China’s Annual New Year Migration

December 31, 2012

We visited China and traveled during one of China’s national holidays in 2008.

My sister and her youngest daughter went with us—both are evangelical Christians and mentioned they didn’t believe in China’s one-child policy. I heard this more than once but after they arrived in China and experienced that migration, both stopped preaching about the one-child policy.

It was so crowded, it was as if we were swimming through an ocean of people.

That’s when I decided that my next trip to China will not be during any of China’s national holidays.

In fact, to deal with this migration, inhabitat.com says, “China has released a massive rail development program, which will expand the high-speed rail service to 42 more high-speed lines by 2012.”

This Al Jazeera report is about China’s annual New Year Migration of 2010. For readers who haven’t been to China, this may be your only chance to experience a taste of what it is like to live in a country with more than 1.3 billion people.

Tony Birtley of Al Jazeera, reports from a train heading south from Beijing to Hebei province.

Birtley says, “Welcome to the Chinese New Year and to the world’s biggest annual migration.… There’s something like 2,000 people on this train and you can hardly move.”

The rail system in China barely manages to move the average 220 million people traveling home to celebrate the Chinese New Year with family. But the Chinese lunar New Year is on Sunday, February 10, 2013.  That’s when you want to avoid visiting China unless you want to experience this holiday with the  Chinese. If so, pick a city and avoid traveling.

It is possible that a passenger will have to stand for a trip of 16 to 48 hours to reach their destination.

Discover Harbin’s Winter Wonderland

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.

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3 Comments | China, Chinese Culture, cultural differences, expatriates, expatriots, tourism | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Hangzhou – Paradise on Earth

December 4, 2012

If you ever visit Hangzhou, after cruising on the West Lake, you may want to see this tourist attraction in the city. Before 1949, it was the home of a wealthy family but was first owned by Hu Xue-yan (1823-1885).

Hu Xue-yan made his money in banking then expanded into pawn shops, import-export, real estate and made his biggest fortune as the founder of a Chinese herbal medicine company. After he died, his family lost the fortune and sold the house.

The house in these pictures and video was built in 1872. After it was renovated in 2008, it was turned into a museum and tourist attraction worth seeing.

When the Communists won China’s Civil War in 1949, the mansion (covering about two acres) was owned by another family that made its fortune first in the silk industry then banking.


rock art in garden with tunnels

There’s more to the mansion than this example of rock art in the garden you see in the photo above.  These rocks were added when the mansion was built. There was a time in China during the Imperial era when rock art was popular. Hidden under the building and among the rocks are manmade caves.

During a visit to Hangzhou, for a few yuan, you will be able to tour most of the mansion and the gardens (there is more than one garden beyond what you see in the two photographs).

The Hu Xue-yan mansion is in a city with a population of more than eight million, but once inside its walls you have no sense of the crowded city outside. Once the owner was home and the gates locked at night, it was a world-of-tranquility apart from the city.

The city of Hangzhou is more than two-thousand years old and was the capital of the Southern Song Dynasty (1127 – 1279 AD) before Kublai Khan, who founded the Yuan Dynasty (1206-1368 AD), conquered all of China.

Pond with carp – Hu Xue-yan’s Mansion

While Kublai Khan ruled China, Marco Polo visited Hangzhou in 1290.

There is a famous Chinese saying that says, “In heaven there is paradise, on Earth there is Su and Hang (Hangzhou – Paradise on Earth).

Discover Kublai Khan’s Yuan Dynasty

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.

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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

China’s Venice, Zhouzhuang

November 12, 2012

We arrived early when the parking lot and the streets were about empty.  That’s the best time to get there.

Zhouzhuang is surrounded by water, and boats are needed for most short trips.

Zhouzhuang history is rooted in China’s Spring and Autumn Period (770 BC – 476 BC) more than a thousand years before Venice was established. However, it would not be called Zhouzhuang until 1086 AD .

The town is well known for its preservation of numerous buildings from the Ming and Qing Dynasties.

Zhouzhuang, the Venice of Asia,  is on the United Nations Reserve List for the World Cultural Heritage and the Dubai International Best Practice to Improve the Living Environment.

As you can see, it gets crowded. Most of these tourists were Chinese citizens from the growing middle class.

This is where I was a photo thief. I wanted to take a picture of these captured birds but the owners wouldn’t let me.  He pointed at a sign that said I’d have to pay.

I walked a distance and used my meager telephoto lens to take this shot of the birds tied to the owner’s boat.

For a comparison with Venice in Europe, while there are no historifcal records that deal directly with the founding of Venice, available evidence has led some historians to agree that the original population of Venice were refugees from Roman cities near Venice (420 – 568 AD). From the ninth to the twelfth centuries Venice became a city state.

If you enjoyed this photo essay, see the Li River Cruise

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.

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3 Comments | China, Chinese Culture, Chinese history, tourism | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Xian – the Double Menu Caper

October 16, 2012

On this trip, our hotel was outside of and in sight of Xian’s city walls.  We had a view of the battlements that were centuries old. At night, the walls and towers were outlined with white Christmas lights.

I ached to get up there and walk those walls.  It was 1999, and I’d wait more than nine years before that happened. One day I want to rent a bicycle and explore the entire wall.



This is a different restaurant from the one I mention.

Our second day in the city, we walked from the hotel into the city to a Xian restaurant. I went in first and the hostess, who didn’t speak a word of English, handed me a menu written in English.

My wife, dressed more like a Chinese peasant than an American, walked in after me and she was handed a menu written in Chinese. Then she glanced at my menu before taking it out of my hands and giving it back to the hostess.

“We’ll use the Chinese menu,” she said.

The prices in Mandarin were less than half the English version.  A stunned look appeared on the hostesses face.  It was a Candid Camera moment, and it was all I could do to not laugh.

Discover I Ate no Dog, I Ate no Cat, a Guest post by Bob Grant

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.

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1 Comment | China, Chinese Culture, Chinese food, Chinese history, history, tourism | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Huangpu River Tour – Shanghai

September 24, 2012

Shanghai is considered the Paris of Asia.  There’s a reason for this and I hope the photos and video will show that.

Notice the Chinese middle-class tourists on the boat.  Study how they dress. See the cameras. And ask yourself this—if these people are so brainwashed and downtrodden, why are they out taking a cruise on the Huangpu River taking pictures as if they were visiting the Grand Canyon or New York?


Pudong side of Huangpu River

See the city skyline along the river.

This is only a small portion of Shanghai.


Shanghai side of Huangpu River – the croweded Bund

West of the Huangpu River is Shanghai. On the east bank is Pudong–fifty years ago, this land was farm land.

A close up of the crowded Bund on the Shanghai side of the river

Check out the number of Chinese tourists visiting the Bund in this photograph.  I’ve waded through these crowds.  These people are laughing, smiling, eating, taking pictures of each other, clowning around.  They are having more fun than I see from most American tourists when I travel in America.

Look at the signs-Nikon, LG, Nestle

China has almost five hundred million people living in its cities. Another eight hundred million live in rural areas.  There are now more Chinese surfing and Blogging on the Internet (513 million) than the entire population of the United States and there are ways to get around the censors. The average time spent on the Internet is almost three hours a day or more than 19 hours a week.

Fifteen to seventeen million people live in Shanghai.

To discover more of Shanghai visit: Shanghai Shanghai Huxinting Teahouse Eating Gourmet in Shanghai Shanghai’s History & Culture Chinese Pavilion, Shanghai World Expo

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.

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Leave a Comment » | business, capitalism, China, economy, environment, tourism | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

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