Mrs Li is a well know Naxi guide who i accompanied yesterday on a walking tour through Naxi and Yi minority people's villages. Both groups are strongly matriarchal societies in which the women drive economic life, tending to diverse crops (peaches, corn, wheat, apples, livestock) and household. According to Mrs Li men do very little which was pretty much what I observed throughout the day. That said, it may be that Mrs Li 's cultural assessment is colored by her ...

I walked the alleys and stairway streets of old Lijiang for nearly five hours yesterday and saw no foreigners. The old stone streets run alongside narrow irrigation canals criss-crossed by stone bridges. Everything moves at a pedestrian scale and pace as cars are not permitted in the old section. Everything is immaculately maintained, with clean public restrooms at every turn. This is not an inconsequential feature considering the amount of tea being consumed! T...

I was literally 40 hours in transit with lengthy delays in Beijing and Kunming. At the latter the pilot was a no show and the Chinese passengers became indignant, surrounding, yelling, castigating airline supervisors until they reluctantly committed to finding a replacement pilot. I got some good video footage of "standing in the fire" Chinese style... Marvin Wu, my Chinese trip coordinator recommended by a client and friend was on his cell phone handling all th...