Author: Anne

Just a Walk in the Park – Xining

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cranesWe are in Xining because that’s where we will catch the train to Lhasa, Tibet.  It’s certainly not the most attractive city that I’ve been in.  It’s surrounded by barren rock like hills, with a population of 2 million living in the multitude of ever increasing high rise apartment blocks which stand like sentinels across the skyline. The air is heavy with smog and dust.  I have read that Xining has been dubbed the “summer resort capital of China” due to its cool summer, but somehow can’t see the attraction.

So, after picking up our train tickets to Lhasa from the station, and feeling uninspired to visit tombs or temples I pointed to the largest green space on the Chinese language map and said “let’s go there”.  We flagged down the taxi, pointed to the map and were delivered to the Peoples Park.

P1100281 (2)Somehow the air was clearer there and we spent an enjoyable couple of hours wandering through this community park.  As we ate our ice creams we watched Continue reading →

The Red Lantern Ride – Xi’an City Wall

Anne1 Comment

P1100260A wonderful delight in Xi’an was cycling around the old city wall.  In fact we liked it so much that after completing our morning ride with Karin and Wei we returned the following day to do a sunset ride.  Steve aptly named the circuit the “Red Lantern Ride”.

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Plenty of room to ride
Plenty of room to ride
Xi’an is one of the few cities in China where the complete city wall is still standing and that’s pretty amazing because it was built in 1370 during the Ming Dynasty.  This is a huge structure, the walls are 12 metres tall, 12-14 metres wide at the top and 15-18 metres thick at the bottom.  The walls form a rectangle with a perimeter of 13.7 km.

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Initially the wall was built with earth, quick lime and glutinous rice extract.  This made it Continue reading →

A taste of life in a Beijing Hutong

Anne3 Comments

P1090403We’ve been staying with Karin and Wei in Beijing. Karin is Steven’s cousin, so that makes us all cousins.  Lovely.

Wei was born in Beijing and left when he was 15 years old. He, and Karin, returned l last year.

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P1090122They elected to live in the inner city so it’s been a privilege to have a taste of their life in a hutong. Hutongs, the heart and soul of Beijing, are alleys formed by lines of traditional courtyard residences. Neighbourhoods were formed by joining one residence to another to form a hutong, and then joining one hutong to another. Hutong also refers to the neighbourhoods of alleys.  Many hutongs have been demolished to make way for new housing, others have fallen into disrepair and are low cost accommodation while others have become protected historical areas.

P1090935Karen and Wei’s home in the hutong, is one of the few in the alley that has been renovated, with the rooms wrapping around a small courtyard, a remnant of a much larger courtyard from times long ago.  Wei calls his serene courtyard a ”chaoasis”.  An oasis from the chaos that is sometimes life in Beijing.  Sitting in the sanctuary of their courtyard it is impossible to believe that there is a city of 27 million people just outside its walls.

P1090702Karin is an amazing cook with a passion for Chinese cuisine. We have been treated to a dazzling array of treats from across the country, all created in her tiny kitchen. Her banquets start northern style, with a selection of cold dishes such as marinated cucumber, jellyfish with chilli, lotus root salad, shredded bean curd, three flavoured salad and woodear mushroom salad.  She follows this with an array of hot dishes such as steamed eggplant with cumin, asparagus in chicken broth, duck and winter melon soup, tree bark with egg, pork cooked in red fermented beans, chicken with peanuts, sticky rice in lotus leaves and garlic steamed prawns.  The dishes have exotic names such as La pi, Gong Bao and Su Dong Po but I have been at a loss to remember them and put them with the correct dishes.  I have learnt that Continue reading →

Sliding down the Great Wall of China

Anne4 Comments
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Entrance to tomb of Emperor Zhu Yijun (1563 – 1620)

We booked a tour, which consisted of us, an English speaking local guide and a driver, for a day out at the Great Wall of China and the Ming Tombs. The day started with a stop at the jade shop. We could have opted out of this part of the tour for a cost of $20 extra each.  That’s right, you pay more if you don’t want to attend the mandatory shopping.  So we obediently looked around the jade shop, admired the art work and left without spending a yuan, then headed on to the Ming Tombs.

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Tomb headstone

I was surprised at how quickly we left Beijing behind and started driving along country roads and by farmlands. We visited a tomb where Ming Dynasty Emperor Zhu Yijun (1563 – 1620) was buried.  The construction of the tomb started when he was 22 years old.  It’s a strange concept to me preparing for your death at such an early age. I wonder what impact it has on the way you live your life? The Ming tombs are not small mausoleums, they were built as hidden palaces, replicating that which the Emperor lived in but on a slightly smaller scale. While the tomb we visited was not elaborate, as the relics have been removed, it’s fascinating that Continue reading →

We just had to visit the Pandas

Anne1 Comment

P1090729 (2)We could not be in China without visiting the Giant Pandas so took ourselves off to the Beijing Zoo.  Pandas sleep about 16 hours a day so we timed our visit for the morning when we heard they were most likely to be active.

