Tag Archives: china

Though these tales and pics from the Chinese side are only just warming up to get going – in the meantime we’ve gone and completed our China-2024 trip!

Cheeky spoiler: this year’s China-in-the-fall trip was especially full-to-the-brim with active tourisms:

• Over two weeks a full 23 (!) natural and historical objects were visited, strolled, prodded, delighted in, and – of course – photographed;
• Places we stayed for at least a night – 11;
• Distance covered on the road (by our driver) – more than 5000km!

The concentration of OMG-impressions and emotions during our China vacation this year was off the scale – all about which will be coming to these here blog pages soon (after the Kamchatkan tales are done)…

Just in case you missed them, here are parts one and two of this China-intro-trio. Now – on with part three! ->

Read on…

Ni Hao!

Our China trip continues…

In the city of Xining we turned westward – thereby exchanging mountain forests, rivers and lakes for nothing much besides desert. Not that the views to be beheld were any worse for it…

So what can I say about this part of China? In no particular order, this is what:

These desert landscapes are in the northwestern Chinese province of Qinghai, which sits next to the Tibetan Plateau – the Roof of the World; yes – the world’s highest (and largest) plateau above sea level. Yes – meaning breathing up here can be rather difficult. We’d planned for this however – having been acclimatizing up around two or three thousand meters above sea level for a week already.

By Chinese standards, the place is sparsely populated: just under six million folks live here over an area of 720,000 square kilometers. That’s a population density similar to that of the whole of Russia – the world’s largest country (including all its vast but sparsely-populated Siberian and Arctic regions).

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Regular readers of my tales-and-pics of my travels to far-flung countries (and some nearer to home) will recall that, usually, in the first half of October, colleagues & friends and I get ourselves over to China!…

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My summer tales from the Kamchatkan side have only just begun, but now – quick fast-forward to the present for a China interlude over a few days…

I spent my 59^th birthday in the Chinese resort Sanya on the tropical island province of Hainan, which, actually, seems to be the only large resort of its kind in China. It’s also literally the southernmost city of China, with Vietnam just 250-300km across the water and Beijing a full ~2500km away.

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For the first time in my life I’ve seen a comet unassisted – with just the naked eye. Oh my Gerasimenko! ->

Greetings all – from China’s Qinghai province, where right now up above our heads we can see the 62P/Tsuchinshan comet without a telescope. And it’s going to be flying past Earth for around another week!…

Like I say, I hadn’t seen one before, since they’re a rather rare phenomenon – even though there are plenty of them; for example, there’s the famous Halley’s Comet, which we won’t see again until July 28, 2061 (if clouds don’t get in the way).

So when will 62P return to our cosmic skies? Some astronomers think… never!

And so it goes…

You follow the path of life, running here, slowing down there, focusing on this and that, getting caught up in small tasks, darting around the planet, and suddenly – boom: you find yourself being 59 years’ old!

Fifty-nine. That’s a serious number of years. Stock – as ever on this day – needs to be taken (real quick; don’t over-think it:)…

I’ve done a great deal throughout these 59 years – but I still need to do a great deal more. I’ve seen, prodded, tasted, smelled, and photographed half the world already – but I still dream of seeing, prodding, tasting, smelling, and photographing the other half. So that’s what I’ll do – and full-steam ahead!…

Read on…

Now for a quick review of my recent business trip to Tianjin, China…

The first thing that came to mind when we reached downtown was: “Where are all the millions of Chinese folks that I’ve been told live here?” For the mentioned downtown sure seemed rather deserted empty for a city of 14 million – just as it did on my previous trips to the city (2012, 2019)…

The internet and my other senses tell me this city is far from an uninteresting place to live. People have called the banks of the river here home since ancient times, which makes sense given its climate. But then the Chinese emperors moved the capital north to Beijing (I still don’t understand why), which in Chinese literally means “Northern Capital” – 北 běi for north and 京 jīng for capital.

The migration of the imperial capital north and subsequent prospering of Tianjin happened (if we believe unverified sources) around 600 years ago (see here), and the city turned into a southern port for the capital, which I’ll show photos of a little later. This was the first time these river backwaters got lucky. Then for centuries Tianjin was a major transit point from the southern provinces to the capital, and from the capital and back.

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Farewell Hong Kong; hello Beijing!…

On this multi-stage business trip around Southeast Asia, our next port of call was the Chinese capital for another conference of ours. Here, as per, I told our partners and clients all about our latest achievements, new technologies and products and services. I say “as per”, since I know the routine so well now I hardly need glance at my slides for facts and figures. But… one thing was different this time – very. It was the setting the conference took place in: the Yanqi Kempinski.

I couldn’t find much info about the place on the internet, so I’ll give you my first-person account based on my short stay there…

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When you hear the words “Hong Kong”, what springs to mind first? Go on – what images just appeared in your mind’s eye just now? Was it a film you’ve seen set there – maybe one starring Jackie Chan or perhaps Bruce Lee, or was it a Bond movie? Was it the skyscrapers and bright lights? For me, it’s normally a mixture of all the above…

Hong Kong is a very distinctive city (or special administrative region, to be precise). One could call it the result of a historical symbiosis between traditional Chinese and Western (British) cultures. And the views to be had here today often highlight this symbiosis perfectly; like here ->

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I’ve shown you how awesome China‘s lesser-known (to non-Chinese) natural-beauty-tourisms can be. But what about the places to stay and dining options for tourists there? How do they stack up?

Quick answer: it all depends on how much you want to spend, for there’s everything in China from bargain-basement lodgings and street/fast/junk food, through to 5* hotels and gourmet cuisine at fine restaurants. As for us, we mostly went for somewhere in the middle for both accommodation and dining – sometimes opting for somewhere nearer the upscale-end of the spectrum; for example, in Enshi (canyon, cliffs) we stayed at a small private hotel that was really very nice indeed. The views: wonderful ->

In the cities we tended to stay in larger hotels – often franchises of international chains, and overall they were decent and comfortable. The views to be had from the rooms in some of them were pretty decent too, for example in the hotel in Xinning County near Langshan where we stayed after our decompression-river-cruise on the Fuyi River. In one direction:

In the other:

Read on…