Travel to follow a dream
That opportunity transpired in 1992 as I headed off for a year to live in Guangzhou. It proved no ordinary travel experience for I would be staying and working among ordinary Chinese people, not cocooned within the few comfortable or luxury hotels then available to foreigners. It was an opportunity to travel alone on river journeys -- of visiting families in their village homes, reaching the stunning Li River landscape of Guangxi -- and to head along railway lines by steam-hauled trains that helped drive this inspiration. It is something I still have, to keep discovering so much more of China's unique geographical and human diversity. China, a country I have found so vastly different from contemporary images of Shanghai’s magnificent waterfront or Beijing's spectacular imperial heritage.
