I spent a fabulous weekend hiking on the Mongolian Grasslands. The trip was arranged and carried out by Beijing Hikers who I’ve been with on daytrips before. I would advise anyone coming to Beijing to check out their website and go on a walk or hike with them. Apart from enjoying the beautiful scenery and seeing less-well-known places, it’s a great opportunity for visitors to talk to ex-patriots here about why they came and stayed in Beijing and what everyday life is like for an ex-pat. On this weekend there were returned Chinese people who have unique perspectives on life in China that ex-pats will never have. We all met up on Friday midday and boarded the Beijing Hikers coach with Henjie (“Way-jay”), the woman leader and owner of the Beijing Hikers business. There were twenty-one ... read more

I am delighted to say that I went on a day trip with the Beijing Hikers and we climbed very long, steep, derelict sections of the Great Wall of China. I’ve earned my stripes! OK, to go back to the beginning: Soon after I arrived in China I was, of course, reading the magazines for ex-patriots about all there is to see and do in Beijing. I read about the Beijing Hikers who organise regular trips to areas outside Beijing. My immediate response to the discovery was, “That sounds brilliant!” But all my free time for the next few months was taken up apartment-hunting, moving in, then planning the trip to and going on the Trans-Siberian Railway. By the time I got back to Beijing mid-June it was too hot to even consider doing anything energetic ... read more

I was apartment hunting from when I arrived. My work colleague recommended a young woman agent, Ivy, and it was great to have her. I couldn’t imagine doing the search on my own, but I guess there are ads in English-language newspapers for Westerners. I’ve been reading “Beijing for Beginners”, a book by Gary Finnegan, an Irish journalist who taught English here for a year, just before the Olympics. It’s very good. He wrote about not wanting to live in an international residential area or a “gated community” and that made sense to me. But I discovered that it is very difficult to find accommodation in blocks for Chinese. Ten years or more ago the Chinese authorities used to insist that Westerners live in specially designated blocks but that doesn’t apply any more. When I say ... read more

Before I began this trip I had bought my flight tickets from Moscow to Urumqi and from Xinjiang Province back to Beijing, so it was handy to have that sorted. My next step was to fly to Kashgar. The day after my trip to Turpan I got to Urumqi airport early and had time to look around. In fact I was far too laid back and ended up missing my noon flight to Kashgar – gr-r-r. It wasn’t a tragedy though because the next one was in two hours. It took all of that two hours to reschedule my flight, get my luggage back and check it in again. Each of these steps were very difficult because none of the airport staff spoke English. It was obvious that they were Han Chinese and this supported what ... read more

The last week of this month-long trip around northern Asia certainly was the most challenging. After three weeks in Mongolia and Siberia, I had anticipated that Xinjiang would be very different from Beijing or Russia, but I hadn’t imagined it would be such a different world. In ways it was amazing, particularly the scenery on the Old Silk Road, but in other ways I found it depressing. My background is in sociology and I find this blending/clash of ethnicities in China, and the role the government plays in promoting it, to be very interesting. I’ll try to explain as I tell you about the week day-by-day. But first, a little background courtesy of The Rough Guide: “Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region” is one of the most exciting parts of China, an extreme terrain, more than 3,000km ... read more