When it came time to go through our “You Know You’re In…” file for China, it was bulging at the seams! A country that doesn’t give a damn what other people think, this behemoth is bold, brash, and beautiful. While some stereotypes like incessant spitting were true, the streets were cleaner, the people friendlier, and…
As the capital city of the Earth’s most populous country and one of its oldest cultures, Beijing is the center of China’s universe. Cloaked in mystery and ancient traditions, every layer you peel back reveals an ever more complex layer below it. As the last city we could squeeze onto our 30-day visa, Beijing would…
We heard such mixed reviews on Shanghai that we almost didn’t come here. “It’s just another big city” some people scoffed while others raved, “It’s one of the most exciting cities of the 21st-century,” …so with that we had to see for ourselves. With more than 4,000 skyscrapers and plans for over 1,000 more in…
Hangzhou is big city with a permanent vacation vibe. This 6.3 million metropolis has a proper downtown but the heart of the city is at its lake, Xi Hu. As an ancient city at the end of China’s Grand Canal, it’s been a prosperous town and cultural center for over 1,000 years. Pagodas, pavilions, monuments,…
Stilt houses teeter over the winding river, boats are propelled by bamboo poles, stepping stones act as bridges, and the everyone is in a good mood in Fenghuang, China. Boasting a twelve-hundred-year old history with great Chinese leaders and artists claiming it as their home, Fenghuang is firmly on the Chinese tourist track (not the…
Avatar is one of the most visually stunning movies of the 21st-century, so when we found out that James Cameron based his floating islands on Wulingyuan National Forest…we had to see them for ourselves. The quartz-sandstone spires towering throughout Wulingyuan, formerly known as Zhangjiajie, were formed over 400-million years ago through a series of unique…
The Yangtze is the third longest river in the world, stretching 6,400km across China, so we knew we had to cruise it. And when I say cruise, I mean a triple-decker boat, complete with one karaoke parlor, four electronic mahjong tables, 500 Chinese tourists, and two westerners (us). We joined the tour to experience the…
If you can picture the quintessential Chinese mountain scene painted on a rice-paper scroll, with mist-shrouded mountain peaks and long stone stairways connecting ancient pagodas perched atop cliffs, then you can picture Emeishan. Emeishan is home to the first Buddhist temple in China and the place where Buddhism is said to have taken hold in…
As close as you can get to Tibet without a separate visa, Meili mountain range feels like a piece of the heavens. Though we traveled three days deep into Deqing, China get here, Meili’s beauty is so accessible it felt too good to be true. Mountains like this usually don’t come without porters and oxygen…
Tibet is world famous for its culture of Buddhism and holy mountains but its neighbor Diqing is a well-kept secret. When China drew the line around the autonomous region in 1951, they didn’t magically move all the Tibetan people and the centuries-old monasteries inside the new boundary…the Tibetan people and their culture live on in…
We thought our entry into China via Hong Kong would semi prepare us for this massive and mysterious nation, but really, nothing can. We took a boat from the formerly British HK over to the mainland and it was like entering a new and very foreign country—goodbye English language, Roman alphabet, capitalism, and western ways…