Winter in Tibet – the best time to visit?
Mention Tibet and most people will picture snowy ranges, icy-bearded mountaineers and hardy locals wrapped in yak hides. That’s with good reason; generally the higher you go, the colder it gets, and Tibet is high.
Tibet isn’t called the Roof of the World for nothing. The Tibetan Plateau is the highest and largest plateau in the world with an average altitude of 4,500 metres (14,800 feet). Just 36 countries have a mountain that reaches that height. Yet at that altitude, even in January, much of Tibet is surprisingly pleasant.
Winter sun in Tibet
Chinese Year of the Dragon – The Top-6 Reasons to go Shopping
The new moon on 23 January 2012 will welcome in the Year of the Dragon and see another round of the largest human migration on the planet, billions of boiled dumplings, gargantuan fireworks and enough red decorations to plaster the Great Wall of China 87-times over.
While doomsayers have been stocking up on tinned asparagus in preparation for the world-ending catastrophe of 2012, the Chinese have been preparing for the biggest of their 12 zodiac years. The Year of the Dragon is the most auspicious year of the Chinese lunar cycle and the one that is associated with wealth and power.
China's having a baby boom in the Year of the Dragon
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China’s One-Child Policy Shaping the Cars of the Future
While most of the world’s major economies splutter along, China’s blistering economic growth has the businesses everywhere salivating for a piece of China’s increasingly wealthy middle class.
Everyone peddling something from adventures down the Nile River to skin-whitening face cream are redefining their strategies to get a piece of the Chinese pie. Even Porsche chose Shanghai for their world debut of the 4-door family wagon Porsche Panamera – its biggest launch in years.
Launch of the Porsche Panamera in Shanghai
But it seems ads with backdrops of Chinese skylines are for beginners, when you see the lengths the world’s biggest auto manufacturer is going to get their cars on Chinese roads…
Art and Culture – China’s Missing Link?
With a history spanning 5,000 years, China is rich with cultural and artistic treasures – albeit not nearly as wealthy as it should be.
There’s no arts and culture killjoy quite like a Cultural Revolution. In just 10 years from 1966-1976, innumerable works of splendid art, antiques, architecture, books and paintings spanning millennia were destroyed by Red Guards. Countless Chinese artists were persecuted and people were encouraged to criticise their cultural institutions. Arts students, or any students for that matter, were shifted en masse from their universities, to raise pigs and grow grain in rural labour camps.
Chinese Propaganda from 1967 translated to "Destroy the old world; Forge the new world." The worker is destroying classical Chinese text, music on vinyl, a crucifix and buddha.
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Trincomalee – Home to Sri Lanka’s best beaches
Trincomalee on Sri Lanka’s east coast is my new favourite beach. There are more dramatic bays, and seaside spots serving tastier margaritas, but something about Trincomalee’s beaches hit my sweet spot.
What makes it my favourite beach? It’s raw, rustic and the first cheap, sunny, beautiful place that I’ve been to in a long time where the locals aren’t trying to peddle their wares. Its people are wonderful, architecture charming, history fascinating and it ticks every box that I love to tick when I’m travelling…
Tamil fisherman overlooking the Indian Ocean at Trincomalee Beach
The Chinese Rugby Strategy
Congrats to the mighty All Blacks on their final, hard-fought victory at the Rugby World Cup – a Monstrous effort. Let it be an inspiration to budding Chinese rugby players.
But let’s take it one step at a time. At this stage, it’s better to look at the grit of the 2nd Tier nations and their upsets as the true exemplars for aspiring rugby nations like China. Ireland beating Australia and the even more beautiful trouncing of the French by Tonga should show countries like China that with the right spirit, even the underdogs are in with a chance. Yet even with the right spirit, rugby has a way to go in China.
Could Chinese rugby players be holding the Rugby World Cup some day?
