We spent our last full day in Beijing exploring the area near our hostel. This district, between Tiananmen Square and the Temple of Heaven, seems to be one of the last parts of the city to retain the old development pattern wherein low houses with interior courtyards are grouped together into hutongs, forming what are effectively villages within the city. This development plan dates back to the Mongol days when the capital was moved here. In fact hutong is derived from a Mongolian word, and this term is not used for alleys or back streets any place but Beijing. In modern times, and especially since 1949, most of the city's hutongs have been torn down to make way for grand government buildings, tall apartment houses, and, more recently, modern retail development. In the core tourist area ... read more

The dust jacket for Invisible China says that Jacob and Colin, his coauthor, "threw away the guidebook" when they travelled around China to collect the material for the book. We have been fortunate, with Jacob as our guide and interpreter, to be able to leave the Lonely Planet trail a couple of times this trip. The first was the incredible tea town of Ninger. The second time was our current excursion to Zhangjiakou, a prefecture city in Hebei provice northwest of Beijing, outside of which we spent today looking for the remains of part of the Great Wall. The map shows the Wall crossing a river at the north end of this mainly linear city. There is no official Great Wall entrance here, with the accompanying shops, tour buses, and other hoopla. In fact, when we ... read more

(written in Chongqing, 17 Oct 2011) We are on our way back northward and a few days behind in blog posts. All of a sudden the weather is truly October-like in contrast to the tropical heat that characterized our entire stay in Xishuangbanna. We stayed three days in Jinghong with an air conditioned room to deal with the continuing heat. On the last day, before boarding our evening sleeper bus of Kunming, Kathy, Jacob and I went back to one of our favorite tea shops to search for a special pu'er Jacob and Lynn. The shop was piled high with bags of leaves, newly-pressed cakes, and the stones used to press the cakes. The proprietor pressed those cakes with tea from areas we had visited in throughout the region. We tasted three different kinds of pu'er, ... read more

We are back in Jinghong, the capital of Xishuangbanna prefecture, the three-county region at the very southern tip of Yunnan province that we have been exploring for the past week. While we are enjoying the ambiance of this small tropical city, we are also using it as a base for further excursions to the countryside: a pretty great bike ride along the river yesterday and an incredible visit to the Yiwu tea mountain today. Yesterday morning Kathy, Karen, Jim, and I rented bikes in town and followed the city bike paths and dodged traffic until we got to the outskirts on the east side of the Lancang (a.k.a. Mekong) River. There we found the river road, which, contrary to the report in Lonely Planet, is not built up and touristy. Heading south towards Menghan the road ... read more

(Damenglong, Yunnan province) The bus from Jinghong dropped us off at the edge of Damenglong which consists of a few dusty streets. The entire town seems to be a construction project. The road from Jinghong was new and in good condition. China seems to be pushing new roads towards Burma, which is only a few kilometers from here. The road workers are Han and the area is populated by many minorities. The Dai, similar to Thai linguistically, are one of the dominant groups. After a siesta and late lunch of Dai food, we head down the road and climb the steep path to the Black Pagoda, a Dai monastery. Terraces of rubber trees, over 30 feet tall, lined the walk. Buddhists always seem to locate their temples with superb views and this pagoda was no exception. ... read more