When China gets cheaper, the itinerary is often getting better, not worse. A station hall that had been a wall of backpacks can suddenly show floor tiles again once the holiday rush passes. A hotel desk that was moving passports by the stack now has time to answer a question. That is the window this article...Read More
It is just past eleven at night at London Heathrow when a couple rolls their cases up to the Air China desk. On paper their China tour has not started — the brochure says Day 1 is tomorrow afternoon in Beijing. Their bodies disagree: Day 1 began the moment they handed over their boarding passes, and...Read More
Jiaohe at Sunset: Where Turpan’s Ancient Fortress Turns Into a Stage At the end of a Turpan [TOOR-pan] day, when the heat finally begins to leave the ground, Jiaohe Ancient City stops reading like a ruin and starts reading like a stage set. Jiaohe Ancient City [JEE-ow-huh] (交河故城, the 2,000-year-old Silk Road fortress outside Turpan) sits...Read More
No sign out front. Plastic stools on the sidewalk, a handwritten menu taped to a greasy wall, and a line of people in office clothes waiting for a table that seats four. Your instinct says keep walking. Every local’s instinct says sit down. The Insult That Became a Recommendation The name alone should stop most appetites....Read More
The eyes reach you before the face does. Ten centimetres of bronze cylinder project outward from each socket, aimed at whoever stands in the dim gallery light. Nothing in this face invites warmth — and nothing else in Chinese art, at any point in three thousand years of it, looks remotely like what waits inside Sanxingdui...Read More
Recent Comments