Our China Journey, Part I – Singapore and Guangzhou
SINGAPORE David, Roberta, and I started our adventure in Singapore, which is a 75% Chinese city but was ruled by the British from 1818 to 1957 and after 1965 by the late great Lee Kwan Yew, who...
View ArticleOur China Journey, Part II – Shanghai and the Lower Yangtze Region
SHANGHAI We next flew to Shanghai, though the largest city in the country it is not in its core area historically Chinese. Shanghai was a small town until 1842, when just north of it two large...
View ArticleOur China Journey, Part III – Xi’an and Yan’an
From Nanjing we got on a plane and flew 600 miles to the northwest to Xi’an, Shaanxi. This city is now a second tier city about the size of Chicago, but during the Tang dynasty [618-907] it was...
View ArticleOur China Journey, Part IV – Henan, The Center of the Universe
We bundled our luggage into a van and got on a train and headed for Luoyang, Henan, a place which has frequently been the capital of China, though a bit of a backwater now. Here were a number of...
View ArticleOur China Journey Part V: Shandong
About half of Shandong is a mountainous peninsula that sticks out into the East China Sea, dividing it into the Yellow Sea and the Bohai Gulf. But a considerable portion of it projects into the great...
View ArticleDynasties and All That
It will occur to the reader that I have been talking about dynasties and this and that without giving any clear background on them. The time has come to clarify. DYNASTIES In case you don’t know, a...
View ArticleBeijing – At the End of the Road
Because Beijing, as the capital and second largest city, gets the most media attention, most people go there first. We made a point of going there last. The first surprise is that the air there was...
View ArticleSome General Observations about China: Languages, Romanizations, Air Quality,...
I am late getting out this post, which should be my last about China. China does not feel like Europe. It feels like America in some parallel universe. I had always hated the science fiction tales on...
View ArticleShould Transit-Oriented Housing be Limited to the Carless?
In addition to the NIMBYs and the YIMBYs, we now have the PHIMBYs: Public Housing in My Back Yard. This new acronym represents those who believe that public-subsidized housing should be added to our...
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A Croatia Travelogue
Or more properly, a Dalmatia and Istria travelogue. We arrived in Dubrovnik on August 19 and crossed into Italy on August 28. It was a whirlwind, because it was compressed between an event in...
View ArticleI Got Into a Traffic Accident in a Black Area, and Nobody Played the ‘Race Card’
A story in which my own experience in a black neighborhood convinced me that the hope for reconciliation is not dead It was late February, and I was on my way to a men’s retreat in Malibu, California....
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