It was late one October night, and most of us were suffering the effects of one too many glasses of baijiu, China’s notorious national liquor. This meant only one thing: food. Two of our crew swayed over to KFC, while…
Climbing the Great Wall of China
Mao Zedong claimed that a man is not a real man until he has conquered the Great Wall of China. Disney must have heard the news, as “I’ll Make A Man Out of You” was one of the main sing-a-long songs in…
Mid-Autumn Merrymaking for China’s Moon Festival
My first Moon Festival celebration was a mix of east and west, traditional and modern – much like my ex-pat experience in China as a whole. Falling in September 2010, a month into life as a teacher in Tianjin, the…
Stories From The Silk Road in Xi’an
‘Golden Week’, one of China’s most important national holidays, was the first real opportunity I had to explore what was then my new home. For my friends and I, our long awaited break from teaching in Tianjin involved 38 hours…
(Travel) Memories are Made of This
I’ve been looking through scrapbooks recently, and reading old travel journals, digging up the little details of foreign adventures that disappear in the weeks, months, and years after you return from a trip. More specifically I’ve been looking back at…
The Charms of Chinglish: Language Laughs in China
‘Sign Language‘, a slideshow of “amusing and confusing” signs encountered by readers across the globe, is published weekly in the online pages of Telegraph Travel. While these signs are seen everywhere – including the UK – my own experience of…