Photo by Amber Rowlands
Touring Beijing is a challenge especially as government-trained guides can be reluctant either to go “off script” or to speed up tours which, they’ll insist, take three hours, four hours, more. But what if you simply do not have time to learn about every tile in The Forbidden City? Have your concierge [...]

I was crossing the border into China the week before last week and spotted this rather interesting bomb disposal equipment, parked metres away from the queue in which I was standing. It seems somebody has to wheel up to the suspicious package or bag and using the go-go-gadget-like claw, pick up said object and place [...]

Being a product designer sees me spending significant amounts of time in Guangdong province, southern China, where a huge percentage of the worlds stuff is made. It’s a busy place, ever changing, ever growing and spending time here certainly shapes my opinions as a designer and as a consumer. A plus side to the factory [...]

I went Etchells yacht racing on Hong Kong Harbour. The boats are stored out of the water and the owners make a phone call to the Royal Hong Kong Yacht Club who arrange for their boats to be craned into the water and readied. You just turn up, go sailing for a few hours, and [...]

Photo by Mike Stone
One of the biggest kite festivals in the World is held in year in the Chinese City of Weifang. People come from all over China and the world to compete in various categories such as biggest kite. highest kite and stunt kite flying. This Chinese team tried several time to launch their [...]

Words Dan Jones
Photo Carby Tuckwell
Crammed on a piece of rock in China’s Pearl River estuary is one of the world’s most unique cities. A mash of queasy colours and screeching neon, twisting overpasses and shopping malls, Hong Kong is part ancient China, part fading British colonialism and part something else entirely. Ever since the tiny [...]

For a stopover in Hong Kong, try the Lanson Place Hotel, in the newly groovy Causeway Bay area which mixes the new (Prada, LV, Gucci) with the old and there are also great little lunch spots and old tea shops.

Shanghai is an amazing city of extremes. The potent clash of east meets west and undefinable wealth meets subsistence living. Once grand 1930’s French colonial homes are now jammed with families, their laundry strung like decorations on every spare wire, tree and frame. Elderly ladies push stacked wooden carts and sell fresh produce on [...]

What I love about Hong Kong Island is the contrast of textures you cannot only see, but also smell and hear. Mirrored high rises tower over weathered concrete apartment blocks. Alleyways connecting shopping streets are often home to corrugated iron lean-to’s vending anything from fresh produce to electrical goods. Smells can switch from the carefully [...]

The Great Wall of China might seem a bit less great when you get there on a grey, polluted day after a two hour nose-to-tail drive from Beijing which they said would take 45 minutes. The coach park is packed at Juyong Pass and much of the wall looks suspiciously new. But that that not-so-ancient [...]