City Love Companions

China has one of the oldest civilizations in the world. Over 3000 years of documented history is a lot of time. Think of what kind of knowledge and cultural heritage they’ve amassed. Beijing doesn’t capitalize on that. Sure, there are temples, a touch of that ancient legacy, but for the most part, it’s just…vast. China used to have several capitals. Even better, they had numerous capitals at the same time. They had a central city for each of the four regions. Beijing has been an on-and-off northern capital city for over 800 years, throughout different dynasties. In 1949 the People's Republic of China won the Chinese Civil War and claimed Beijing as the regimes seat of power. Mao Zedong and his iconic haircut claimed the prize from the Tiananmen overlooking the Tiananmen Square. It�...

Hong Kong, like other major players in the region, has made its fortune on the drug trade. Opium was the name of the game back then, everyone wanted a piece of that trade. Hong Kong means “The Scented Port” in Cantonese. They say it comes from the smell of sandalwood incense. I believe it was the smell of sweet, sweet opiates that caused the “peaceful colonization” by the British Empire. They came, planted a flag in the ground and said: “This is ours now”. I thought it takes more to colonize a piece of land, but apparently not. They left eventually, but Hong Kong remained one of the most “English” cities in Asia. Victoria Peak and Victoria Harbour (named after Queen Victoria) have become iconic parts of this city. The tram that takes tourists to the summit is an unforgettab...

Shanghai is one of the most interesting cities on earth. I had this image in my mind that China, being a socialist country, would be a proper dump. I couldn’t have been more wrong. The Chinese metropolis is running laps around the rest of the world in terms of development. People say they advance ten years in the span of one. It’s an exaggeration but not by a lot. You can literally take a magnetic hover train from the airport to the city. It only takes a few minutes running at 300 km/h. It’s Star Wars stuff. Shanghai is located at the Yangtze River Delta and is the largest shipping container port in the world. I have a fling for shipping containers; people build incredible houses out of those. Just to put things into perspective: over 26 million people live in Shanghai. Just imagine:...