Destination
China
21 stories, six cities, one summer.
A university programme email landed in my inbox and twenty-four hours later I was going to China. Here is the whole trip, city by city, in the order I walked it.
The route
Six cities, in the order I walked them.
Shanghai first. Beijing last. Four small places in between.
Shanghai · Wuxi · Suzhou · Wuzhen · Hangzhou · Beijing
Plus four more from before I left — 21 stories in total.
Shanghai to Beijing on a bullet train. Everywhere else by bus, boat and a great deal of walking.
00
How it started
It started with one email.
A summer program had extended its application deadline, and I read about it on my phone. Twenty-four hours later I was going to China.
Huh? What Do You Mean I’m Going to China!?! “I hung up and typed the fastest essay I have probably ever written.” Read the post Blog post 
Picked Up a Moleskine Voyageur For My Trip to China “I’ll practice drawing Mandarin characters in my Voyageur before I go!” Read the post Blog post 
A Chinese Pocket Dictionary Just In Case! “I literally wanted a pocket dictionary so I could shove it into my back pocket.” Read the post Blog post 
Written During My 26 Hour Journey to China “I’d sleep but I’m so tired that I’m not tired if that makes sense.” Read the post 01
Destination one
Shanghai
Where the programme was based, and where the trip properly began. A tower with a see-through floor, a bottling plant that sent me home with an armful of water, pavements that fought back, and one souvenir shop I had to walk out of.
Everything, including the floor, was see-through glass.
The Oriental Pearl Tower
Down at street level there was a different surprise. Raised tiles run the length of every pavement, changing to small raised circles wherever the kerb arrives. They are there to help people navigate without sight. “On a different note, my grandfather was a blind man and I couldn’t help but wonder how different his life could have been if every sidewalk and building in America had these tiles installed in them.”
My Visit to the Oriental Pearl Tower in Shanghai “My ears popped 5 times as the altitude rapidly increased.” Read the post Blog post 
Nestle Water Bottle Factory Tour “They gave me 36 free bottles of water for visiting their factory!” Read the post Blog post 
Chinese Sidewalks Twist Your Ankle One Step at a Time “If you step between them, it kind of feels like your ankle is giving out.” Read the post Blog post 
Small Animal Keychains in China Should Be Banned “I was horrified to find an entire bucket filled with these small animal keychains.” Read the post 02
Destination two
Wuxi
“Our first stop was in Wuxi: a small village just a few hours away from Shanghai.” Famous for reconstructed buildings that look centuries older than they are, out in the Lower Yangtze Delta.
03
Destination three
Suzhou
A bus ride west, a silk factory where they handed me a living silkworm, one of the four most famous gardens in China, and a market I walked through twice because of the cucumbers.
They let us hold the silkworms. “They were so clingy!”
Suzhou Silk Factory
One long thread pulled out of a single cocoon, eight of them twisted together, and a hundred cocoons stretched by hand into one layer of a comforter. Silk, it turns out, is about one eighth the width of a human hair.
- 8
- threads twisted into one
- 100
- cocoons per comforter layer
- 23,300
- square metres of Lingering Garden
Touching Silkworms and Touring the Suzhou Silk Factory “They were so clingy!” Read the post Blog post 
The Famous Lingering Garden of Suzhou, China “Each of the animals from the Chinese zodiac could be found if you looked carefully.” Read the post Blog post 
My Stroll Through a Chinese Farmers Market Enormous cucumbers, strange eggs, and a cat on the counter. Read the post 04
Destination four
Wuzhen
A canal town on the lower Yangtze, thirteen centuries old, where the streets and the water are the same thing.
Wuzhen means water town.
From “To Wuzhen, Hangzhou, and Beyond”
“Water lines the edges of buildings and helps the native Chinese people travel around their village.” Thirteen hundred years old, on the lower Yangtze, and the streets are the canals.
05
Destination five
Hangzhou
“Hangzhou translates to living poetry.” A tea village at Mei Jia Wu, a pagoda people once ground into medicine, and the one souvenir I had decided on before I ever left home.
“I went to China with the intention of buying authentic tea.”
Long Jing plantation, Mei Jia Wu
The legend goes that Emperor Qianlong was picking leaves here when word came that the Empress Dowager was ill. “The Emperor shoved leaves into his sleeve and left.” What reached Beijing, flattened in a sleeve, is the shape the leaves are pressed into to this day. March is harvest. April and May are the rains. “It all came out to around 100.00 US dollars.”
- 975
- the first Leifeng Pagoda was built
- 1924
- it collapsed, its bricks ground up as medicine
- 2002
- the pagoda I climbed opened
I’m Bringing Home Authentic Emperor’s Dragon Well Green Tea “I can’t wait to enjoy this tea and to share it with my family back at home!” Read the post Also covers this stop 
To Wuzhen, Hangzhou, and Beyond The Leifeng Pagoda, and the climb to the top of it. Read the post 06
Destination six
Beijing
The programme ended and a few of us kept going. “In order to get from Shanghai to Beijing, we took one of those fancy bullet trains.” Then: the Summer Palace, the Great Wall, a city I managed to get lost inside, and a woman who screamed at me about watches.
“I jumped and touched the wall to mark a personal victory.”
The Great Wall of China
There were two queues for the buses out and we chose wrong. “It turns out, one was a standing line and the other was a sitting line.” Two hours upright, and then the climb: “There were a lot of steps, but there were also a lot of steep ramps.”
请站稳
“A gentle woman’s voice announces aloud: Please stand firm and hold the handrail.” By the end of the trip I was saying it to myself all over Beijing.
I Walked the Great Wall of China!!!! “This is it! I just walked the GREAT WALL OF CHINA.” Read the post Blog post 
Don’t Leave China Without Visiting The Summer Palace “I was more worn out after climbing all the stairs at the Summer Palace than I was after climbing the Great Wall.” Read the post Blog post 
Exploring the Forbidden City: The City I Got Lost In “Getting a little lost might just lead you to the most amazing discoveries.” Read the post Blog post 
I Got Lost in the Forbidden City On My Last Day in China “What would a trip be without Rocky getting lost somewhere?” Read the post Blog post 
The Weirdest Translations I Came Across in China “slippory suriace” · “bomething bo thin” · “oooh chicken fungus!” Read the post Blog post 
My Crush on the Chinese Ice Cream Guy “Aside from the photo, all I got was his name: Chang Hai Yang.” Read the post Blog post 
Reflecting on Gay Rights “The whole thing seemed pretty one-sided to me.” Read the post Field notes
Six things China taught me the hard way.
Everything below cost me something to learn. Tap a card to read the moment it came from.
The last page
Until we meet again some day!
Thank you, people of China,
for making this trip unforgettable. I arrived as a college kid with a camera and a notebook I had bought myself as a reward, and I came home with 21 stories and a hat.
Where I’ve been
Every country I have photographed, filed on one map with the journal entries attached.
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