Poetry of the Yellow Mountain

Thirty six strange peaks,
Immortals with black top knots.
Morning sun strikes the tree tops,
Here in this sky mountain world.
Chinese people, raise your faces!
For a thousand years cranes come and go.
Far off I spy a firewood gatherer,
Plucking sticks from stone crevices.

-Li Bai “Dawn Vista On Huangshan”

There are some places in the world that just seem to inspire gushing wellsprings of poetry. Metaphors woven together to create tapestries that reveal glimpses of those inner workings that lie just below the surface. Meaning layered upon meaning until everything is saturated and more than the sum of its parts. Huangshan in China’s Anhui region is one of those places. Continue reading →

Discovering Tunxi

A wall of gold has been mounted on Shu brocade.
Craftsmen from Wu collect spare change
To pay tribute to the abundance of a myriad of families.
The watchtowers of the city rise to great heights.
The bustling scene is truly impressive.
It is a chance to explore vestiges of bygone days.

-excerpt from a poem on the Qing Dynasty remake of Qīngmíng Shànghé Tú

Located in the foothills of the Yellow Mountains, Tunxi is Continue reading →

Dumplings, unite!

It all started with a wooden table in an alley: square, unadorned, pressed up against a cement wall. It wobbled a bit on the uneven cobbles.

Somewhere nearby, a game of mahjong- the soft clinking of tiles echoed faintly on the evening air. Wisps of a forgotten dream, sounds from another time. I imagined the room where they played. Dark, smoky. Fingers twisted with age shuffling, shuffling, shuffling. The worn bone and bamboo whispers as it slides between mysterious symbolism and a poetry of deeper meaning. Through all that is lost and everything that is gained, what will be revealed? Plum blossom, peacock, white tiger, sword. Continue reading →

Not Your Eomma’s Kalguksu: an ode to eating on the side streets

Tunxi, China

It turns out that I am a back alley kind of girl. This was something that I didn’t know about myself until we moved to Korea and began to travel through Southeast Asia.

Give me food stalls, stacks of dumplings steaming on street corners, wobbly stools, plastic chairs pressed up against cement walls, narrow passages crammed with tables. Let me sit elbow to elbow on a wooden bench in a bustling market noisy with sizzling, slurping, hissing, lip-smacking goodness. Paper sacks and plastic bags. Crunchy, greasy, savoury, sweet, bean paste, sesame, skewers, buns, pancakes and pockets. I am happiest at Continue reading →

Qinghefang Ancient Street: A Feast for the Senses

Qinghefang Ancient Street- Hangzhou, China

just before the crowds…

We emerged from the narrow street where our little guest house sat nestled into a row of white washed buildings. It was quiet, and the essence of another era lingered between the walls and the cobbles. Then, as we rounded the corner and stood at the opening of Qinghefang Ancient Street we saw it: a throng of humans stretching as far as the eye could see. I am not going to lie- Continue reading →

West Lake Walkabout

We woke on our first morning in Hangzhou to the sound of birds chirping in the courtyard. I kept my eyes squeezed shut and listened intently to their song, not yet wanting to break the spell, and tried to imagine what words the ancient Chinese poets would use to describe the moment. Is it possible that there was a proverb somewhere in their early morning music?
Continue reading →

Hangzhou, we arrive.

little guardians of Quinghefang Ancient Street…

The bus hurdled westward until Shanghai was just a collection of faded grey shapes. I watched through the window as the suburbs rolled by: groups of colourful housing complexes creeping their way across green. Power lines, train tracks, industry. Even in the mystical land of the red dragon Continue reading →

The Magic of Malapascua (part 2)

As we surveyed the rubble through the barbed-wire fence, the whole while nursing our warm beers, Josephine recounted the story of how her house was lost to a massive storm. Continue reading →

The Magic of Malapascua (part 1)

Sometimes when you arrive at a place, you find that it is full of magic. It is not necessarily filled with ancient structures to be revered, or dazzling skylines as a testament to the clever engineering capabilities of its humans. The place may not be studded with snow topped mountains, awe inspiring waterfalls, or pristine beaches. Yet, when you arrive, you can feel Continue reading →

A little dinner with your Hong Thong?

Creating the perfect bite of food in Chiang Mai, Thailand

The more time we spent in Thailand, the more obvious it became that the best way to find a great place to eat was to follow your nose, and look for the red and blue plastic chairs. Seemingly synonymous with ‘delicious’ all across the country, it took us little time to figure out that where we found the chairs, we would find Continue reading →

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