Julie's checkup
Kaili, China
October 29 2001

Doctor : open up...say 'eeeeee'...yes...I see it!
Julie : What is it? What do you see?
Doctor : Nothing
Julie : Nothing?!?
Doctor : Too much Yin energy in your throat. You worry too much.

Nigel on the night train to Xian
October 3 2001

cramped but lovin it

Julie & Nigel & the Hong Kong Skyline
Hong Kong, China ~ Panoramic
November 13 2001

Aren't the three of us beautiful? Well, the view of Hong Kong across Victoria Bay from Kowloon is certainly a real looker - and how about those names? Hong Kong, Kowloon, Victoria Bay are all names that conjured up wonderful images before we arrived and for once the anticipation was surpassed by experience.

Nigel gets his dog
Shilin, Yunnan Province, China
October 26 2001

My first hot dog since selling the business ~ OK, it was just a gummy hot dog and it made me nostalgic and homesick but it was a gummy hot dog. How am I supposed to pass up a gummy hot dog? I mean, it had gummy mustard and gummy relish and....

Julie on Parade
Guilin, Guangxi Province. China.
November 4 2001

The Chinese have a strange obsession with their tourists. They like to dress us in uniform shirts (and sometimes caps but not in this case) and parade us around for the Chinese media. It's all part of the 'build new China attract more tourists' campaign. On this particular day, Nigel was sick in bed and I was looking for adventure. I innocently signed up for a 'free lunch and bike tour for westerner tourists' sponsored by the City of Yangshuo and soon found myself biking down the main street of neighboring Guillin with thousands of Chinese cheering and waving at me. I (and about 25 other western tourists) was tricked into biking in a parade and as if on cue, instinctively started waving back in that regal way that only beauty queens on parade do.

Julie practices Chinese
Guandong, China
October 31 2001

Julie has the power to both terrify and delight with her few mangled words of Chinese

Julie 'queues'
Beijing
October 6 2001

This picture is actually from a subway ticket booth in Beijing - though it's ALOT less crowded and a little more civilized than a full blown train station, it does show the main characteristic of the 'Chinese style queue.' Which is to say a free for all in the vicinity of the window.

"It's like being famous!"
Beijing, China
October 2 2001

Is that Sharon Stone? On our visit to the Forbidden City alone, Julie had her picture taken with tourists on 16 separate occasions. After being in China over a month, Nigel has had this request once. You tell us what this means. That's right, Chinese have excellent taste.

Julie on the bus to Dali
Yunnan province, China
October 23 2001

I was messing with the setting on my camera and testing them by taking picture of Julie. It seems I was testing only someone's patience as my muse began to get fed up with it.

Nigel's sick bed
Yangshuo, Guangxi Province.
November 3 2001

Nigel's determination to bring you the latest news from China shines through in the darkest of times ~ three days bed ridden with a mysterious disease. Well, mysterious for a while....

Nigel's Cigar
Dali, Yunnan Province
October 24 2001

I enjoy the occasional cigar, but the imported ones are really only smoked by westerners and this makes them quite expensive. I was thrilled to find this tiny crone selling the no-name local offering out of a doorway. They were well worth the pittance I paid.

Snow Quality
Chengdu, Sichuan province.
October 15 2001

We took this one (in more ways than one) for the family. The Snow quality beer resulted in a Snow quality hangover. We have received more comments about this picture than any other on the website, so for the record, IT WAS STAGED! I was not dead drunk. I was sufficiently in possession of my facilities, fully capable of opening the next beer that really finished me off.