Heading back to London, we passed through Oxford, a veritable riot of architecture. I really only had time for a brief walk through the town centre to the University Church of St Mary the Virgin, the tower of which affords some magnificent views, including of the Radcliffe Camera, the original science library and of course, of the colleges which comprise the veritable University. Louisa and I also enjoyed browsing the Museum of the History of Science. [View Full Entry]

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With an early start we headed for Avebury to see the 335 metre diameter ancient stone circle, flanked by older massive ditches and embankments (dating possibly from 3400 BC). The town itself was especially pretty with thatched-roofed Elizabethan style buildings, atmospheric old stone church and church yard which was sited at one end of standing stone starcens. Not far away was 40-metre high Silbury Hill built from chalk (dating from 2750BC) and the West Kennett Long Barrow, a tomb complex (dating from about 3600 BC and apparently in use until about 2500 BC). Further South was the famous S [View Full Entry]

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My visit to United Queendom coincided with that of my old Uni friends Peter and Louisa, and two of their fine lads. I joined them in London to hire a car to see some of South-West England, armed with a booking at the grand old Youth Hostel in Bath. The buildings and streetscape of central Bath were classic. The bath-house itself is a worthy monument with ancient and modern elements, and Bath Abbey is perfection in stone (if a bit cluttered inside with side-chapels and sundry monuments). Pulteney Bridge over the Avon is distinguished by having shops on its length. Peter [View Full Entry]

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Di and I also managed a day-trip to York. Having visited the amazing York Minister (with the great Rose Window celebrating the end of the War of the Roses between the House of Lancaster and House of York), the York Minster Crypt, the Jorvik Museum on the site of an archaeological dig and bringing to life the original Viking City, another archaeological museum, the local markets and the striking Clifford Castle our day was fast disappearing. We opted to check out the National Railway Museum getting there only an hour before it was due to close, and missing some great exhibits [View Full Entry]

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Having revisited my bride in Shenzhen, I slipped off to England for a bit. The plane from Hong Kong took us over a gas/oil field in Siberia, presenting an apocalyptic vision of flares and illuminated installations across a vast area. The view of London between broken cloud with a full moon was also a treat, as were snow covered slopes sighted on the connecting flight North to Newcastle. My friend Diana was working at Newcastle University so it was a great opportunity to see a different part of the world. The city centre is said to have some of the best-preserved [View Full Entry]

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10 November 2007 was a great day, a red letter day! The weather was fine, the company first class, and the food exquisitely tasty. Oh, it was also the day we got married! Myself, Dan, my sisters from Sydney, and Dan's father and uncle from Fuzhou, took taxis to the Phoenix Restaurant in the Pavillion Hotel in Futian, Shenzhen, arriving at 4pm. We had booked a particularly nice suite which the staff had made resplendent with flowers, balloons and gold trimmings for the celebration. The table was set for 12, so it was an intimate occasion. Dan changed into her red [View Full Entry]

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Jenny, Gillian and Dan first met at lunchtime the following day, when we all went shopping to Dongmen, all getting on famously. As Dan went back to work, they enjoyed purchasing fabrics for making clothes for themselves and their families. The following day, Cliff took them to Guangzhou, where we took the cable car up Baiyun Mountain and enjoyed seeing how people enjoyed themselves kicking feathered discs and various other activities. We then visited the Nanyue King’s Tomb, which was over 2,000 years old, and only rediscovered, largely intact and unplundered during excavations for a s [View Full Entry]

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7 November saw the arrival of my two sisters Jenny and Gillian from Sydney. I went to meet them at Hong Kong Airport and enjoyed the day doing a walking tour in the old Chinese quarter of Hong Kong Island, including a number of small temples and antique shops, and visiting a particularly large Buddha recently constructed (with temple and monastery) on a mountain on Lantau Island, not far from the airport, to house and display a (somewhat miniscule) relic of Lord Buddha. The cable car was not functioning, which meant a particularly long, winding but scenic bus trip each way. [View Full Entry]

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We had hoped to see more of China in the second week of Dan’s holiday - possibly to Henan and Xi’an, cradles of Chinese civilisation. However, tours are exhausting, and for Dan, after the long hours at work, a second tour was unthinkable. We started dreaming of a few days at a resort on Sanya Beach on Hainan, but a phone call between Dan and her father made it clear that we needed to return to Fuzhou, and give him support. His mother, Dan’s grandmother, has passed away in mid-October at the magnificent age of 96. Dan’s father had been her [View Full Entry]

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Shangrila was traditionally know as Zhongdian, but sometime in the last 20 years or so, changed its name purely to encourage tourism by linking its name to the fictional valley and lamasery depicted in the 1947 novel The Lost Horizon by James Hilton. (The ruse is ironic, because like the Hotel California, the Shangri-La of the book was a place you could never leave, hardly a place to entice tourists: it was also a place whose nature supposedly derived more from Western people and ideas, than Eastern.) We were fortunate in our tour to have a Naxi guide in Lijian, a [View Full Entry]

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