After the initial flush of exploring the hutongs around our hotel and seeing all the cool activities in the Temple of Heaven Park that Karen described to you yesterday, we settled down to more mundane sightseeing activities here in Beijing. We did Tinanamen Square and the Forbidden City yesterday, traveled nearly to the end of one of the new subway lines to the Summer Palace today, and then came back to town for a Peking Duck meal. All of these were repeats for Kathy and me, but we wanted to share these places with Karen and Jim, and we all certainly had a good time. This week, the city is full of people from all over the country, many of whom travel in conjunction with the October National Day (anniversary of the declaration of the PRC ... read more

This year's trip, our third time in China, will start with a few days in Beijing, then to Chongqing for the marriage celebration of our son, Jacob, and daughter-in-law, Lynn, then to southern Yunnan to see where Pu'er tea comes from and to visit the semi-tropical area close to the Burmese border, and finally back through Chongqing to Beijing and home. Our good friends Karen and Jim from San Juan Island will be travelling with us for their first visit to China and the first major expedition of their retirement years. The initial few days in Beijing will be a test of our China savvy as we try to show Karen and Jim the sights without the benefit of Jacob as our guide and interpreter. The reception in Chongqing, with lots of Lynn's extended family members ... read more

The rain came to Xi'an in full force on Monday. We pushed ahead with our plan to see the Terracotta Warriors site, got soaked, but were still amazed. Continuing forecasts of bad weather caused us to cancel the climb of Mt. Hua and our plans to spend a night at the top. Instead, we flew to Beijing a few days ahead of schedule to see some more sights there before our Friday return to Seattle. The Terracotta Warriors site was predictably touristy and crowded, and also incredible, as most such places are. The constant pouring rain made our visit a little difficult as we had to negotiate getting a bus for the ride out of town to the site. The fact that they make you walk an extra distance from the parking lot to the actual ... read more

Chinese trains usually fill up early, and we were disappointed not to be able to get tickets to Xi'an from Urumqi for another great ride across the desert. But we were pleased to get airplane tickets,which, although somewhat expensive, promised us a 3-hour trip to Xi'an, instead of 36, and giving us an extra day there that we hadn't planned on. Well, things in China don't usually work out as promised, and, indeed we ended up arriving in Xi'an just about when we would have on the train, weary and haggard and with some new stories to tell. Our first surprise was not finding our flight on the departure board at the Urumqi airport when we arrived early Wednesday afternoon. That was because although we thought we were on Hainan Airlines, a somewhat known and ... read more

Like all other western Chinese cities we have visited, Urumqi is in the midst of an economic boom, fueled by resource development, domestic tourism, and migration of people from the eastern part of the country. The central and northern sections of the city could almost be anywhere else in China with much new construction of apartments, food from all parts of the country, trendy shops reminiscent of Robson Street in Vancouver, and some opulence in the form of four- and five-star hotels and even foreign restaurants that serve sashimi in this place that is farther from the nearest ocean than anywhere else on Earth. But the south side of Urumqi is another city altogether. This is the city of the Uyghurs and some Hui muslims with different language, food, religion, and manner of dress than ... read more