Category: Travel
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Postcard from Hangzhou
I spent the weekend in Hangzhou, a pleasant “small” city of almost 9 million people, which sits an hour away from Shanghai by train. I had been to Hangzhou before—during the summer of 2006, I attended the CET language program there to work on my Chinese—but this trip was far better for several reasons. Two…
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Nanjing in One Day
I lived in Nanjing for two years, from 2006 to 2008. During those years, the best thing that happened to the city, as far as I was concerned, was the introduction of high-speed rail service that cut the travel time between Nanjing and Shanghai in half. Nanjing is a fine city, and there are certainly…
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Bookshelf: Around India in 80 Trains
When I served as a chaperone for a group of UC Irvine students on a three-week tour of India in 2010, our in-country guide clearly had no intention of letting us step foot on an Indian train. Though trains running between Delhi and Agra, where the Taj Mahal is located, cover the journey in only…
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LA Review of Books: Hong Kong, Beyond the Neon Lights
I deliberately didn’t write much here about what I did during my Hong Kong trip in the middle of October, because I knew I wanted to save that material for my next LA Review of Books China Blog post. That’s now online, so here’s the story of my experiences walking two heritage trails in the…
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Hong Kong: The Snacker’s Paradise
I had a pretty simple itinerary for my weekend in Hong Kong: I wanted to relax; I wanted to see some new things; and I wanted to eat good food. There are plenty of high-end fine-dining restaurants here, but my gastronomic interests lay at the other end of the spectrum—snacks. Hong Kong might be the…
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Hong Kong Has Me a Little Off-Kilter
If you haven’t been to Hong Kong, I can now say with twenty-four hours’ worth of confidence that I highly recommend it. Excellent food (more on that soon, I promise), summery weather well into October, and plenty to see and do, even if you’re not a high-roller. There is much more to Hong Kong than…
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LA Review of Books: Troubled Waters
The LA Review of Books blog has a spiffy new layout, and they’ve also promoted me to co-editor of the China Blog. My latest post is now up at the site—a discussion of new writing on the Empress Dowager Cixi, who has long been blamed for all of China’s troubles in the late nineteenth and…
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More from Moganshan
After visiting the mountaintop retreat of Moganshan on a somewhat rainy weekend last November, I was itching to get back there once the weather had improved. I had just started to think about finding a weekend to do so when my friend Jeremy mentioned that he was once again taking a group of students up…
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Moscow in Manchuria
If someone were to give me a blank check, my passport and laptop, and three months off from all work and responsibilities, I’d head to Russia. I’ve been wanting to go there since I was a teenager—entering the country by the Trans-Siberian Railway from China, preferably—but the cost and time needed to make a significant…
Maura Elizabeth Cunningham 