• Asia,  China

    The Language of the Heart – Yangshuo

    Sitting on small wooden stools, the silence was only broken by the sound of heavy rain and the vigorous brushes the woman gives to the soaked clothes in the red round plastic container. The husband astutely maneuvers the knife removing the tip and the stringy bit from the side of the green beans, separating those into a different container. Their son, maybe 6 or 7 years old, oblivious to us, holds a pencil in his hand, scribbling mandarin characters on his dusty notebook, determined to finish his homework. The silence isn’t disturbing at all. It only gives space to contemplate the question “how could they trust us, such strangers, and…

  • Asia,  China

    Tianmen Mountain – Zhangjiajie

    Even with my eyes closed I could feel it. An emptiness of everything and a simultaneous filling of nothing. Walking as far as the edge goes, I opened my arms to embrace the nothing and the everything. The breeze kissed my cheeks and messed up my hair. With the Tianmen Mountain behind me, saying I was walking on top of it wasn’t quite the truth. In fact, I was following a path built on the cliff face of the mountain, with metal railing painted and sculptured to look like wood. At 1400 meters high, initially it felt like walking on the clouds, but when they disappeared, the houses were like…

  • Asia,  China

    “Avatar” Mountains exist… in China – Zhangjiajie

    We climbed 2000 steps to the top of the mountain to get an “unbelievable view”. Well, all there was to see was fog and Chinese people taking selfies in the fog. Then it started to rain, but in a way it made me believe that the skies were mad at someone somewhere. My rain proof jacket was letting me down (and wet). We found shelter in a KFC at the end of the path, asked for hot chocolate and were served with hot milk. After several failed attempts to say/mimic chocolate in Chinese, we turned to our hot cups of milk and tried to sink our frustrations in it. Well,…