We have travelled by train from South China to the North, straight from the tropics and into Autumn, via Shanghai and the middle of the country into Suzhou arriving at 5.30am, seeing very little. Immediately, the atmosphere in this city is recognisably different to anything we’ve previously experienced in China. There is a nip in the air, almost comparable to an early English Autumn and makes us happy. The streets are empty at 5.30am, just as in Kunming. On arrival, we exited the small northern train station and were immediately aware of our changed environment. The buildings [View Full Entry]

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After four weeks in Zhuhai the things that I miss are simple: a good English cooked breakfast, loose leaf earl grey, walking in the peaks with my friends, access to my friends, crisp autumn leaves, the dawn chorus, the sound of the wind blowing in the trees, the colour of the red November sky, changing seasons, hanging out with Patti in pyjamas well into the day ( me nagging), my garden, light beams, - access to places like café 9, the quick walking paths I know in Sheffield between the allotments and so on. AND, I’ve realised now more and more [View Full Entry]

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8 October One of the aspects of travelling and moving around is the element of pre booking accommodation and modes of transport. We have travelled the length and across the bottom of China entirely by train except for the bus from Chengdu to Lijiang, which seems a distant memory. From Sheffield to Hong Kong, our chosen route has been about 25,000 km. Our accommodation choices for Hong Kong were limited due to price and we settled for Chungking Mansions. The reviews on the site were good and for the healthy cost of around £50 per night - this is cheap, we [View Full Entry]

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4 October 08 Okay, so we travelled 1127 km on a train from Guangzhou, across the sea to Hainan to fly a 5mtr power kite on the beach at Sanya. As our train drew further south we left behind the 36 degree heat of Guangzhou and woke to dull weather for the first time since Lijiang. The train bumped on until it came to a standstill at the end of China and we wondered how we were going to get over the sea to Hainan. I thought that maybe it would be a bit like going over to Lindsfarne when the [View Full Entry]

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This blink of an eye is for Deb. It’s strange but the more I am in this country, the more I see and the less I know what to write and what I do write seems trivial and is only scratching the surface of this complex country and its people. I can tell you that I visited the Liu Rong Si (6 Banyun Tree Temple) and when I climbed the 187ft pagoda (built in 1097) it definitely moved in the breeze when I was at the top and now I have a bit of a fear of going up that kind [View Full Entry]

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We’ve been in Kunming for 3 weeks now and I think that I can say that we’ve seen a lot. I thought I’d give you a quick over view of what we’ve seen before we leave for Guilin tomorrow. If you'd like to see 2 parents and 2 kids on the same moped driving at high speed across a crossing (supposedly for humans), then we’ve got it here, or if you want to see a live chicken in a string bag being poked and carried home by a granny for her tea, we’ve also got it, as well as the many [View Full Entry]

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Kunming after life gifts and getting married - 9 September On Sunday, whilst we were trying to find a public park on the map, we discovered a small working temple in a very built up residential area by the side of the train track. The jewel of a temple was hidden by the surrounding area and the only give away sign from the outside was the front gate and temple name above the door, written in traditional Hanzi. We did not have to pay to go in, which I noticed immediately and wondered why. We went in and found that it [View Full Entry]

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3oth August 08 Kunming - Something to write home about I love Kunming. We arrived at 5am, on the night sleeper coach from Lijiang, just before the city began to wake. As our taxi drove across the city, the roads were empty and dark. I like a city that sleeps. As daylight broke, we could see our new surroundings in the dawning light from the window in our room, which is on the 12th floor of the Guolin building on Dong Feng Dong Lu. Our lessons start on Monday on the 16th floor from 8.30 - 12.30 every week day for [View Full Entry]

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27August 08 Buying bus tickets for the first time. Although I’ve been learning Mandarin for some time now, I’m still painfully aware of my language inadequacies and my basic toneless Mandarin skills. Chris has always been good at languages and is way ahead of me with his Mandarin skills and this puts me in a position whereby I let him do all the talking because he’s better at it than me. Also, this further adds to my own feeling of inadequacy because I think I’m worse than I am and I get on that treadmill of thinking that I won’t ever [View Full Entry]

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Chengdu to Lijiang is a 22 hour bus journey. The bus winds its way up, down and around all of the mountains in between the two places and it should be a relatively easy journey except in monsoon weathers, where there can be land slides and in the winter where the roads become impassable. Our journey started normally but five hours into it, we were stopped behind a traffic jam. We could see traffic also tailing back curling around the mountain in the opposite direction so the problem was somewhere in between. Everyone got off the bus and started walking forwards [View Full Entry]

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