by Melinda Allman What's Cool: The Great Wall could stretch from Florida to the North Pole. China's Great Wall, stretching more than 4,500 miles (7,300 km) across the northern Chinese countryside, was built originally as a fortification to protect Chinese lands from invasion and to keep the nation's people from leaving the empire. In the centuries since, however, it has become both a symbol of tyranny – thousands of slaves were sacrificed during the building process-and a tourist attraction,  » Read more »

Published on 12 August 2003 by Travel Age West & Travelagewest.com Although the Athens Olympics are less than a year away, many travel professionals are already ramping up for the 2008 Games in Beijing. "We plan for it to be a major part of what we do here for the next few years," said Gilbert Whelan, director of marketing for China Travel Service U.S.A. in San Francisco. By all accounts,  » Read more »

By Guy Rubin Centuries ago, in a cliff-face in the midst of China's vast Taklamakan desert, artists hollowed, sculpted and painted 492 caves, creating over 450,000 square feet of spectacular murals, or more than thirty times the mural area of the Sistine Chapel. But whereas the Sistine Chapel was painted over a few years, the works at the Mogao Caves began in the fourth century and were completed over the next millennium.  » Read more »

Which Luxury Tour? 5 Critical Factors For Choosing A Luxury Tour by Guy Rubin You've paid top dollar for your "luxury tour" but find yourself continually eating in shabby restaurants, puzzled that tourist sites shut early each afternoon while souvenir stores seem permanently open. You are angered not only by your guide's increasingly obvious dishonesty but also by the waste of your valuable vacation time. This disappointing but common experience springs from the confusion people often have in choosing among a plethora of luxury tours,  » Read more »

Finding commonality at Beijing's West Qing Tombs by Guy Rubin What is it that you, me and the last Qing dynasty Emperor, Puyi, could all have in common? Absolute power at the age of two? Two wives for our sixteenth birthday? A flawed come-back in our thirties? Or maybe it's that now we can all be buried together. A commercial cemetery is the latest addition to the impressive Western Qing tombs.  » Read more »