Author: karl

I’ll be honest: before I first rode the Ngong Ping 360, I thought the Big Buddha was just another photo stop. I was wrong. The moment the cable car lifted…

I still remember the first time I stood at the base of a half-size Eiffel Tower while eating a sticky rice dumpling under a palm tree in southern China. That…

I still remember the first time I rounded the final bend of the road and the valley simply opened up. There it was — a sheet of impossibly turquoise water…

I still remember the first time I stepped off the bus at Pudacuo National Park. The cold mountain air hit me at over 3,500 meters, pine resin filled my lungs,…

I’ll be honest: before I stood at the mouth of a Karez well shaft in the Turpan Depression, I thought “irrigation” meant ditches and a slow-moving hose. The Karez Wells…

I almost skipped Zhenyuan. My original Guizhou plan was built around the headline sights — the vertical forests of Fanjingshan, the thunder of Huangguoshu, the karst pools of Libo. Zhenyuan…

I arrived in Chongqing expecting a city of brutalist concrete and endless staircases, and I found that — but I also found something older and quieter pressed right against the…

When I first arrived in Nanjing, I expected another pleasant Chinese city with a few temples and a busy riverfront. What I did not expect was to spend two full…

I had spent two blissful but busy days circling West Lake before I finally listened to a friend who lives in Hangzhou. “You’ve seen the postcard,” she said. “Now come…

I still remember the morning I first walked through the gate of Hanshan Temple. I had spent two days in Suzhou chasing gardens — the grand ones, the famous ones…