In advance of Graham Earnshaw’s talk at the Beijing Bookworm on Saturday, here’s a chapter from his brand new book, The Great Walk of China. After crossing flat country for most of the distance from Shanghai, Graham finds himself in the Dabie Mountains of rural Anhui Province. Chapter 2: Drinking Games The day’s walk was [...]

In related developments, Hong Kong residents are taking to the hills in record numbers — at least, if sales of this guidebook are anything to go by. Other Asian cities don’t have such spectacular mountains and beaches so close at hand, so we’re lucky to have such a wonderful natural resource. Check out some of [...]

How long would it take to walk from Shanghai to the edges of Tibet? Long-time China resident Graham Earnshaw is in the process of finding out. His westward trek is described in his new book, The Great Walk of China, out at the end of this month. Through his conversations with the people he meets along [...]

High ridges, sparkling waterfalls, lush feng shui woods and ancient fishing communities nestled in rocky harbours. Your mind refreshed, your limbs exercised, and your senses intoxicated, you wonder at the fact that only a few miles separate all this from one of the world’s most crowded cities. The Serious Hiker’s Guide to Hong Kong — [...]

Further to last month’s post about the Danxiashan national park in Guangdong, it’s worth mentioning that many of the rock formations bear uncanny resemblances to human sexual organs. (I have no photos of those, but Wikipedia does). Ancient Confucians probably avoided the area for these reasons, and it’s still very much off the beaten track, [...]

Hiking recently in Shaoguan, in northern Guangdong, I was grateful for the handy suggestions offered by the local authorities, and I fell down the hillside paying the proper attention to health and safety. The Danxiashan region of the province is a weird landscape of forest punctuated by dramatic red sandstone formations and divided by meandering [...]

It’s hot and sticky but we’re going through a period of unusually clear skies in Hong Kong, so the heat doesn’t deter us from hiking. This week we followed a trail from Tseng Lan Shue on Clearwater Bay Road south across Black Hill and Devil’s Peak to Lei Yue Mun. Standing on the high points [...]