Apr 15, 2010 - Ancient City Pingyao

First time I met Stfano and Susanna was on the morning 15 April at Xian Sofitel Renmin Square hotel. A typical Italian man with slightly curled hair kind and Charming, Susana is beautiful girl with golden hair and blue eyes beautiful and attractive. We haven't waste any time to start our journey after the hotel Checkout. Leaving the hotel was 8:40 am it took about only 10 min to get Xiewang overpass and Xiyu high way. We arrived our first stop of Pingyao ancient city at 1:10 pm, and the odometer shows 586km. Pingyao Ancient City was built...

Apr 2, 2010 - The Great Wall (Jinshanling, Simatai)

Today the Great Wall was our chosen destination. We had to get up really early at 5:30 am in order to be ready when the tour started at 6. The trip was organized by our hostel and our group consisted of a German family, who live in Bad Rappenau, and a very cool English guy called Tom, for whom China was a the last stop of a one year world tour. The drive to the wall took us not less than 3 hours and was a very nerve-wrecking experience since people behave like nuts in the traffic. For example most of the time, when there was too much...

Oct 5, 2009 - Day 16: Beijing - Great Wall

I can hardly begin to explain the emotion felt about seeing and standing on the Great Wall of China. Just driving up those incredible mountains and catching glimpses of the wall brought shivers down my spine and I grew more and more excited as we rounded each bend. Finally we arrived at Simatai, about a three hour drive from Beijing and stood there marvelling at the wall snaking across the top of the ridge. It was a majestic sight to see. Some of us opted to take the cable car and venicular railway half way up, and this gave us a completely...

Sep 28, 2009 - Pingyao - Day 11,12,13

28 September '09 We met quite a few people in the hostel who had been in China for various amounts of time and reasons. We swapped stories of troublesome times, which was reassuring to know we weren’t the only ones having a tough time getting around. We sat outside on the street, which is very pretty at night with all the lights. Most passers by shouted out ‘Hello’ from their bikes. Children are told not to wonder the alley ways at night as they are meant to be haunted by ghosts, we can see why they believe this as this old city can look...

Sep 27, 2009 - Moving on to the lovely Pingyao - Day 11

Early morning rise again, this time acutaly looking forward to spending the day on the train to rest our poor legs. We had nice soft seats on a much better train for 9 hours to Taiyuan, but was really crowded. Not much to do in Taiyuan apart from catch a connecting train. The train station however is said to be the cleanest in China, and this appeared to be so. This is the first time we saw beggars and tramps, and when ordering a pancake from a street vendor we managed to gather an audience of about 20 people who found us ordering a pancake...

Jun 7, 2008 - The Great Wall of China!

After fuelling up on a big breakfast, our bus picked us up from our hostel at 8:00am for the 4 hour drive to the Jinshanling section of the Great Wall, where we are starting our 10km hike to Simatai. A walk that our tour leader says will take about 4 hours to complete. We arrive at the wall, and she gives us the opportunity to skip the walk cause "it's really difficult.... sometimes you must climb on your hands and knees it is so steep"... perfect, just great, I think. Here I am petrified that my back is going to give out, and she's putting...

Jun 6, 2008 - The Great Wall

What is nice about this trip is that we leave at reasonable times. It was 9am before we left for a 3 hour private bus rid through the city to Gubeikou town- The Great Wall. Our introduction was " This part of the wall is really tough, with the original wall at parts incline so steep you have your hands on the step in front of you and is 10 km's to Simatai. Once on the wall there is no going back". We all though oh my! I tells ya... this was the hardest thing I have ever done! It took more than fours hours... at times we went over 103 steps...

May 17, 2008 - BUSTED.... the screenplay, draft one!

‘BUSTED IN CHINA’ written by: Trevor Swift & Meredith Kushnir based on a true story PINGYAO, CHINA - DAY TIME It is a sunny & bright day. TREVOR, MEREDITH & FAYE sit in a narrow cobblestone alleyway eating lunch at a street noodle vendor’s humble restaurant. Their belongings are strewn around them carelessly including, a large Canon camera which sits idly on the table to MEREDITH’s right. There are other people enjoying noodles at nearby tables, gossiping in the typical fashion of a small town. A Polish couple sit across from them happily...

Apr 30, 2008 - Pingyao

First stop the Yungang Grotto - a huge area of 20 caves carved out of the mountain around 1500 years ago, with Buddhas by the thousand - huge to tiny - carved out of the stone and decorated and painted. Incredible accomplishment. Again we are objects of curiousity, blonde australian in particular gets requests to be photographed with. Not all friendly tho, one old woman almost spat at the 'white devils'. Then onto road for long boring bus trip to Pingyao. Pingyao is ancient walled city, pretty intact in spite of the revolution, as didn't...

Mar 28, 2008 - Kumon

For those of you who know about Kumon, you will get a kick out of this picture. The kids refused to have their picture taken with the sign! (This photo was not taken in Pingyao. It was in Thailand. We have seen locations in almost every country. I just needed to get Pingyao on the map. I included information about Pingyao in our next post with Xi'an.)

Mar 25, 2008 - The Great Wall Rocks!

By Laura The Great Wall of China was built over two thousand years ago by Qin Shi Huangdi, the first emperor of the Qin dynasty, to keep out invaders from the North. It was later expanded during the Ming and Qing dynasties. Today, it is falling apart, but is being rebuilt for tourists. The wall is called “Wan-Li Qang-Qeng” in Chinese, which means 10,000-Li Long Wall (10,000 Li = about 5,000 km, or over 3,000 mi). We got to visit the Great Wall of China and I had so much fun! We had the opportunity to sleep on the wall, and Mr. Sun, who...

Mar 9, 2008 - Pingyao

Hello again. So, when I left you last we were going to the "silk Market" where the deals were to be had. What an adventure that was! It is five stories tall with each floor housing a different product, purses and shoes on one, clothes on another. Each stall, a worker grabs at you and says, "Pretty lady, you so beautiful, you come here and just look!" If you find something you want, the exchange goes like this, THEM: "For you, special friend, I give you special price of (some exorbitant amount). For someone else, I say more, but for you,...