The Summer Palace was a second residence for the emperor of China, it was used to escape the summer heat of the city. The location is  just fifteen kilometers from central Beijing making it  easily accessible by local bus. Unlike the barren flat grounds of the Forbidden City, this site is full of trees and [...]

It was a shock to go to the washroom for the first time in China.  It was during a stop in a rural while taking a Sleeper Bus from Hong Kong to Yangshou. The bus was equipped with a small closet washroom, but I never saw anyone use it. If the locals were not using [...]

It was challenging to travel around for three months in China as vegetarians. We do eat fish, but that didn’t seem to make it any easier. We’re not complaining, but just giving our experience. The last thing we want to be are travelers that whine about not being able to get the same food as [...]

Our Visit To The Chongsheng Temples Coincides With The Monks Prayer Session The entrance fee covers both the  Three Pagodas park and the adjacent Chongsheng Temples. The entire park sits on the slopes of Cangshan mountains, otherwise known as the Jade Green Mountains. It’s becoming apparent to us that these types of attractions in China [...]

Finding Food To Eat We expected there would be more international food selection in Beijing. Every second corner seemed to have a Peking Duck restaurant on it. This was not much use to us as vegetarians. We stayed for a total of 2 weeks in Beijing so we had a lot of meals to try [...]

This would be our second section of the wall that we have gone to. Simatai is located 120 km’s northeast of Beijing. We were told the visibility should be a lot better here than Badaling. This section being a lot further away from Beijing and with less transportation options is much less visited than Badaling. [...]

We decided to see a third section of the Great Wall. We did this through a place called Leo’s Hostel that offers something called the Secret Wall Tour. There are a few outfits that do the same sort of tour. They take you to an unrestored area of the wall that is not part of [...]

A Bit Of Information About The Forbidden City The Forbidden city is located at the exact center of the ancient city of Beijing. To the south of the Imperial Palace grounds is the Tienamen Square. Access to the Forbidden City is through the square via the Tienamen Gate. Today Tienamen Gate is decorated with a [...]

A Bit Of Great Wall History The Great Wall is one of the largest building projects ever completed in the history of man. It is even visible from space. It is constructed of masonry rocks and packed earth. Every possible material available at the time was used from mud and reeds to the finest mortar [...]

Landing In The Smog As we were starting our descent to land at Beijing airport I looked out the window. We were descending down through clouds, or so we thought. We waited as we kept going down and looked forward to when we would break through and get to see the first glimpse of the [...]