A well-known Brazilian agent told me about the futuristic Flyzoo Hotel soon after it opened in 2019. As it turned out, I was unable to visit this 290 Room 4-star hotel packed with the latest hotel technology until a month ago, after Covid had passed. I had ventured to Hangzhou, the hometown of Jack Ma, the business genius who in the late nineties launched Alibaba, now a golgothan Chinese B2B company that helps many importers around the world connect with exporting Chinese factories.  » Read more »

In May 2023, during my first visit to China after the pandemic, I was astonished by the development of Xi’an. “How Has Covid Changed China” chronicles the transformation of this previously unkempt city into a more modern metropolis of gleaming towers and high-tech zones interconnected by elevated expressways, metro lines and buses set on a canopy of lake-centred parks and green spaces. It was like time-traveling from 1980 to 2025 in the space of four years.  » Read more »

The glittering J Hotel, housed atop China’s tallest building, The Shanghai Center, the third tallest in the world, curvaceously soars 128 floors over the world’s most stunningly glorious futuristic cityscape in an opulently Las Vegas-inspired flight of fancy. With a Shanghainese restaurant on the 120th floor, it’s currently the world’s highest hotel. Indeed, it’s a hotel of China luxury travel superlatives, whether you count the tiles of the Italian mosaic walls in its presidential Shanghai Suite,  » Read more »

The reopening of international travel to China in March 2023 has introduced visitors to changes in rules for accessing Tiananmen Square and for buying tickets to the Forbidden City in Beijing. If you are working without the help of a luxury tour operator such as Imperial Tours, which can organize these tickets as part of an custom package, but want to organize these activities for yourself, the instructions below detail how to do it. To Access Tiananmen Square (Without Visiting The Forbidden City) As of 2021,  » Read more »

Daily life in China has become so reliant on using smart phone apps that I now wonder if I could survive without them! The obvious immediate obstacle for a tourist is flagging down taxis as these exclusively respond to ride-hailing apps now. That said, even though local Chinese people are using their smart phones to handle all their daily tasks from paying their phone bill, to ordering cinema tickets to renting a bike,  » Read more »