Well it's a bit difficult writing a blog after all this time of being back and working, but if you know us you know we don't like to not complete stuff, and hopefully one day we'll have a chance to look back and read all this. On arriving in Beijing after the overnight train, we were treated to our first conversation with a stranger since we made it to China, although after just getting off the overnight train at the time I think we would have preferred to be le...

After a short flight from Chengdu we arrived in Xian, famous for the Terracotta Warriors and the Tomb of Qin Shi Huang, first emperor of the Qin Dynasty who united the country for the first time, started the building of the Great Wall of China, and standardised the currency and writing script.As it was Rich's birthday we took the day off, although as there's no English TV or films in the cinema, a day off in China has limited appeal. Still, we had a ...

We decided to avoid the 37 hour train journey from Shanghai to Chengdu and flew instead. Good move we thought ,not sure we could have taken that amount of slurping and burping from the locals, not to mention the non-stop eating. The day after we arrived we took a trip to the Giant Panda Breeding Sanctuary. This is one of the few centres in the world where you can view the Giant Panda as they are close to extinction. Apparently there are only about 1,000 left in ...

Two hours west of Shanghai is Nanjing, our next stop and one of the most historic cities in China.As well as being capital of early successive dynasties, Nanjing gained fame when Zhu Yuanzhang, the first and founding emperor of the Ming dynasty, defeated the Mongol Yuan dynasty (Gengis Khan's descendants), united the country and made Nanjing the capital, building a huge palace and city walls.After the third Ming emperor moved the capital back to Beijing, Nanj...

Leaving Hong Kong we headed to mainland China, first stop Shanghai.Shanghai was apparently little more than a fishing and weaving town before the British arrived around 1842 after the first Opium War, turning it into a huge, international trading port.The Nanking Treaties (which were massively in favour of the British) meant the international community jointly ran the city with the Chinese, though, similar to Hong Kong, the Chinese have tried to take credit ...