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P1090746 (2)The first Panda we saw was sitting up munching on a feast of bamboo leaves.  He looked like he was at a resort, lounging against a rock and enjoying himself.  When he finished eating he walked over to a platform for a snooze and had a cute wiggle as he walked.  Pandas are pigeon toed so I guess that accounts for their unusual gait.

P1090757 (2)We wandered past a few other panda enclosures but they were chilling out and mostly sleeping.  Then we were lucky enough to watch two 18 month old male panda twins playing together.

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P1090756 (2)They bear hugged each other, chased each other, nipped at each other, rolled through the dirt together, climbed up a platform and slid off it. We stood there mesmerised for about 20 minutes until they exhausted themselves and lay down for a nap.

 Here are a few random facts I have now discovered about Pandas. Continue reading →

Two days in Shanghai

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We took the high-speed train from Beijing to Shanghai, travelling at up to 307 kms an hour, a five-hour fast ride from heritage sites to a futuristic-looking city.

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The Bund, along the Huangpu River, looks old to me but by Chinese standards it’s quite a modern addition, as the 52 Western modern and classical style buildings were built in the 20th century.  The Bund formerly housed banks and trading houses from across the world.  When you look at this area you could be in any European city and its disorientating because you know you’re in Shanghai.

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The Bund

If you turn your back on the Bund the modern city of Shanghai is laid out before you and looks like a city of the future with its space age Oriental Pearl TV and Radio Tower and light displays on skyscrapers, only the flying cars are missing.

Futuristic Shanghai skyline
Futuristic Shanghai skyline
The market outside the hotel door
The market outside the hotel door

The mall we wandered down could have been any big city in the world with its plethora of expensive international brands and hip and trendy young people. Shanghai is an interesting mix of old China, with a street market outside the hotel door, the quaint French Concession and the modern, almost culturally unidentifiable areas such as Xin Tian Di Street.

P1090506We spent an afternoon exploring the delightful Continue reading →

Celebrating Contraception on Mother’s Day

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It’s Mother’s Day in Australia today and I have just finished reading The Birth of the Pill by Jonathan Eig. It made me realise how this contraceptive profoundly changed the experience of motherhood for me and for many women across the world. The book is truly fascinating and reads like a thriller.  Here’s the blurb from the cover:

In the winter of 1950 Margaret Sanger, then seventy-one, and who had campaigned for women’s rights to control their own fertility for five decades, arrived at a Park Avenue apartment building. She had come to meet a visionary scientist with a dubious reputation, more than twenty years her junior. His name was Gregory Pincus. Continue reading →

Inside the 中国小花 China Little Flower Orphanage, Beijing

Anne6 Comments
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One of the bedrooms

In Beijing we are staying with Wei and Karin.  Wei, a pediatric surgeon, planned to visit an orphanage and I was keen to accompany him.  The book I am writing, currently called Not Forgotten, is the life story of a woman who was in an orphanage in Australia from 2-10 years old, so I have developed an interest in orphanages and how they operate.

Even though Wei told me that the children we would meet were the most severely handicapped, I still had a naive view that we would be seeing some cute, chubby faced adorable Chinese babies who would be smiling and gurgling at me, but that was not to be.

When we arrived at China Little Flower Orphanage we were greeted by Lily, the administrator, and asked to Continue reading →

Spoilt for World Heritage choice in Beijing

Anne4 Comments

P1090096You’d think that as seasoned travellers we would have a bit of an itinerary worked out for each place we plan to visit and be prepared for our time there before we arrive.  Well that’s not really how we operate. Our style is much more to look at TripAdvisor or the Lonely Planet Guide the night before, or maybe on the plane to our destination, and get some ideas about what we should see.

P1090102Consequently, we arrived in Beijing to see Karin and Wei with minimal understanding of the amazing choices that would be offered to us.   Beijing has seven Word Heritage Sites, putting it right up there with Rome and Paris.

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To stop us dithering about which ones to see, our hosts directed us to start our sightseeing with the Forbidden City and follow it the next day with the Temple of Heaven.  One advantage of our laissez faire style of travel is that we Continue reading →

A serene introduction to the cacophony of China

Anne6 Comments


P1080889We flew into Guilin, China in the evening and were taken by car, along a four-lane highway with minimal traffic, to Yangshou. The Yangshou Village Retreat was along a dark, quiet country road and we retired for the night, lulled to sleep by the sound of frogs croaking, in a surprisingly palatial room decorated in classic French style.

P1080876The morning greeted us with a stupendous view of the mysterious karst peaks and we grabbed bikes to explore the countryside. We rode past old men ploughing the fields with bullock’s, small children playing and women carrying buckets of water to the garden.

P1080877The road was quiet and we were seldom interrupted by the friendly toot of a passing motorbike. We sat on the banks of the Li River watching empty tour boats glide up the river. A serene first morning in China. Continue reading →