I came across this guy in Singapore last week, and couldn’t help but post his picture here. Especially since he was nice enough to pose for me.

Using on a recent post here, I pasted the text in at I Write Like, a site that analyzes your writing and tells you which famous author it is most like.  Here’s the result….

Whew!  Don’t I wish!!!

That’s way better than the answer I got on one of my other blogs.  Based on the most recent post there, I was told I write like Dan Brown.  :-(

I usually enjoy driving more than any other mode of travel.  In Beijing, there were enough of us traveling together to make it worthwhile to get a van and driver for our trip to the Great Wall, rather than taking a bus.  Our driver was reliable and honest, and the price was pretty good by Beijing standards.  (Though quite a bit more costly than the transport in Xi’an, which is to be expected.)

The drive to the Great Wall was an enjoyable one, making for a good day all around.

Lots of people have tried to beat the system at the World Expo, avoiding the long queues by pretending to be handicapped.  I came across some funny pictures of “miracles” — people getting right up out of their wheelchairs, apparently healed, suddenly and completely!

I’ve recently been working on some essays for language study.  One that my teacher went and found for me, knowing I keep this blog, was about Tai Shan.  I really got into the essay, and couldn’t help looking up more information online.  I came across several nice info sites, but probably what I enjoyed best was this photo collection.

Hope you enjoy too!

This news video is several months old, but certainly not outdated.

Travel to the end of each line in Shanghai’s Metro system has been fun and enlightening.

One thing the project has reminded me is that Shanghai is a huge city (and growing).  I actually completed the project within a month, making the first trip on March 22, and the last on April 22.  And now here it is getting into July, and I am finally wrapping up the series.  And, this time, it’s not just because I’m long-winded, but because the topic — the city — is that expansive.

This metro map (the same one you see in all the stations, minus the dates) shows the days that I made my trips.

I’ve tried, in each post about the stops I visited, to include a little window into that world.  You can find very little in words, with more pictures than written narrative in each post — something of a departure from my normal style, I guess.

I worked quite hard to find a different way to display the name of each station.  The picture of each station’s name was taken inside the station, or on the outside of its structure.  I’ve included the names from various signs posted in the stations, once using the machine where you buy tickets.  It was fun to try to find enough different ways to post the name, so that each method would be unique to that locale.  I think it does something to add to what I wanted to capture in this whole series — the diversity of this city.

At times, I began to feel the project was quite silly, and that it would never end.  But I am glad I did it, as I saw what I wanted to see — the different sides of Shanghai life.  It has definitely caused me to reflect, and for that alone, it was worth the time and effort.

It might seem a little strange to include a short post on Yishan Road in a series of posts about travel to the end of the various lines in Shanghai’s Metro system, because it is not at the end of any line.  It is right in the middle of the action, a place where three different lines in the Metro system meet.

It is not as busy an interchange as People’s Square, but it does give some feel for what I was contrasting each of the ends to.  And, it works better for giving a window onto my own daily experience of taking the train than some of the other downtown stations because it is not too far from my house, my starting point for most of my journeys to the end of the lines.

Here’s a little look at life right outside Yishan Road station, to give a feel of the contrast it provides for the other stations that have been featured over the past few months.

If you are in Shanghai, you should soon be able to find copies of Suzhou Basics on shelves in your local bookstore.

Suzhou Basics is my first book-length travel guide, published by Urbanatomy in Shanghai.  It covers all the important hotspots in Suzhou, and I think the perspective it provides on the city is one that most visitors would enjoy sharing.  It was certainly a lot of fun putting it together.

Suzhou is one of China’s most beautiful and historic cities.  The gardens that you will find all over Suzhou set the standard for the Chinese classical garden — an art form that receives a fair amount of attention in Suzhou Basics.  Suzhou is easily accessible from Shanghai (about 40 minutes by train), and a day trip there is very easily done.  But a longer stay is, of course, all the better.  In Suzhou Basics, you can find all the information you need to plan your stay — including food, accommodations, shopping, nightlife, and sightseeing.

I hope you enjoy the book, but even more, I hope you enjoy the city.

Travel to the end of Line 9 where it terminates in Songjiang marked the end of my travels along the Shanghai Metro system to explore the outer reaches of this big city.  It was a very fitting way to end the project.

Songjiang is one of the older parts of Shanghai, considerably older than the downtown regions, I think.  Today, it houses another of Shanghai’s many universities, the Shanghai International Studies University, which is actually located one stop before the final station on Line 9.

Across from the station where I stopped was a pretty little garden, which I took a short walk through.

The garden was actually set up to lead the way to the impressive complex that houses the city’s administrative bodies.

It was a very nice way to wrap up my travels to the end of each line on Shanghai’s Metro system.