"Ladies and Gentlemen we have just landed in Tianjin and the temperature is currently 0 degrees". Wow! We knew Beijing got cold in Winter, but it was now Spring – this wasn't supposed to happen! We donned our hopelessly inadequate coats and found our guide Jane waiting for us to take us from the city of Tianjin some two hours south east of the capital, to the city centre of Beijing. (Tiajin serves as the Air Asia low cost airport for Beijing). As we d...

 The man strode purposefully into the park with a tiny round bird cage tucked under his arm.Where was he off to we thought? After a few moments we decided to follow him and spotted him sitting with his bird on a garden wall chatting away to it. Fast forward 15 minutes in which time we had wandered through the park and we spotted him again - sans the bird! What had he done with his bird? We watched for a while as he put crumbs on the ground and we wrongly conclud...