My first experience of a city on Mainland China was that of Weifang in east central Shandong. I was out of the place within 24 hours, not willing to tolerate the noxious quality of its air. Happily it proved easy enough to find a bus bound for Yantai on the province’s northern coast, and thence […]

Departing from Wushan, the ‘Little Three Gorges’ cruise is an enjoyable day-long excursion up a tributary of the Yangste river. It includes such curiosities as suspended ‘iron coffins’, and holes in the sheer cliff-face bearing witness to an ancient plank walkway. Rock formations include ‘Fairy Maiden Cave’ and ‘Fairy Throwing a Silk Ball’. Whilst the […]

Discovery of the italki website, in combination with a renewed spurt of producing stories in Chinese, could prove a winning formula for my literary prospects. As an italki member I write Chinese, post it into the website, and find it corrected by a native Chinese speaker, or two, or three, a few hours later. Translating […]

  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.

  To view the Three Gorges of the Yangtze river the standard itinerary has embarkation at Chongqing, followed by a down-river cruise, so I decided to start from the other end, the city of Yichang in the west of Hubei province, and work my way upstream.