I'm giving this site one more chance (to be fair, I think it's the computer I'm using that's making all the troubles, but I'd rather blame somebody else), partly because this blog has got some awesome things that we saw in it, and partly because I'm going to be annoyed if I can't get everything written out. I'm really hoping that I can get this to go onto the database as being in Datong - because everything I've read has given the city a bad review and I want to give it a bit of a better review. Honestly, the city's pretty ordinary, but NOBODY comes here to visit the city. If they do, they're nuts. It's like going to any smaller cities - why should you expect every corner to have something awesome. It's a ... read more

Hello everybody! Today we travelled out to the Wang household. The Wangs were the family that set up the banking industry in Pingyao, so they were ridiculously rich. Unbelievably rich actually, the residence is absolutely massive. Im pretty sure its actually bigger than the Forbidden City, and if it isn , theres definitely more buildings in there than the Forbidden City. At their peak, there were four different generations living in the complex, which was so big they needed to build a bridge to get across to the other side of the house. When empress Cixi travelled through Pingyao, she actually stayed at this place on the way through. If you don know anything about her, look her up, its an interesting read in how much one person can be a complete cow. Anyway, to be ... read more

Hello everybody! Weather here is not so good, but we’re carrying on undeterred. Xian is a beautiful city, I like it better than Beijing, although I think I’ve given Beijing a much better chance to grate on my nerves, I’m sure that if I stayed here for a long time I’d find things to complain about - in fact, if I was here for a week in this weather I’d probably leave it as soon as I could - but there’s awesome stuff here. I’m just trying to think of what I did today - I’m actually writing this days later in a completely different city, trying to make it sound like I’m writing it on the same evening, so sorry to shatter the illusion, but I thought it would make the in incohesiveness of it ... read more

Hello everybody! Today we finally made it to the great wall. We were supposed to go a fortnight ago, but Sue was sick. Then we were supposed to go the following Thursday, but the big poo of a national day got in the way again, so we put it off till today, so it's been a long time coming, and to be honest I half expected we'd never make it. The part of the wall we went to is called Simatai, which, according to the website, is celebrated for its steepness, queerness, and intactness . It is definitely intact, and its steepness was never in question. I was a bit confused about the queerness until Lloyd posed for a photo. Then all was revealed. Metaphorically speaking anyway. So yeah, the day started thusly: We woke up ... read more

Hello everybody. Something pretty cool happened today - one of those moments when all the shame and embarrassment of hanging around Lloyd pays off. We got free tickets to the China Open. And not just cheap tickets - centre court tickets from 11:00 to 7:00PM - we got to see Djokovic, Venus Williams, Davina Safina, and we saw Roddick on one of the other courts - it was awesome. And even better - cans of Heineken were only RMB10/can, so life was good. I can't think of much to write though unfortunately - it's basically all we did all day - no exciting stories about getting there except that it took an awfully long time to get there because it's a lot further away than we expected, but even that only made us half an hour ... read more