China travel tips and stories. Vacations ideas, cruises spa and resorts

Chinese New Year is a perhaps the most elaborate, colorful, and important holiday in China. Chinese New Year is the biggest holiday celebrated among Chinese people – Koreans, Vietnamese, Mongolians, The Philippines, Thailands. Chinese New Year starts with the New Moon on the first day of the new year and ends on the full moon 15 days later. In China, people may take weeks of holiday from work to prepare for and celebrate the New Year. The 15th day of the new year is called the Lantern Festival, which is celebrated at night with lantern displays and children carrying lanterns in a parade. New Year’s Day are celebrated as a family affair, a time of reunion and thanksgiving. Chinese New Year was on 18th February 2007. It will be the Year of the Pig. If you were born in 1923, 1935, 1947, 1959, 1971, 1983 or 1995 – you were born under the sign of the pig. The Chinese believe a child born this year in The Year of the Golden Pig will be blessed with a carefree, wealthy and loving life!

Continue reading The improbable celebration – Chinese New Year

This photo of the frozen-over, 20 metres high Flame Mountain in Turufan, XinJiang province, China is very striking. What an amazing nature we have.

If you are fan of river boat trips the Li River cruise is the best option for you. It is cosidered as one of Earth’s most stunningly beautiful journeys. The Li River aka Lijiang River has very smooth water which mirrors and creates a fairytale landscape of mountain and hill peaks reaching for the sky.

The Li River cruise from Guilin to Yangshuo is the centerpiece of any trip to northeastern Guangxi Province. Gorgeous Karst peaks give you surprises at each bend of the limpid river under the blue sky. You will also see Water buffalo patrol the fields, peasants reap rice paddies, school kids and fisherman float by on bamboo rafts.

Continue reading Take one of Earth’s most stunningly beautiful cruises at Li River

Really nice photo of Hong Kong’s tallest building, the Two International Finance Centre. It is the 6th tallest building in the world behind giants like 101 Taipei, Petronas Towers, Sears Tower and Jin Mao Tower.

Continue reading Photo of the Day – 2IFC on Hong Kong Island

The Terra Cotta Warriors and Horses are the most significant archeological excavations of the 20th century. Work is ongoing at this site, which is around 1.5 kilometers east of Emperor Qin Shi Huang’s Mausoleum, Lintong County, Shaanxi province. It is a sight not to be missed if you are going to China.

The terracotta figures were buried with the first Emperor of Qin (Qin Shi Huang) in 210-209 BC. Consequently, they are also sometimes referred to as Qin’s Armies. The Terracotta Army was discovered in March 1974 by local farmers drilling a water well to the east of Mount Lishan. Mount Lishan is the name of the man-made necropolis of the First Emperor of the Qin Dynasty. This is also where the material to make the terracotta warriors was made, and found. Construction of this mausoleum began in 246 BC and is believed to have taken 700,000 workers and craftsmen 38 years to complete. Qin Shi Huang was interred inside the tomb complex upon his death in 210 BC. According to the Grand Historian Sima Qian, the First Emperor was buried alongside great amounts of treasure and objects of craftsmanship, as well as a scale replica of the universe complete with gemmed ceilings representing the cosmos, and flowing mercury representing the great earthly bodies of water. Pearls were also placed on the ceilings in the tomb to represent the stars and planets, etc. Recent scientific work at the site has shown high levels of mercury in the soil of Mount Lishan, tentatively indicating an accurate description of the site’s contents by Sima Qian. They were built as an army for the king (Emperor Qin) to use in the after life.

Continue reading Terra Cotta Warriors and Horses Mausoleum of the First Emperor of Qin Dynasty

Potala Palace located at Lhasa is one of the most massive palace on the Earth. Now a museum it was once the winter religious and political seat of Tibet under the leadership of the Dalai Lama.

Built at an altitude of 3,700 m, on the side of Marpo Ri hill, the Red Mountain in the center of Lhasa Valley, Potala Palace, with its vast inward-sloping walls broken only in the upper parts by straight rows of many windows, and its flat roofs at various levels, is not unlike a fortress in appearance. At the south base of the rock is a large space enclosed by walls and gates, with great porticos on the inner side. A series of tolerably easy staircases, broken by intervals of gentle ascent, leads to the summit of the rock. The whole width of this is occupied by the palace.

Continue reading Potala Palace at Lhasa, a religious and political seat of Tibet

The Forbidden City ( aka Forbidden Palace ) is located at the exact center of the ancient city of Beijing, China. It was the imperial palace during the mid-Ming and the Qing Dynasties. The Forbidden City now is known as the Palace Museum and its extensive grounds cover 720,000 square meters, and at one time supposedly had 800 buildings and more than 8,000 rooms, though there are only 2,172 rooms that remain intact. As such, it is listed by UNESCO as the largest collection of preserved ancient wooden structures in the world, and was declared a World Heritage Site in 1977 as the “Imperial Palace of the Ming and Qing Dynasties”. The Imperial Palace Grounds are located directly to the north of Tiananmen Square and are accessible from the square via Tiananmen Gate. It is surrounded by a large area called the Imperial City.

