The BBC has put up some wonderful old photos of China taken in the 19th Century by the Scottish photogragher John Thomson who visited China between 1868 and 1872.
Click here to see them:BBC NEWS | In Pictures | In pictures: 19th Century China
1990 / 1991
On our first China trip, when foreign visitors could be counted on the fingers of one hand, we entered China from Pakistan on a rickety old bus that followed the Karakoram Highway and crossed the Khunjerab Pass. The Kashgar Sunday Market was our first, unforgettably exotic, ‘Chinese’ experience. We then loosely retraced the Silk Route all the way to Beijing. Next, we swung back towards Central and Western China, using local boats, buses and trains. Highlights such as Lijiang, Dali and Ruili were totally unspoilt and utterly fascinating. After nearly 6 months we left China via the Pearl River on a night boat from Guangzhou to Macau.
This piece looks at the issues raised in the article “Drinking Their Fields Dry”, written by Xiong Lei and published in the China Daily on 12 -7-2007. The article focuses on the effects tourism is having on the Dragon’s Backbone Rice Terraces (Longji titian) near Longsheng in the Zhuang Autonomous Region in Guangxi province.
On that beautiful late summer’s evening in 2003 the dynamite went off at regular intervals, with a thud that echoed around the entire valley, shattering the silence of an area without cars and very little electricity. I looked on as a crowd of local Zhuang from the village of Ping’an gathered to watch how huge swathes of the beautiful terraced mountain side were blasted to pieces to make way for a new road that would eventually arrive at the very centre of their village. I wondered then what changes that road would bring to their lives. I never imagined that they would be so quick and so damaging. [Read more →]