Hailuogou

In the Boston Review, a dispatch from winter.

Zigzag Ice Dragon

Porters in ratty green uniforms are standing by their bamboo-and-metal sedans, calling out to the busloads of Chinese tourists. The tourists are huddled in groups on the frozen parking lot, strapping mini crampons onto all sorts of inappropriate footwear, or zipping up their rented snow boots. It’s February, and the New Year holiday has given way to a period of frantic mass travel that has what seems like all of China on the move.

Hailuogou National Glacier Forest Park is shrouded in a cold whiteout. My brother and I, traveling in the Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, have paid a couple hundred yuan for matching entrance and transport tickets, which double as postcards. We churn past three thermal-bath resorts, tiered by price and comfort. The rolling green-tea fields of Sichuan province are miles downriver, on the other side of massive tunnel and hydroelectric projects reshaping Tibet’s eastern slope.

Read the rest at Boston Review

Embers

The Times publishes my Jewspotting effort from Kaifeng, China today. This is a story that, for being in Travel, left a lot of topics on the cutting-room floor: identity, migration, loss and the motivations behind religion. Themes to come back to.

China's Ancient Jewish Enclave

THROUGH a locked door in the coal-darkened boiler room of No. 1 Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine in Kaifeng, there’s a well lined with Ming Dynasty bricks. It’s just a few yards deep and still holds water. Guo Yan, 29, an eager, bespectacled native of this Chinese city on the flood plains of the Yellow River about 600 miles south of Beijing, led me to it one recent Friday afternoon, past the doormen accustomed to her visits.

The well is all that’s left of the Temple of Purity and Truth, a synagogue that once stood on the site. The heritage it represents brings a trickle of travelers to see one of the more unusual aspects of this country: China, too, had its Jews.

Read the rest here.

In China

I'm in China, reporting three stories, through early March. It's all here on Find China, http://chinable.org, so why don't you click it already? Come on back to OPP once that trip is over.