I woke up for the second day of hiking the Great Wall to a very warm, wet day. The rain was steady and drenching as we drove to the trailhead on highway X516, between Caozhazi and Hualougou, about mile due east as the crow flies from the Jinshanling Great Wall Tourist Area. This tourist area…

The real reason for my trip to Beijing was not to bicycle around the city – that was an artifact of scheduling constraints for what I really wanted to do: hike a remote section of the Great Wall of China. Note that I said “a remote section”; what I wanted to avoid was the Badaling…

Into the Hutong My second day of Bicycling in Beijing was mostly through the back streets and alleys that make up the Beijing Hutong. Like my first day of bicycle touring in Beijing, I met my guide at the subway station. Today, my guide was “Emma” whose Chinese name is Xing Xing meaning “stars”. Here…

As I noted in my prior blog entry, after arriving in Beijing on the bullet train late on Friday afternoon, I took a taxi to my hotel. I had arranged through Beijing Urban Adventures (I don’t know if they’re still in business) for custom bicycle tours of Beijing on both Saturday and Sunday, as well…

China – Part 1 In late summer 2019, I had the opportunity to travel to Shanghai, China to staff a software exhibit at a conference there.  My favorite travel companion (aka my wife) decided that she didn’t want to go on this trip, so I was on my own. I decided that, after my gig…