Three days on the Yangtze River

The rugged terrain of the Three Gorges region of the Yangtze sheltered it from much of the development taking place in the rest of China in ...

Video: Chinese calligraphy in Xi'an

Many Chinese artists are as famous for their calligraphy as for their landscapes and poetry. Actually, they are all mixed together in many p...

The madding crowd in the Forbidden City

Bernardo Bertolucci's 1987 film "The Last Emperor" had some great shots  of the enormous plazas within the Forbidden City. Bei...

Sitting on top of a volcano

Steam vents at the Craters of the Moon, Taupo Here in New Zealand we are perched on a land mass where two continental plates collide. Below ...

How to speak Kiwi in New Zealand

At the moment, the New Zealand accent sounds the same to me as Australian, and its most notable distinguishing features are: The short-e is ...

New Zealand: air and space

Cindy and I have some friends in New Zealand, Daniela Cavallaro, who is a professor of Italian language and literature at the University of ...

Why the Chinese will never drop their written language

As I scratch the surface of Chinese, I now understand why the language cannot be simply converted to the Roman alphabet. They have to keep t...