Results tagged “trip”

Well, President Obama's first trip to China is now officially over. A lot of things happened, a lot of people talked about it, but nothing too groundbreaking occurred. Obama seemed to have a good trip: he visited famous Chinese landmarks, met with his brother, even talked a bit of politics along the way. But a lot of us were ultimately left with a feeling something like disappointment: for various reasons, the mythic qualities of the American president were overwhelmed by the totalizing nature of China and Chinese politics.

We were alerted to this neat little site when it was still just a photo blog, with beautiful pictures of random 老百姓 (laobaixing - local civilians) around the Xinjiang area. Now its creators, Andy and Evan, are setting off for a year-plus tour of China by bicycle... today!

Bullet trains will be replacing all the daily Z trains between Shanghai and Beijing, making the commute between China's two mega-cities take ten hours instead of 12. Sadly, prices will be rising to accommodate the new technology - up to RMB 655 for upper berths and RMB 720 for lower berths one-way. Comparatively, the Z train's upper berth was RMB 478 and the lower berth was only RMB 499. We wonder if these fancy schmancy new bullet trains will have “hard seating.” Sure, it sucks to be sitting for ten hours, but at least you won't be wondering why you didn't just shell out the exact same price to go by plane. Source: Urbanatomy