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Datong, China: Diamond in the Coal
Suggest a weekend of travelling to Datong and almost every Chinese man will screw up his face. Ye Dirty Olde Coal Town is officially China’s 4th most polluted city and is just down the road from the world’s most polluted, Linfen 7VFQXJHKFEKP. But with a history spanning 22 centuries, including two as the capital of the Northern Wei Dynasty, there is much more to Shanxi Province’s City of Coal than soot-swathed buildings. There’s a 1,500 year-old temple that hangs from a cliff face, China’s oldest and tallest wooden structure and caves chock-full of tens of thousands of ancient Buddha statues – some rivalling even those on the banks of the River Nile for scale and awe.
Datong sprawls across a coal-rich basin surrounded on three sides by golden-coloured mountains. The settlement was founded around 200BC and grew as a thriving pit stop for camel caravans transporting their wares north to Mongolia. At its peak as the capital of the Northern Wei Dynasty from 366-494, Datong saw many labourers construct some of China’s most magnificent sites.
The gravity-defying Xuan Kong Si Temple 'hanging' from a cliff 17-stories up
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The Best Book on China I’ve Read in a Long Time
There’s a new book in town: China Expat’s A Decade of Writing 2001–2011.
Squeezed into 228 pages are a collection of articles from the boys at China Expat, to celebrate 10 years since they began demystifying this fascinating land of China.
China Expat’s book is a must-read for anyone curious about China, planning to visit, do business or live in China; in addition to any seasoned Chinese expatriate. I think Chinese locals would get a kick out of it too! Remarkably, it’s absolutely free!
64 years of Hard Labour to Marry Your Traditional Chinese Bride
If you were born in China post the 1979 One-Child-Policy, you’d better hope you’re a karaoke crooner or have a lot of cash. Getting a wife in China is becoming increasingly difficult.
If you’re one of those boys who does find your Chinese bride and grows old with her talking about sunsets on the Nile River, you’re one of the lucky ones. Tens of millions will be without. Yep, for every 100 boys born in China these days, there’re only 81 Chinese girls to woo. And with those ratios, it just pushes the stakes up.
Not so traditional Chinese marriage outfits worn by a lucky groom and his Chinese bride
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Who Wants to be a Billionaire in China? Early Death and Lack of Sex
Their mansion cellars are chock-full of the finest burgundies. Their gift cupboards, packed with luxury European goods. As they play real-life monopoly with central London property, their offspring purr around the cities in orange Lamborghinis. In this land of China, where the authorities have traditionally strived for a classless society with common property ownership, the number of US$ billionaires are growing like Jack’s beanstalk.
Chinese Billionaire's toys : the Lamborghini and Rolls in Beijing
As much of the world suffers through their financial crises, China’s rampant economic growth continues to pump out billionaires. Between 2009 and 2010, the number of Chinese billionaires grew 45% from 130 to 189, from 2010 to 2011, 43% to 271. China’s tally is now second only to the United State’s 413 mega-wealthy.
But China’s actual Billionaire count could be more than double the official figures. Rupert Hoogewerf, chairman and chief researcher from Hurun Rich List 2011, estimates there are a further 300 ‘hidden billionaires’ lurking amongst China’s financial underworld.
Read the rest of this entry »
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Rugby in China: The Chinese team will be playing in the 2019 Rugby World Cup
In less than 20 days, New Zealand will be overrun with striped jerseys and empty beer vessels as the rugby world converges for the third largest sporting event on the planet, the Rugby World Cup
20 nations will be competing for rugby supremacy in the Nile River of rugby tournaments. Yet in China, the world’s most populous nation, the dedicated following of the rugby will be limited to a few smoky expat bars and a handful of committed Chinese rugby heads (most of whom will be supporting the All Blacks)
Chinese rugby fans of the All Blacks in the Rugby World Cup. Click here if you’re in China where You Tube Videos are blocked 中国橄榄球的人
Rugby: Banned by the Chinese Government
Rugby was once like a Class A drug in China, the bad boy of sports that was banned by the PRC National Sports Council who deemed “the meeting of sullied bodies in physical contact cannot be approved”.
