xiamen is a port city on the east coast of china, about halfway in between hong kong and shanghai. i only tell you that because i’m pretty sure you didn’t know it.
the highlight here is the couple of fellows i met in the hostel. first i met this guy who was on his way back [...]
who’s the celebrity, you may wonder?? me!
this has got the be the greatest thing about china…i’m just walking down the street and all of a sudden i feel a tug on my sleeve. lo and behold, it’s a chinese girl (or three) waiting to take a picture with me! it does wonder for the self-esteem.
an [...]
okay, here’s my complaint. if you run a hostel, it’s pretty obvious that your clientele are going to be unfamiliar with your city at best, right? especially if you’re a hostel in china. so given the opportunity to provide directions to your customers, do you think you might want to come up with something a [...]
shanghai is, like hong kong, not china.
strictly speaking, of course, it is, even more so than hong kong (which is a “special administrative region”), but it doesn’t feel like it. it feels like new york. there’s tons of people and storefronts and neon and markets and taxi’s and white people. i did not come to [...]
my first stop in beijing was tiananmen square. you can check this for a brief description and some history, if you’re interested. it is the largest open-area public square in the world at just under half a million square meters but that doesn’t even approach the feeling of standing there. it is massive and no [...]
a few words on the darker side of beijing…
everywhere you go, and i do mean everywhere, someone will be trying to sell you something. it could be someone relatively official hawking gaudy souveniers or a peasant trying to make money selling maps, but it is assured, you will be harassed. fake fur hats, mao watches, [...]
i’ll end my time in beijing with a few last observations.
the city is being destroyed. i mean literally demolished. much of this has to do with renovation for the olympics and the rest of it has to do with simple modernization, but the effect is all the same. there is construction everywhere and there are [...]
i’ve come to the last stop on my mainland china tour. it’s not technically the “last stop,” since i fly home from hong kong, but we all know hong kong isn’t china so there.
xi’an has one major claim to fame from which its major tourist attractions flow: it was the capital city of china for [...]
okay, here’s a fun card game. i learned it in australia, forgot about it, learned it again in china. good times…
you can have 2-8 players, maybe more if you get a couple decks. you deal each player 3 separate cards face down, 3 cards face up on top of them, and then a 3-card hand [...]
and now, at the end of my three weeks, i find myself back in HK. i’ve got four days before my flight skips town and honestly, i wish it were two.
i’m stumped at how to really entertain or educate myself in hong kong. the city seems really inaccessible for doing anything above a simple tourist [...]