Wherein I talk about what's happened to me and everyone else in the six and a half years since I left Beijing.

I've created a list of Google Earth placemarks for places that I went in China. Not everything is there of course, but Beijing is pretty well represented.

view with Google Maps

So I made it back to the US.

This is probably my last diary as weihan...

July is my last month in China...

So I decided to spend it in a place that was a bit more representative of the rest of the country than Beijing. I went back to PingQuan. This was the farming town where Very went during Chinese New Year.

This is the diary of my three weeks there. Three weeks of Chinese hospitality, linguistic isolation, and beautifully cool weather.

It's been a while since I've written, so here's a quickie.

Very and I went camping on the Great Wall again this weekend. The only difference was that we didn't actually sleep on the wall this time. Instead we and our 8 friends slept on about 10 meters of ridgeline.

Luckily we all survived unscathed. This is our story. (with pictures!)

Since I slacked off and didn't write a diary for a month, here are the highlights from April.

Well, Slozo already covered his trip here BUT IT WAS ALL LIES.

This is what really happened...

I just got back from seeing my roommate off on his journey to Thailand. Wish me luck in not locking myself out of my apartment for the next week or so.

Inside: the airport taxi mafia and a bowl of guts.

I've been in China for six months now. I know this because my first visa expired and I had to get a new one (a shockingly painless process in this land of bureaucracy). I've got until September 8th to get out of the country or get a new visa via some crooked agent who knows a guy that knows a guy or something like that. In all likelihood I'll leave in July like I've planned to all along. But until then there are adventures to be had...

This diary has been sitting around on my computer for a month now. I've been so busy doing fuck-all that I haven't gotten around to posting it. (That's a lie, I went to Xi'an in there somewhere)

So without further ado, here's my account of getting the hell out of Beijing to enjoy Chinese New Year in the sticks with Very.

I've returned from Xi'an. I officially hate China Rail... again.

But the real news is that I got a yinzhang! A yinzhang is one of those spiffy name stamps that you see on calligraphy works or letters or anything else that can use a spiffy looking signature. See it inside and take the related poll!