Author: karl

I’ll never forget the moment I stepped off the shuttle bus and turned the corner onto the riverside path. There it was: a sheer limestone cliff, honeycombed with tens of…

I was standing ankle-deep in spray on a narrow wooden causeway when a Chinese tour guide next to me turned to her group and said, “There is no dam.” She…

The first thing you notice about Yellow Crane Tower isn’t the tower at all. It’s the wind. Standing on Snake Hill above the Yangtze, I watched a cargo ship the…

The first thing you notice when the ferry’s engines cut out and the gangway drops is the silence. No horns, no engine hum, no scooter buzz — just the clack…

I’ll never forget the first time I walked into the Sanxingdui Museum and locked eyes with a 3,200-year-old bronze face that stared back with eyes bulging like a startled owl…

I was standing on a wooden plank no wider than my shoulders, a vertiginous drop of 75 meters yawing open beneath my feet, when a gust of wind actually made…

The first time I watched the Yangtze swallow a mountain whole, I was holding a thermos of jasmine tea on the top deck at 6:40 a.m., half-asleep, and the fog…

The first time I gasped for air at 4,600 meters, it wasn’t from the cold. It was because I’d just rounded a prayer-flag ridge and the whole of Daocheng Yading…

The first time I saw the sun leak over the rim of the world from 1,545 meters up, I understood why emperors crawled up here on their hands and knees….

The first time I heard a wooden staff crack against the air at 6 a.m., I was half-asleep on a tour bus outside Dengfeng. Then the doors opened and there…