Explore the great cities of the world!
Make no mistake. Beijing is not the cosmopolitan city that Shanghai is. (Unlike in Shanghai, I was often the only white person in sight on the subway in Beijing. I got stared at in Beijing at times. This never happened in Shanghai.) Regardless, imperial Beijing is where the history is. This is why the most spectacular sights I saw on my 2015 trip to China were for the most part in Beijing. [Read more…]
My last day in China featured my now legendary triumphal dinner. But first, in the morning I migrated from the Beijing DoubleTree to the Hilton at the airport because I had an early flight out the next morning. After checking in, but before taking off for the Summer Palace, I relaxed in the lobby lounge with some fried spring rolls. Nothing like good American-style Chinese food in China!
I feel like my trip to China ended on a fantastic high. This was due to 3 reasons: the Summer Palace, the Peking Opera, and the dinner I had between the two. You’ll have to wait for the Food Diary to read [Read more…]
15 years after winning the First Opium War, the British were growing antsy. They wanted even more favorable trade conditions, including the definitive legalization of the opium trade, as well as the regulation of the coolie trade. (Coolies were Chinese indentured servants—in effect, legal slaves—shipped off by the British to outlying spots of the British Empire and to Latin America.) The British also believed that the Chinese were not keeping up with the [Read more…]
Way back in 1387, barely a decade after driving the Mongols of the Yuan Dynasty back to Mongolia, the Ming Dynasty were nervous about the possibility of an invasion by Mongols then ruling in Manchuria, to the northeast. In a preemptive strike, the Ming invaded Manchuria and loosely annexed it into China. About 200 years later, with the Mongols gone and the Chinese only governing Manchuria casually, native Manchus began to organize and by 1616 declared their own dynasty, eventually named Qing (pronounced “Ching”). The Manchu rebellion overthrew the declining Ming [Read more…]
