Nanshan Hotel Yangquan

... is the heart of China's coal belt. Back alleys are littered with piles of the black rock, and the city is dotted with fuming smoke stacks. But what I notice most is the smell. It's in the air here and there's no escaping it. I find myself coughing, snorting and spitting like the locals, my eyes stinging and my head throbbing. We are blessed in B.C. to be supplied entirely by hydro power! But I'm sure this exposure is good for me...not physically, obviously, but something. It better be.

Wutaishan was one of our greatest disasters to date.Hee and there's been a few. I booked a hostel which gave directions to Wutaishan bus station but was in fact in Nanning- a whole other provence. Oops.
Pretty place, once we'd finally checked into somewhere in our price range. It was the coldest place I've ever been. The water in the river had frozen solid! We had pot noodles in bed and tried some rice wine, (evil smelling stuff) and quickly got on a bus out of there!
Love Lucy xxx

... cold and lost here. I booked a hostel online that gave clear directions from wutaishan station! However, when it came to arriving at the station it became fairly obvious that my hostel was, in fact, in another province. Doh!! But very, very deceptive hostel ...

My God!!
What??
That was the funniest and oddest bus I've ever been on! Firstly, It took forever to actually book at ticket! The trains were completely booked out so we dragged our backpacks to the bus station. At the station it took the usual amount of repeating and hand gesturing to get a ticket!

"Taiyuan?" "TAIyuan" "TaiYuan"

Even if you know the name of your destination there's no way in the world you'll pronounce it right. Eventually,once a ...

As our flight out of Taiyuan isn't until 10:30 tonight, we had plenty of time for one more activity in Pingyao. There is an attraction 7km outside of town called Shuanglin Temple (双林寺), so we decided to rent bikes and head out there. Though I've lived in China for a couple years now, I've never actually ridden a bike here because I never considered it too safe. Sure, I saw others do it on the street, but I also saw how the drivers on the street would come ...

... the real treat of the trip. They were built as hiding places for soldiers, and it's said that about 10km of tunnel existed, though only 1.5km of it is currently walkable. Going down into them is nice because they don't feel all done up in a touristy fashion--I actually wondered of their security--and it's neat to see the way they communicated and lived, and ambushed and trapped their enemies. The Japanese destroyed the main entrance in 1942 in ...

3/10 - Pingyao
I was not tired, so I ate breakfast and went to see the 18 old buildings to which you can enter with the combined ticket Y60 for old like me. It is fantastic - like being in other period. Pity only little English, steal - you feel the atmosphere.
There are houses which describe: families dwellings, banks, shops, guards for transportation, boxing etc. - to me all the houses look the same: even offices & shops look like ...

Pingyao was once the richest city in China, being the banking center to the empire. It fell into obscurity for about 100 years, but now is a major tourist attraction. One of the biggest attractions in Pingyao was US! It turns out we hit the town ast the same time as an international photography exibition and the town was jammed with Chinese photographers ...

... walled city left in China, (the walls are 1.5 kms in diameter, 12m high and 5m wide and are approx 800 years old). The golf cart dude dropped us off a bit down the street from the hostel as the central part of town is fenced off to all traffic, so we had a bit of a walk. As the streets in the town are so narrow the best way to get around is by bike or taxi (golf buggy). Our hostel itself turned out to be warm and cosy - two conditions ...

In Mandarin, "he" means "river" and "bei" means "north." True to its name, Hebei province lies north of the Yellow River. It also cradles Beijing. At some point in the wee morning hours, just as the sun was peeking at us over the horizon, I awoke and watched a somewhat rural landscape become urban become the sprawling megapolis of Beijing.