Skiing China 5: Our Own Private Mountain
And, as if by magic, with a little lot of help from Ski School videos, everything comes together. It’s snowing! It’s snowing, for this arid...
EscapeArtistes Blog
Skiing China 4: Sun Mountain Yabuli
We awake to a blanket of snow, carpeting the shrubby elms and larches and softening the contours of the disappointing hills, chow down on our...
Skiing China 3: Only in China…
You may have noticed, gentle reader, that I have a tendency to embark on insanely difficult projects without adequate research, and then whine about it....
Skiing China 2: In Which I Attempt a Slalom
“The black run is short,” Li explains. “After, blue.” “What about that one?” I say. “Dangerous! Lots of rocks!” Well, I think stoically, that’s one...
Skiing China – Episode 1 – Getting Yabuli Wrong
The Chinese are the most inventive nation on earth when it comes to winter fun, but skiing in China is a very new thing. And,...
The Best Laid Plans…
There are still two important projects outstanding from our plan for winter in China. Project Visa and Project Apartment have been concluded. We have seen...
The Harbin Ice Sculptures – a Winter Wonderland
What’s it like seeing the Harbin ice sculptures when you’ve dreamed of seeing them for over a decade? Jaw-dropping. The Harbin ice sculptures are the...
In Search of the Harbin Ice Sculptures
We haven’t, frankly, had the best start to 2013. Or Harbin, for that matter. Among other observations on life in minus 30, I can confirm...
10 Random Observations on Life in -30
1: Your Body Acclimatises When we first arrived in Harbin, the cold seemed so biting that I couldn’t believe locals would go out without gloves...
The Songhua River
One of the few details of primary school history that sticks in my brain – well, apart from Elizabethans using white lead on their faces...