veil between the outer world and the psyche Why presence is sometimes the only answer we have A brush of the arm. A child’s fear. A sudden flash of recognition. On a subway platform in Shanghai, I stood next to a young gi...

In Shanghai’s M50 art district, I wandered into another world. In a city of 28 million souls, she was a still point: a living work of art who spoke of life, creativity, and eternity. We drank blue flower tea, sketched without words, meditated in a room filled with dreams. And then, as suddenly as she appeared, she was gone — her studio vanished like a myth, leaving only memory and the scent of inc...

After 14 days of quarantine-induced cabin fever, I found myself in a surreal banquet hall being serenaded by a Chinese billionaire — and before I knew it, I was reciting Rudyard Kipling’s If to a room of powerful men, expensive wine in hand and the weight of global history echoing through the silence. This is Part 2 of my encounter with the enigmatic Chairman — a man who survived starvation, rose...

I’m exploring different ways of defining the book - first with artworks and now with readings which can be found here and on YouTube. I love reading to people so this seemed an obvious choice but I soon got tangled in a world of technical complexity which was not fun but may be part of a learning curve. I was, however, surprised to find myself enjoying ‘clip farming’ these longer form videos, that...

As the days pass there is an absence of talk about the place I have left behind. There is only here. There is only now. China does this in a way I have not experienced elsewhere. The fabric of my life, the culture that makes up ‘who I am’ is starting to fade in my rear-view mirror. This is the paradoxical way in which China is absorbing me, at once I am disconnected and alien but at the same time...

I found my way an art studio in the M50 art district of Shanghai and there she was... Lotus. I instinctively took off my shoes and stepped into another world, far away from the hubbub of the seething city of 28 million people outside. Lotus emerged, draped in a gown of her own design and invited me to tea. She poured blue flower tea into tiny cups, surrounded by her astonishing art. The atmosphere...

It’s getting late and I still need to get a batch of drawings finished for tomorrow morning. They’ve installed me in a comfortable serviced studio apartment with a view over the Qiantang river, that mighty waterway that has carried the wealth of China to the world for centuries. It was from here that tea left for the West. All the tea in China has passed my window at some point. Across the river I...