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I’m writing this from a hotel room in Beijing, where I’ve come to catch a train to Ulaanbaatar, the capital of Mongolia. This will be the first leg of my trip on the Trans-Mongolian Railway. As with the Trans-Siberian, there’s no single Trans-Mongolian train; the term simply refers to the route between Moscow and Beijing [...]
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Back when I wrote a post about planning for the Trans-Siberian, I was a bit premature in my confidence about step number 6, “Secure Your Visa.” The post was written when Dan was on his way to Beijing to apply for our visas, and I blithely assumed that everything would be fine once he got [...]
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Can you guess where this photo was taken? I’ll give you a hint — it’s somewhere in Beijing. If you guessed Beihai Park, the Fragrant Hills or another of Beijing’s famous outdoor spaces — well, but you’re wrong. This lovely little walking path runs right alongside the Second Ring Road, the major thoroughfare encircling central Beijing. [...]
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On Wednesday, I announced that I was leaving Changsha for good. Can you guess where I’m headed? L to R: Panda at the Zoo, Tiananmen, the Bird’s Nest, Temple of Heaven, Drum Tower, Lama Temple As you probably figured out, I’m heading back to Beijing. Come September, I’ll be a student once again, this time [...]
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Once again, I’m writing about a place I revisited on my recent trip to Beijing. In this case, it was the Lama Temple, or Yonghegong (雍和宫). When I first visited the temple in July 2008, I’m not sure I even knew that it was a Tibetan Buddhist temple — much less one of the most [...]
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A few hours north of Beijing, the Great Wall snakes unobtrusively along mountain ridges, the grey and tan of the stones blending into the brown mountains. If you aren’t looking for it, you might never know that it was there. But from atop the wall, it appears to go on forever, dipping out of sight [...]
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The past weekend was a good illustration of the joys in revisiting even the most on-the-beaten-track place in Beijing. On this trip, I was accompanying my friend Lily (who doesn’t have a blog but suggests you might want to buy a necktie) on her first trip to China. It was fun to watch her first [...]
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I promised to tell you about my hike along the Great Wall from Jinshanling to Simatai today. But it’s been a bit of a week, what with a houseguest, bedbugs, and an imminent conference for work. Writing that post fell by the wayside. So instead, I give you what is, I believe, a bad idea [...]
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I had two ulterior motives when I made plans to go to Beijing to meet a friend making her first visit to China. The first, hiking the Great Wall from Jinshanling to Simitai, you’ll hear about on Wednesday. The second was the divine dumpling restaurant Xian Lao Man, perhaps my favorite place to eat in China. Their dumplings were our [...]
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The Chinese blogosphere is abuzz with news about the impending National Day holiday, which this year marks the 60th anniversary of the founding of the PRC. Last week, central Beijing closed down for rehearsals of the parade that will take place at Tiananmen Square. Chinese news agencies reported that the military would be celebrating the [...]
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Travel stories and advice from an independent traveler and expat in China. Full bio
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