In the morning, at the train station in Beijing, I finally had my first (and last) chocolate croissant of the trip. (A week earlier, I had gotten a plain croissant in Shanghai.) If anything proves how different China is from Europe, it is the fact that I only came across one chocolate croissant on the whole trip.
China, A Little History, Part 10
Nationalist Republic
You say you want a revolution? After the disastrous 19th century, the Chinese people did. The Qing Dynasty realized it had no choice but to reform and modernize. Unfortunately for them, there was nothing less modern than China’s 2,000-year-old imperial system. (And in an era of nationalism, it didn’t help them in the least that they weren’t ethnically Chinese.) Over a period of many years, the people began to rise up and revolt throughout the vast [Read more…]
China 2015, Day 9: Tianjin
I will admit right off the bat that Tianjin was not the most exciting place I went on my trip to China. But it’s a major city just a short high-speed train ride from Beijing, so how could I resist spending a day [Read more…]
China 2015 Food Diary, Day 8
When I got off the train at Badaling to see the Great Wall of China, I stepped into an arctic blast. By the ticket office, a woman was selling pancakes from a counter window. It wasn’t a fancy affair; it was meant to be eaten by hand. It wasn’t the most flavorful thing. But it was warm, and that’s all that counted.
After spending time at the Great Wall, I had lunch in a restaurant in the tourist village at Badaling. I must have been sat in the section for foreigners because the tables were set with forks. There were no chopsticks to be seen.
China, A Little History, Part 9
Boxer Rebellion
The infamous Boxer Rebellion. But what was it? Ultimately, it was a war between China and virtually the rest of the world’s powers. Guess who won. Hint: it wasn’t China.
The Boxer Rebellion started off as sort of the opposite of the Taiping Rebellion. The Taiping Rebellion began as an uprising by a somewhat irrational [Read more…]
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