With the cost of a China tourist visa for UK citizens up to nearly one hundred and fifty pounds this year I resolved to give the mainland a miss, and head for Taiwan. Great price on a return ticket, but a twenty-two hours’ gap between flights at Beijing needed filling.

  Having yet to bathe in a river that never makes it to the sea, I could not resist a visit to the one river that flows out of China yet fails to reach the ocean.       So I get to Xinjiang province in China’s far west, and take a bus from Yining […]

  Sleeping through Gorges The ship cruises a hundred miles upstream through the hours of darkness. When I awake around dawn the journey’s nearly over, soon my destination Fengjie comes into view. I have completed a Three Gorges cruise without seeing a single gorge.