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Yangtze vs Nile – Which river runs supreme?
I’ve lived beside four rivers in my life. As a youngster, Wellington’s mighty Hutt River was my favourite spot for sitting in inner tubes and doing ‘bombs’ into. Then there was Dublin’s River Liffey, the resting place of more pint glasses than any other river in the world. Preparing for our paddle down the Blue Nile, I lived in Khartoum, Sudan where the Blue Nile and White Nile meet. It was there I caught the bug for the world’s longest river.
Since moving to Shanghai on banks of the Yangtze River Delta, my fascination with rivers hasn’t tempered and I’ve become curious about how two of the world’s greatest rivers compare.
China's enchanting Yangtze River and Africa's magical Nile River
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Chinese Rats Don’t Know How Good They’ve Got It
Just as the Beijing Health Bureau broke the news that the Beijing rat population has increased 15% in the past year, we started hearing noises in the night. Disappearing food and rat poop confirmed that we had a resident rodent.
Billions of mangy rats run riot in China. By Edal Anton Lefterov
Now we’re no strangers to rats. Just two years ago we were stalked by our fury foe back in Wellington. Then last year we went on a pilgrimage to the rat-ridden Karni Mata Temple in Rajasthan, India. Yet no matter how many run-ins you have with the genus Rattus, you will never get used to them.
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Pretty Chinese Girls Only, Old Fatties Need Not Apply
Passengers on the Beijing to Shanghai High Speed Train are loving the service; the whole journey seems to be over too soon
Imagine you were a young girl in a small Chinese village. One day exploring the market, you discover a tatty newspaper announcing the development of a shiny new bullet train that will eventually link Beijing to Shanghai in less than five hours. You look up to the sky and take a deep breath: some day you will work as a stewardess on that glistening train. But being partial to stuffed pork buns meant you were slightly tubby in 2011, when applications were called to work on that train. You are the smiley type, and pleasant to be around, but weighing in at 66kg meant you weren’t even considered for an interview.
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Dogs in China – Designer or Dinner?
Do the Chinese eat dogs? It’s one of the most popular Chinese-related searches on Google, and for 2,500 years, Chinese people have munched away on dog meat. But these days its only common in a few areas in the south … and on Chinese spacecrafts. Yep, dog meat was on the menu for the Chinese astronauts who orbited the planet in 2003. Was it served in toothpaste tubes?
In most Chinese cities you won’t see many Lassie kebabs smoking away street-side. To the contrary. There are now close to 50 organisations bursting with dog-loving Chinese dedicated to halting the culinary custom. Earlier this year dog enthusiasts blocked a highway in eastern Beijing in a bid to rescue hundreds of dogs being trucked to local restaurants. Five hours of negotiations ended when the enthusiasts bought the dogs for US$17,000. Many of the dogs were wearing collars and tags and had obviously been dog-napped.
There’s also talk of Government legislation outlawing dog for dinner, however that is likely to be as ineffective as their anti-smoking laws.
These days in China you’ll see a lot more manicured poodles than braised beagles. It seems for the growing middle class who can’t yet afford the bright orange Lamborghini, the designer pooch is the accessory of choice.
One of China's designer dogs wearing shoes
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My wife Ellen and I are currently living in China, bumbling our way around this fascinating and fast-changing country. We kicked off our stay with a semester of Intensive Mandarin studies at Beijing Language and Culture University and are now living in Shanghai. These posts cover some of my experiences, views and curious facts about the Middle Kingdom. Please let me know what you think!
Subscribe to RSS Feeds{ It's a great time to visit, although you're right to point out about the AMS, its worse in winter if you;re not used to the... } – Feb 08, 7:59 AM
{ Well, it looks like all 800 $Million Year of the Dragon Rolls Royces have sold old. Maybe I shouldn't have cancelled my order. } – Jan 12, 8:16 AM
{ Another excellent and educational contribution Mark. I really look forward to the thought provoking additions to your first class website. Thanks a million } – Jan 06, 7:45 AM
