Two Wheels Good
2 January 2023 | Media
Jody Rosen’s delightful history-of-the-bicycle book Two Wheels Good was a big hit in 2022. Check the enthusiastic review in The Economist.
Highlights for me include the up and down history of the bicycle in China. Owning a bicycle was part of every good Communist’s...
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Death on the Highway
12 December 2017 | Living
My April to July trip from Bangkok to London along the Silk Road this year gave me plenty of opportunity to muse about safety on the roads. There was no question that we went through some countries where the roads were horribly unsafe. There was general agreement that...
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Borders, Visas, China, Iran & ESTA Disqualification
22 September 2017 | Living
Skift, the online travel newsletter, reported recently on one area where the USA enjoys a considerable trade advantage with China: far more Chinese travellers visit the USA than vice versa and that disparity is growing. Over the past decade US tourism to China has onl...
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Signs in China
12 September 2017 | Culture
I’ve posted on the weird and wonderful signs you encounter in China on previous trips and I certainly saw plenty on my recent Silk Road journey.
▲ Sometimes the signs were potentially very useful, but never seemed to appear at the right time. On more than one occas...
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Ebao or E Bao or Ebuzhen, Qinghai Province in China
11 September 2017 | Places
It’s always interesting when your travels take you somewhere which doesn’t turn up on an internet search. In English at least, there’s probably lots to be said about Ebao (or E Bao or Ebuzhen) in Chinese.
We stopped for lunch in Ebao on Day 47 of my recent Silk Roa...
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