You finish dinner in China. It’s getting late. You expect the streets to start quieting down. Instead… people are walking. Children are still outside. Restaurants are busy. Someone is buying fruit. People are exercising in the park. And somewhere nearby, somebody is looking for supper. 😂 “Wait… doesn’t everyone go home after dinner?” 🥟 The Quick Bite In many Chinese cities, evening is an important part of everyday public life. People may...
You look out of a Chinese high-speed train. Apartment towers. Then more apartment towers. You arrive in a city, take the metro for 30 minutes, come back above ground and… more apartment towers. 😳 You may start wondering: “How many people LIVE here?” 🥟 The Quick Bite China experienced one of the world’s largest and fastest periods of urbanization (城镇化, chéngzhènhuà). As hundreds of millions of people came to live in cities,...
You open the metro map in a major Chinese city. Red line. Blue line. Green line. Purple line. Then another twelve colors you didn’t know existed. 😂 And you think: “Wait… how big IS this metro?” 🥟 The Quick Bite In several of China’s largest cities, metro systems have grown into enormous urban transport networks. Cities such as Shanghai (上海, Shànghǎi), Beijing (北京, Běijīng), Guangzhou (广州, Guǎngzhōu) and Chengdu (成都, Chéngdū) have...
You’re standing in a railway station looking confused. Someone points you toward the right gate. You’re struggling with a machine. A stranger comes over to help. Someone else tries English. Another person simply takes out their phone and starts translating. And you think: “Wait… I wasn’t expecting this.” 🥟 The Quick Bite One surprise reported by some first-time international travelers in China is simply: how helpful strangers can be. Not everyone will...
You arrive at a major railway station in China. You look left. You look right. Then you look at your phone to make sure you’ve actually come to a train station. 😂 “Why is this place so HUGE?” 🥟 The Quick Bite Because some major Chinese railway stations aren’t simply neighborhood stations. They’re enormous transport hubs (交通枢纽, jiāotōng shūniǔ) designed to handle very large passenger flows, numerous train services and connections with...
You enter an old Chinese residence. From the street, it may look surprisingly closed. Then you step through the gate and discover: a courtyard hidden inside. Rooms face toward it. Family life seems to turn inward. Why build a house like THAT? 🥟 The Quick Bite Courtyard houses are an important part of traditional residential architecture in several parts of China. One famous example is Beijing’s: 四合院 (sìhéyuàn) — literally, a courtyard...
You visit a temple, palace or old courtyard in China. Characters above the gate. Characters beside the doorway. Characters carved into stone. Characters on plaques. And unless you read Chinese, they can start looking like: “Beautiful decoration I can’t understand.” 😂 But they’re often telling you something. 🥟 The Quick Bite Written Chinese is an important part of the visual world of many historic Chinese buildings. A plaque (匾额, biǎné) above a...
You visit an old Chinese palace, temple or pagoda. Huge columns. Heavy roofs. Complicated wooden brackets. And surprisingly little of the massive stone construction you may have expected. Why did Chinese builders use so much wood? 🥟 The Quick Bite Timber framing became one of the great traditions of Chinese architecture. In many important palaces, temples and halls, the building’s main structure was created from a framework of: wooden columns (柱, zhù)...
You’re photographing a traditional Chinese building. Then you zoom in on the roof. Along the ridge is a little procession of creatures. One. Two. Three. Sometimes quite a few. “Wait… what are THOSE doing up there?” 😂 🥟 The Quick Bite Those little figures are roof-ridge ornaments (脊兽, jǐshòu). You’ll see different forms of them on important examples of traditional Chinese architecture, particularly palaces and temples. They aren’t simply random animals added...
You walk into the Forbidden City (故宫, Gùgōng) in Beijing. Red walls. Red columns. Yellow roofs. Then more red and yellow. After a while you may wonder: “Why THESE colors?” 🥟 The Quick Bite The colors of the Forbidden City aren’t random decoration. In Ming and Qing imperial architecture, yellow (黄, huáng) became strongly associated with the emperor and imperial authority, while red (红, hóng) was widely used on important palace walls,...
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