Tag Archives: walk🚶🏻

You see the blue stream on the map? That’s the famous Yellow River. I am so close to it, but alas! I can’t see it just yet, because it has pulled back too far into its bed: The road I was walking on today looked the same for hours and hours: No people, no cars […]

This is my friend Chang Haiqiang 常海强: Awesome guy; fixed me up with a nice place to stay and fed me home-cooked chicken wings for breakfast. The dude has done just about everything everywhere, from motorbike maintenance in the South to running a restaurant in the capital. He knows everyone in the little settlement that’s […]

There is an aeroplane on a square in a public park in Yongji: Obviously, this is a nice place to play with friends when you’re about 10 years old: I’m 26, so I didn’t play. Instead I was going to climb yet another pagoda, one that seemed to be leaning slightly to the right: The […]

There’s a photographer (I forget his name) who has published a book about things people sit on in China. I think that is an interesting subject indeed, and I am a bit jealous that I didn’t think of it first: There’s not necessarily a deeper meaning to this – most chairs are still just chairs […]

Someone had left his sneakers outside, on a wall next to the road: My boots didn’t care much though. They just carried my aching body away: The mountains to the left, the flat land to the right, stomping the concrete highway, so we walked, my boots and I: Some kids were shooting pool, and I […]

Oh, so good to be on the road again! Or so I thought… It seemed like the Chairman himself was going to hail me off when I was about to leave the city: Everything was quiet, almost all shops and restaurants remaining closed during the holiday season: I seemed to find a kid around every […]

The news in Europe and the States seem to make it look like China is basically buried under thick and heavy snow everywhere. Well that’s not entirely true, as you can see on the pictures I’ve been taking. But I’ll get to that again later. There is a set of ancient twin pagodas here in […]

You’ve probably guessed it: Last night was pretty cold. Getting into those frozen shoes, then packing up the tent and walking through the crackling snow… really not that nice. Anyways I warmed up a bit after a distance, and at some point got to a small settlement next to the highway: The kid in the […]

There’s a park up here: They told me there was no road down the south flank of the mountain. Who cares if they don’t have roads like THIS over there? thought I, expecting today’s distance really just to be a walk in the park. When I got about halfway up, things changed though: By loading […]

I arrived at the weird thing today, but before that, I had to go to this place: Hell 地狱. Now that’s pretty neat, thought I, fearlessly opened the door and went in. And on the inside, hell looked something like this: Interesting place. It’s behind a small prayer room in Dongyue Temple 东岳庙. Judging from […]

Many people I see ask me why I don’t take a bus or at least ride a bicycle. But there are others walking through the white as well: These two guys are wandering musicians from the province of Shandong 山东. They are walking north, while I’m headed south, and neither of us is going to […]

There’s a site in Jishan that’s called Dafo Temple 大佛寺: The name means “Buddha Temple” – and it was pretty big, this 1142 A.D. earthen statue of the seated Buddha: I’m in the top left corner of the photograph, kind of like in those frustrating Where’s Waldo books. I forgot to mention the best thing: […]

Jishan is actually more than 30km from Xinjiang, but someone had told me that the railroad was a more direct way to get there. So I walked the iron road: You know what sucks about this: the distance between the horizontal boards is just too small, so you have to make tiny little steps if […]

Today was another walk through the cold and white: Here’s something for the horticulturists: Garlic. A good friend once told me that having a few of these with every meal is the best way not to get stomach-sick. I’ve been having lots and lots ever since. Now maybe it was because of the aroma that […]

I’m on the move again today, zooming in little by little on the weird thing that some have identified as being: – a mountain, – a molehill, – a volcano crater, – a HUGE hole. Well, I guess we’ll see later on what it really is. Today’s walk, even though it felt like there was […]

My down filled sleeping bag kicks some serious arse. I actually woke up because I was feeling uncomfortably warm in that unheated frosthole they called “hotel room” in this tiny strip settlement on the highway: Of course my poor shoes had no way of drying out in a place like that. So, after a long […]

Yang Fusheng 杨福生 was a very well-respected man, and head of Dingcun village for many years: Many people came to his funeral, including one foreigner – me. I asked the Yang-family whether it was okay if I stayed and took pictures, and they very kindly allowed me complete freedom. Obviously I tried to make myself […]

sleep 08:00 – Wake up from alarm clock. Open eyes, extend arm from sleeping bag, touch radiator. Feel the cold, close eyes again. 09:06 – Get up. Turn on computer and write up yesterday’s post. Check map. Look at total kilometers. 10:04 – Write “25,7” on back of left hand: that would mark kilometer no. […]

My friends know: I’m a lazy pig. But I left my hotel this morning: My friend who works for a local news station was going to shoot a tiny feature about me. So we went around and I did what I do: walking and taking pictures and asking for the way. We also tried to […]