Melbourne. Jul 2023 For my two weeks' trip to China, I was flying in the China Southern Airlines. Both China Eastern Airlines and China Southern Airlines fly to Australia. China Eastern is Shanghai-based whilst China Southern is Beijing-based. Both are excellent airlines and I have flown with them numerous times for both domestic travel in... Continue Reading →
Jul 2023. Guangzhou I worked and lived in China from 2009 to 2018 and thereafter relocated to Melbourne, Australia. I am happy to be back in China here for a short trip yesterday. Being a Singaporean, the China experience opened my eyes to a bigger world. And to the real China. And this is what... Continue Reading →
Sep 2014. Shenyang No smoking. No inflammable objects. No poisonous materials. No radioactive materials. No vendors. No begging. No commercial goods. No loitering. No pets. A public notice in a Shenyang train station. No different from Singapore, where we have as many of these dos and don'ts. Plus one more. No durians. You might thing... Continue Reading →
Sep 2014. Anshan The world has certainly changed the last 20 years. This is a local bus in a small city called Anshan, couple of hours high-speed train ride away from where I was working and living, Shenyang. I was there for the long weekend. I looked around and there was just one guy in... Continue Reading →
Aug 2014. Shenyang One day I was in downtown for my weekly shopping when I came across a crowd looking at a long banner on a public road. A guy was apparently airing his grievances in public which is not something you do or can do commonly in China. I was surprised that the authorities... Continue Reading →
Aug 2014. Benxi Next day morning I took a cab from my hotel to the Guanmenshan National Forest Park. It was a beautiful sunny day with bright blue skies and a cool weather. The ride through Benzi's countryside was scenic. The mountainous green landscape was dotted with red-roofed farm houses. I saw large expanses of... Continue Reading →
Aug 2014. Benxi If there is one thing that I have seen in my ten years in China is this: the Chinese government spares no expenses when it comes to infrastructure spending. Roads, bridges, hospitals, government buildings, museums, exhibition and convention centres, train stations and airports are always built huge and modern in China. Here... Continue Reading →
Aug 2014. Shenyang. The normal trains in China are called the Z, T, K and L series trains and the high-speed trains are called the D series trains. For long distance overnight trips, people book the sleeper class. There are three types of sleepers: hard sleeper, soft sleeper and deluxe sleeper. Hard sleeper is the... Continue Reading →
Aug 2014. Shenyang I was making a weekend trip to a city called Benzi, about two hours train ride from Shenyang. I didn't make a big plan. I just wanted to get out of Shenyang and not think about work that weekend. But I wanted to go somewhere green and my colleagues recommended me to... Continue Reading →
Aug 2014. Shenyang We used to joke in Singapore that Singaporeans love to queue. Longer the queue the better, because it only means that something great must be happening on the other end. In China, it was the opposite. Unless enforced, queuing is not an automatic public behaviour in China. People do queue in Beijing... Continue Reading →