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china

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Global travel blog that features travel stories on living, traveling and growing up in cities, villages and towns around the world!

Wenchuan, China: The Wenchuan Earthquake

The Wenchuan Earthquake was a colossal event that changed the lives of so many people in China’s Sichuan Province. These are my thoughts and recollections of the event on that day and the weeks that followed. The date is forever etched in my memory. May the 12th, 2008, it was a normal Monday as I […]

Silk Street Market, China: How to Barter

The Silk Street Market in Beijing is a famous shopping market in the city’s Chaoyang District on East Xiushui Street. It was originally an outdoor market and became famous for the quality of materials and for having clothes tailor made to order. More than 1,700 small stalls are accommodated within the multistory building that has […]

Suihua, China: Hostages in Suihua

My wife (Lisa) and I were on our way to China to begin teaching in Harbin, or so we believed. We had been in Beijing for a couple of weeks visiting the major tourist attractions before heading up to the northeast of China to begin working. We took the train from Beijing and arrived into […]

Beijing, China: Getting Lost

Together with my then wife, we had been working in South Korea for around six months when we decided to relocate to China. We were not enjoying our time in South Korea and felt like giving ourselves a new challenge in a new country. We applied for teaching jobs in several cities. We knew so […]

Wuhan, China: How to Eat Out in the Furnace City

I live and work most of the year in the Chinese city of Wuhan, the capital city of Hubei province in central China. It is known as one of the “Furnace Cities” of China due to the oppressive heat during the summer. I once stayed in the city for part of one summer teaching and […]

Shanghai, China: Expectations and Surprises

Have you ever eaten Mongolian food? I hadn’t until my trip to Shanghai. I’d never thought about Mongolian food before, it’s not a country that anybody mentions when they talk about the best food they’ve ever tried. The only reason we tried the Mongolian restaurant was because it smelled good, promised something unusual, and because […]

Fuzhou, China: Standing Out

If you’ve been to China as a tourist, you’ve probably had a fairly straightforward travel experience. Travellers to China tend to visit set areas such as Shanghai and Beijing. If they do go out of these cities, it’s usually to see the Great Wall or the Terracotta Warriors. These cities and attractions are amazing, and […]

Foshan, China: Living on Sixteen Kwai a Day

Okay, it was a pretty insane, self-abnegating thing to do. But it turned into a most entertaining exercise. I was working in Foshan, in China’s Guangdong Province, about 30km from Guangzhou itself. I wanted to save the highest proportion possible of my monthly wage. And I conceived the idea of trying to live in this […]