Blogs from China, Asia - page 8

No matter what culture you’re from, we all share certain things in common as human beings. We all need to breathe, we all need to eat, we all need fluids, and we all produce waste. There’s not much too much to say about breathing – unless you’re visiting a city like Beijing or Hong Kong and you’re from a small town. And what traveler worth his/her salt hasn’t deeply pondered the incredible range of cultural differences in food and eating habits through their journeys? Last year, I took a month off work to realize my dream of travelling around Asia. While I hardly made a dent in my checklist of destinations, I enjoyed cultural experiences and adventures that I’ll cherish for a lifetime. One of the most interesting cultural foibles I encountered was the quirky cultural ... read more

I've flown hundreds of times over the years, but the miracle of high-speed, long-distance jet travel never ceases to amaze me. So much so that whenever we travel overseas, Andi teases me because I inevitably say something like: "Can you believe that just yesterday we were walking the dog back in Rye and now we're in (FILL IN THE BLANK AMAZING LOCATION.)" Well, Andi wouldn't have been surprised to hear me repeating that refrain this morning when I found myself climbing the steep steps of the Great Wall of China surrounded by thousands of Chinese tourists. We "did" the wall at Badalang, the most visited and most touristy of the Great Wall sites, because we wanted to see it as the average Chinese person would. Apropos of that, our adventure began by taking the subway at ... read more

After a cross taxi driver took us to our hotel from the train station early in the morning - it becomes a theme for our stay here - a one way street is not their favourite place to be in busy Beijing - we settled in with our usual post sleeper train showers and then set off for a walking tour of Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City. Fortunately this time we had all slept well on the train so were feeling a lot more perky. As soon as we set foot outside the hotel we realised the Tiananmen Square trip would be somewhat curtailed as right outside our hotel was passing the Beijing marathon and loads of runners whizzing by in a flurry of flags and numbers and costumes. All very exciting and we cheered ... read more

Day 19, 20 at Sea Day 21. Shanghai. Shanghai, one of the oldest towns in the Yangtze River basin, is a city of 23 million people - about the population of Australia! We took a bus to the Suzhou Embroidery Research Institute, the Humble Administrator's Garden and a canal boat ride. The roads were excellent and often elevated except that they had noise limiting walls along each side for much of the distance so sight seeing was limited. The intersections were spaghetti junctions. The airport is close to the city. Suzhou Embroidery Research Institute was fascinating, but no photography was allowed. The embroidery was so fine that the individual threads in a smooth gradation of colour could not be seen unless viewed from close to the work. The cheapest embroidery was one sided with knots on ... read more

Petit message pour saluer les élèves de la classe de 6e année de Sophie (femme de Eric ) de l'école Émilie Gamelin qui suivent notre voyage par le blog dans le cadre d'un projet sur la Chine. Encore une fois excusez mes erreurs de frappe, à l'heure que j'écris et avec le correcteur, je me rends compte que parfois il se glisse des erreurs dans le texte. Lisez le contenu et ne vous arrêtez pas aux lettres. Aujourd'hui course de vélos sur les remparts de Xi'an et visite d'une fabrique de jade. Ensuite je crois qu'on a un souper théâtre.......on verra une chose à la fois!!!! Ni Hao... read more