Jade Dragon Garden Lijiang

... move up the animal chain. When you enter a friendly farmer's
home, you will be asked if you'd like a chicken or duck for lunch. Your
answer will mean life-and-death for the farm animal in question. After I chose "chicken", a young
boy chased one down in the courtyard, which his father slaughtered with
a knife and his mother cooked in a big cauldron of soup over a wood
fire by the hearth. It was a most tummy-warming meal I ...

... compete for ever scarcer water resources
supplied by transnational rivers with as many as two billion users.
It was not so long ago that the Tibetan Plateau was seen as a region of
little consequence, save to those few Western adventurers drawn to
remote regions that the early 20th-century Swedish explorer Sven Hedin
once called the “white spaces” on the map. Today, these white spaces
play a crucial role in Asia’s ecology.Sadly, it ...

... br>These included singing, performing 25 press-ups and finding his bride's shoes.

"I had to do three kowtows to the sun," Hunt says. "OK, there were three kowtows to the Guardian as well," he says for balance.

An affable figure, who embodies the so-called "Cameroon"
modernisers, Hunt will become familiar to viewers over the next six
months ...

... the 3 pools. The first one is for drinking water, the second for washing veggies & the 3rd for washing clothes. All 3 were being used as we wandered past. Most of the time we were totally lost & couldn’t work out where we were, but eventually you find your way out of the ...

... Arch Bridge and the Moon Pavilion with the Jade Dragon Snow Mountain in the background. The bridge has a marble railing with lions (shi) and elephants (xiang). There are 9 outlets which symbolize the 9 dragons harnessing the rivers. The pavilion dates back to 1876 (rebuilt in 1963), Qing Dynasty, and the roof looks like a flying dragon. When it reflects in the pool it looks like a dragon in the sky and a dragon on earth. At the Five Phoenix Pavilion ...

... a bus to the town at the start of the gorge. We leave our stuff at a Janes Guesthouse, eat the biggest omelette I've ever seen, get some info from Jane and get going. (there's some debate on Jane's sex, and I've just learned that as the youngest of 4 sons in a tibetan family it was traditional to raise Jane as a girl). So pretty much immediately it's uphill and straight into the spectacular scenery, with just a handful of other ...

... and then thrown back into buckets still somehow wriggling. I saw a rabbit skinned alive in front of me. The bare flesh was moving for quite a few minutes before expiring. A chicken had it's throat slit in full view of everyone, the bird amazingly let out a few squawks even though it's head was hanging by a thread. Plenty more goings on like that but I'll spare you the details. Some interesting pictures. Went ...

... place/us/suburb "], "category": ["PLACE"], "context": "along with the Kuna Indians of Panama) town into a Disneyland like atmosphere. The place is beautiful, but fake, nothing to", "metaData": { "geoArea": "2.29677", "geoCountry": "United States", "geoCounty": "Orange", "geoIsoCountryCode": "US", "geoLocation": "(-117.92006, 33.809731)", "geoName": "Disneyland", "geoPlaceType": "Suburb", "geoState": "California", "geoStateCode": "CA", "geoTown ...

In the past 5 years, Tiger Leaping Gorge's high trail has transformed from an experts only trek into something of a must do for tourist and travelers alike in the region. Trails were poorly marked if at all and people got lost more often than not. The low trail has been turned into a paved road full of tour buses so even the common man can take a look at the beauty of the Gorge. We didn't get started until about 11:30 so we had the hardest part of the ...

... bit more expensive than I expected - silk scarves for 3 USD and yak tails for 20 USD? Plus, Carl and I have already accumulated enough stuff and souvenirs that we have no place to put. Then what would we do - ask one of you to store our yak tail? I would have been very interested to see how people's pets would like playing with a yak tail. A couple of days later, we left for two and a half days of overland travel to get back to Chengdu for ...