I have been asked numerous times to make the expedition report more widely available. You can download it here in pdf format if you wish. SummaryTwo expeditions were carried in 1992 and 2012 to three villages on the Li River between Lang Ti and Xing Ping in the Guilin area of South China. This expedition… Read More »
I hadn’t even noticed the absence of Ofo shared bikes on the street. Once upon a time there were many companies littering the streets with shared bikes. The pavements were littered with multi-coloured QR-coded metal and it was sometimes hard to navigate your way around, and much more difficult to find a parking space for… Read More »
I have written on more than several occasions about the disappearance of the lanes of old Shanghai, the wiping out of communities of people who live in them and forced resettlement to Songjiang or other satelite town. The saddest of these places are Maoming Lu in Jing’an area and in the old town of Laoximen.… Read More »
Apart from the Purple Mountain, the other things I wanted to do was to catch up with some old Chinese and foreign friends in Nanjing before I leave China. Bamboo Garden is very close to Nanjing South Station and as I arrived there I remebered the time when I went to see it being built… Read More »
I hadn’t been to Nanjing for years and as I am running down my time in China, and as it was May holiday, it was an ideal opportunity to go to see the old place again. The crowds are only to be expected and the Chinese are good at moving arge numbers of people around… Read More »
I have learnt not to expect much privacy living in a lane house. Everyone sees my washing hanging out, they know what time I come and go and they see everyone arriving. This week however, I was surprised to see that someone with very little consideration of her own privacy, moved downstairs into the room… Read More »
Nature just isn’t beuatiful enough according to the Chinese. Not only do they dye the ears and tails of their dogs, and sometimes, in the year of the tiger, paint stripes on puppies to sell them, but they paint flowers too. Often you will see beautiful tight rose buds dipped in glitter. What could be… Read More »
Last weekend I went along the West Bund cycle path and I was very impressed. This Sunday was glorious – the first day without a coat this year – so I took my old Chinese bicycle down through Yu Yuan Gardens on FangBang Lu, down to the Fuxing Road wharf and across the river on… Read More »
What a beautiful day it ws on Sunday. I had been sittig at my desk until 2:30pm and then, when I had completed the audio edited which I had been putting off, I headed out on the metro to West Bund. It seemed everyone else was there too, enjoying the first sunny day of spring.… Read More »
I found the worst cafe in Shanghai at 1933, the old abbatoir. It’s a beautiful Art Deco building popular with photographers but these days it’s full of shops and cafes and much of the old charm and photographic beauty of the place has been degraded. I took a couple of German friends there and we… Read More »