Words Fail Me

At first, the giant insects clinging to the building had me going “nope” but I ventured inside.  What I found was a large collection with each specimen pinned in elebaorate designs.  Photography was forbidden (presumably to spare the dead creatures any further indignity after being displayed in a spiral or a happy face or some other absurd configuration.)

For the last leg of Debbie & my epic tour of China, we stayed at the Six Senses luxury resort in Dujiangyan near Chengdu in Sichuan province.  The view is basically a Chinese shanshui painting come to life.

The accommodations are superlative.


There is even a private little bamboo garden area in the back.  Debbie calls her’s her “panda enclosure.”

And this is the view over the resort’s organic vegetable garden.  (Not pictured:  the chicken run, duck pond, and mushroom hut.)

For my second visit, I captured this terracotta warrior backlit by the low winter sun.  A Winter Soldier, if you will.

Like that song on The Beatles’s White album.

Xi’an cemetery in late autumn.  
Cemetery with distant smokestack.

This is Xi’an’s Big Goose Pagoda:
 And this is Xi’an’s Little Goose Pagoda:
You would think Maverick would be the one who deserves a pagoda, but we couldn’t find one for him, big or little.

In Xi’an, Debbie & stayed at the Grand Mercure, a converted Communist Party mansion which is now part of a complex of western hotels cordoned off in the heart of the city.  I like to refer to the complex as “the Green Zone”.

This picture isn’t the main lobby, but some sort of sub-lobby which stood between Debbie’s room and mine.

Bagpipes and the Eiffel Tower.  The two things all young Chinese shoppers love.

Ladies and gentlemen, we have a new world record.  Debbie & I just blew through check-in and security check at Datong Airport in five minutes.  No lines, no waiting. I think I’m going to cry.