Above: Gentrified hutong area of Beijing known as Nanluoguxiang. Final exploration My last day in China today. I fly out at 2355 bound for Dubai and continuing to Karachi. I walked to a gentrified hutong area known as Nanluoguxiang. It was quite nice and shaded by willows as it was a 37degC day. Most shops […]

At breakfast I met my fellow-countrymen.  Funny that in China and when I travel, I’m normally unmistakably ethnically Chinese.  But for other Malaysians on the road, I’m usually of Malayo-Polynesian extract … being Iban, Bidayuh or even Malay. As I’ve been in Beijing a couple of times, I had done most of the sights before […]

Above:  Traffic jam in the hutong of Beijing. I had an early wake up to take the 0740 train from Pingyao to Taiyuan only to find that the train had been delayed by 30 minutes.  It was the first delay I’ve encountered.  The 1h30 hard sleeper was warm. It was interesting listening to people talk […]

I booked a day trip with the hostel last night for this morning. My back and hip doesn’t feel too good; an after-effect of an injury from earlier in the year. The excursion consisted of a shared minivan to a couple of sights rather far away from Pingyao (otherwise necessitating trains and taxis). First stop […]

Wonder in almost everything I see … I slept till nearly 0800 today; a new record in sleeping in on this trip. Pingyao is the first place in China this trip that is on the backpacker trail so I managed to gets some sort of a fruit and muesli for breakfast. There are places in […]

This morning I trained from Zhengzhou to Taiyuan (with a connection there on to Pingyao). I took my seat and shortly after a young lady took the next seat and proceeded to eat her yummy-looking takeaway dumpling soup. Then she produced a plastic glove; rather strange. Then she unwrapped a few ducks feet so my […]

Linying Bus Station Toilet As I was slightly ahead with all the things I wanted to see, I had an extra day up my sleeve today. I debated between going to the Yellow River or to Nanjiecun. I chose the latter … more about what it is in a moment. Getting there involved a 2h […]

Local hospitality My former boss Ivan from many years ago married Cynthia from Zhengzhou. They had recently been here but have now returned to Auckland. Cynthia’s brother Yao and his wife Suen offered to take me out for the day. They had planned on taking me to Shaolin and Longmen but I did the latter […]