The city is a major tourist spot in china, due to its well preserved ancient buddhist caves on the old silk road. it is surrounded by desert dunes and desert plains and the arrival at the train station offers a gorgeous feeling of emptiness. the city is not big but gives a nice relaxed feeling, with one tourist night market, one food market and a n

An arabic flavor in china i naan bread ! traditional milk tea (salty, with butter/cheese in it!) despite all the warnings from our han friends and relatives, we chose to live in the uyghur area, south of urumqi. there is a huge difference between north and south in the city. people, clothes, culture, religion, food, housing, stores, language, every

Sur le trajet vers le parc (1h de route en bus), mère bonne fortune était une fois de plus à nos côtés, puisque nous avons fait la connaissance de deux étudiantes de guangzhou (dans la province de guangdong) avec qui nous avons passé le reste de ce séjour touristique ! lulu et baobao (j’ai raccourci leur noms pour éviter les maux de têt

Et après quelques coups de fils pour m’informer sur qui serait du voyage avec moi, me voici sur la route pour zhangjiajie (张家界), l’un des plus grands et respectés parc nationaux de chine, reconnu patrimoine naturel mondial par l’unesco. mon compagnon de route est she zhengdong, alias michel pour son prénom de classe. c’est en effet

Ce weekend, c’etait le festival de qing ming (清明, prononcez tching ming) en chine. traditionnellement, les chinois observent durant ce jour des rites de commémoration à l’égard des anciens disparus. c’est un peu notre toussaint. durant ce jour de recueillement, les familles vont visiter les tombes, honorer leur proches disparus, et net

It all started from xiamen, my new hometown (for 2 years now). taking the bus to shenzhen is, in 2011, the only option left since no train is making the connection between the two cities anymore. hopefully soon finished to be be built, the new bullet train line will make this trip more enjoyable. as for now, it’s a 7 to 9 hrs trip (7hrs on the ro

And it's a big one. the biggest one landing on fujian since the beginning of the year 2010. in average, fujian faces 6 typhoons per year which mainly occur from july to september. since i'm always travelling in china during that time, i hadn't had the opportunity to experience one yet ! and this one, named fanapi, has a fierce character. xiamen for

Major city for tourism in xinjiang (although it doesn’t feel like it), it deserves its fame. 90% uyghur populated, the city owns its fame to its peaceful way of life (a bit overrated, i found dunhuang better for that), and great scenic spots around the city. the story said that the city has known its tourism boom a few years ago thanks to the sma

It started raining pretty heavily. i put back inside all the clothes still hanging on the balcony, fearing the wind would blow them away or the rain get them soaked. same goes for the 2 cardboard boxes i had spared from the recent moving. left outside, they would become drenched paper...

Really not much to see in lanzhou but the city got its fame around china for its lanzhou noodles ( 兰州面 ), a moderately spicy noodle (delicious 拉面 ) soup with beef . we went to see the huang river ( 黄江 also called 母亲江 - mother river, because of the colour), and walked along its side. there are interesting, massive water mills ins