China is changing! And you don’t need to have been there more than once to know that. The presence of construction sites everywhere, the freshness of the metro systems in major cities and the fact our 2007 guidebook had a hard time keeping up with the new streets, buildings and ever increasing prices are all clear evidence. Everywhere [...]
Posts under ‘China’
So so Yangshuo
The pictures in this post I believe speak for themselves. For me they capture the quintessential image of China made familiar from ink drawings and Willow pattern china plates. They were taken in Guangxi province near the town of Yangshuo. They are images that were stolen between torrential monsoonal downpours, along small dirt tracks and [...]
Yunnan folk
Lijiang rooftops at dusk
Our last week or so has been spent in China’s Yunnan province, a place consisting of mountains, villages and numerous Chinese ethnic minority groups. We made Lijiang, with its cobbled streets, fresh water streams, red lanterns and hordes of local tourists our base for exploring the more remote parts of [...]
Panda-monium
Feeding time at the Giant Panda Breeding Base, Chengdu
This post doesn’t need too many words, the little black and white fury fellas tend explain themselves and elicit ooohhh and aaahhs pretty well without them.
So I will keep it short. Given scientists studying pandas in the wild can go for years without actually seeing one we [...]
Build ‘em long, build ‘em wide and build ‘em tall
Elizabeth and I at the wall
Growing up in amongst giant bananas, guitars, cows and even clams one learns to appreciate things done on scale. Though long before the fibreglass model memories of my childhood, the Chinese were building them bigger, better and Buddha than ours.
As such, this post is dedicated to The Great Wall of [...]
Bright lights, big city, Beijing
GUEST POST – Elizabeth Dawson
The famous portrait
After a few weeks trooping along the Silk Road, taking in small towns and villages and enjoying the great outdoors, it was high time us champagne-swilling, urban PR-types headed to our true spiritual home – the big smoke – and when it comes to big smokes these days they [...]
Rockin' the Kashgar
Old and new Kashgar
Kashgar, in the far west of China in the Xingjiang province was our first stop in China after crossing the Torugart Pass from Kyrgyzstan. The place was roughly 200km or so from Naryn in Kyrgyzstan, but in many ways we felt a million miles away.
Since the days of the Silk Road, Kashgar [...]
