Be bold, and luck be with you

My address to the 2012 graduates of the Global Business Journalism program at Tsinghua University, Beijing.  I am going to talk with you a b...

Guangxi: Terraced rice paddies, sugarloaf mountains

Rice paddy near Ping'an Yao women are famous for their long hair. A tourism boom is fueling construction of new homes and hotels  in rur...

China's grandparents

In a park in Beijing. Many Chinese families still live with three and four generations under one roof. Some of my acquaintances leave their ...

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 ...