Yesterday was full-on tourist travel day. Summer Palace first thing in the morning. Then the Great Wall. Then lunch in an authentically exotic restaurant hard by the Chinese Ethnic Culture Park. Then the Forbidden City and finally Tiananmen Square. Nothing I could say about any of those places wou...

At last night’s banquet I sat next to an old China hand; he’s been coming here since 1985. He really appreciates the changes that have taken place. For me, the China of memory is a childhood picture. Huge squadrons of identically clothed androgynous workers bicycling through the smog. Drabness and g...

This always happens. One busy day and all thoughts of keeping on top of the blogging vanish. So yesterday was the first full day of exposure to Chinese food (in between work). And I have not yet processed or uploaded the photographs. Nor, actually, do I have anything like a full list of everything...

Markets are fascinating. Wherever I go in the world, I consider it a real treat to be able to wander very slowly through the markets, seeing what there is, seeing whether I can identify things I've only read about, just soaking it up. Kunming is no exception and I spent a very happy hour this af...

Snatched a couple of hours today after meeting some last minute work needs, so took myself off to explore the immediate environs. First off, it is really clean and neat. The streets are crowded, but they are not dirty and they seem a lot more “developed” than, say, Hanoi.

Time came to eat. There w...