Construction of the palace complex began in 1407, the 5th year of the Yongle reign of the third emperor of the Ming dynasty. It was completed fourteen years later in 1420. It was said that a million workers including one hundred thousand artisans were driven into the long-term hard labor. Stone needed was quarried from Fangshan, a suburb of Beijing. It was said a well was dug every fifty meters along the road in order to pour water onto the road in winter to slide huge stones on ice into the city. Huge amounts of timber and other materials were freighted from faraway provinces. Ancient Chinese people displayed their very considerable skills in building the Forbidden City. Take the grand red city wall for example. It has an 8.6 meters wide base reducing to 6.66 meters wide at the top. The angular shape of the wall totally frustrates attempts to climb it. The bricks were made from white lime and glutinous rice while the cement is made from glutinous rice and egg whites. These incredible materials make the wall extraordinarily strong.

Continue reading Discover The Forbidden City of China Rulers

The Great Wall of China is really one masterpiece of human power and construction. Just like a gigantic dragon, the Great Wall winds up and down across deserts, grasslands, mountains and plateaus stretching approximately 6,700 kilometers (4,163 miles ) from east to west of China. With a history of more than 2000 years, some of the section of the great wall are now in ruins or even entirely disappeared. However, it is still one of the most appealing attractions all around the world owing to its architectural grandeur and historical significance.

Today, it is the travel icon of China – and one of the leading vacation travel destinations in the world.

The Great Wall was originally built in the Spring, Autumn, and Warring States Periods as a defensive fortification by the three states: Yan, Zhao and Qin. The Great Wall went through constant extensions and repairs in later dynasties. In fact, it began as independent walls for different states when it was first built, and did not become the “Great” wall until the Qin Dynasty. Emperor Qin Shihuang succeeded in his effort to have the walls joined together to fend off the invasions from the Huns in the north after the unification of China. Since then, the Great Wall has served as a monument of the Chinese nation throughout history. A visit to the Great Wall is like a tour through the history backwards, it will bring you great excitement in each step of the wall.

The construction of the Great Wall began between the 7th and 8th centuries B.C. when the warring states built defensive walls to ward off enemies from the north. It was only a regional project then. Until the Qin Dynasty, the separate walls were joint together and consequently it stretched from east to west for about 5000 thousand kilometers and served to keep nomadic tribes out. The Wall was further extended and strengthened in the succeeding dynasties. Especially during the Ming dynasty when the northern nomadic ethnic groups became very powerful, the Ming rulers had the Wall renovated 18 times. As a result, not the remains from the Qin dynasty were restored, but some 1000 kilometers were constructed to a full length of 6,700 kilometers.

Continue reading Why the Great Wall of China is special place to visit

Jiuzhaigou Valley which means “Valley of Nine Villages” , which is the hometown of nine Tibetan villages; is located in Nanping County in Aba Tibetan and Qiang Autonomous Prefecture about 450 Km north of Chengdu, the capital city of Sichuan province in south of China Mainland.

Jiuzhaigou is well-known in its many multi-level waterfalls and colorful lakes. This place is full of more than 100 beauteous lakes and what makes the lakes in Jiuzhaigou area differ from other lakes is a high concentration of calcium carbonate so that the lakes and embankments are all covered with crystals. The water in the lake is so clear that you can see the bottom despite depths of several meters.

The main essence of Jiuzhaigou is water and there are all kinds of waters such as small ponds, calm lakes,

Continue reading Welcome to Paradise China and Jiuzhaigou Valley

In the western part of Shanghai, a very modern and flourishing city, there is a venerable and famous Buddhist temple, Jade Buddha Temple. As with most modern Chinese Buddhist temples, the current temple draws from both the Pure Land and Chan traditions of Mahayana Buddhism. It was founded in 1882 with two jade Buddha statues imported to Shanghai from Burma by sea. These were a sitting Buddha (1.95 metres tall, 3 tonnes), and a smaller reclining Buddha representing Buddha’s death. The temple was destroyed during the revolution that overthrew the Qing Dynasty. Fortunately the jade Buddha statues were saved and a new temple was built on the present site in 1928. It was named the Jade Buddha Temple. The temple now also contains a much larger reclining Jade Buddha, donated from Singapore, and visitors may mistake this larger sculpture for the original, smaller piece.

At the time emperor Guang Xu in the Qing Dynasty (1875-1908) ruled China, Hui Gen, a Mount Putuo abbot went on a pilgrimage to Tibet via the two famous Chinese mountains Mount Wutai and Mount Emei. First he goes to Tibet and then he contiduen his jorney to Burma. By this time Mr. Chen Jun-Pu, an overseas Chinese resident in Burma, donated five Jade statues of Buddha to Hui Gen, who transported two of them back to Jiang-wan, Shanghai. Here Hui Gen had a temple built with collected from various sorces money, mostly of them donated, and died shortly thereafter. This temple was occupied during the 1911 uprising, and the statues were moved to Maigen Road.

Continue reading What a place to see – Jade Buddha Temple in Shanghai, China