A visit to China in 2021, (at the time, home to our daughter Megan in Ningbo, now permanently returned) yielded many visions of this Far Eastern country, together with it's people and places. Some immediately identifiable such as the Forbidden City (Beijing), the Great Wall (this particular 3km section from the 500+km wall, a mere two hour bus ride from central Beijing) and the 'Terracotta Army' (12 hours by overnight sleeper train, west of Beijing, at Xian).

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China is vast! So big that much of it is an unpopulated, (if stunningly beautiful) wilderness - together with equally vast cities that seem to be ever-evolving. Countless tower-cranes atop towering apartment blocks that seem to be springing up in every city we visited. Currently Beijing is home to some 23 million people - give or take. Xian, by comparison a mere 12 million, (London stands at 8.5 million at the most recent estimate!)

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I was surprised by 'how flat' much of the landscape is (although a high percentage of this is human-made for arable cultivation). I was equally surprised at the expanse of each city, again interspersed with huge swathes of flat ground. Chinese cities have been struggling to reverse the problems of polution and smog. Their solution - create man-made hills and valleys within the cities and fill them with literally millions of trees, to absorb carbon di-oxide.

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This 'photojournal' helps tell the story of our adventures (with Katy my wife) and allows me to share with you, the beauty and colour of the country.