Peter Hessler has been one of the most consistently popular attendees at the Beijing International Literary Festival over the years, and his wonderful River Town and Oracle Bones are essential reading for China watchers. Hessler will be talking about his new work, Country Driving: A Journey Through China from Farm to Factory at this year’s festival – note the date of his talk has changed. A second talk, Beijing Through a Lens, featuring Hessler and Mike Meyer (Last Days of Old Beijing) has also been moved to a different time and bigger venue - which means more tickets will be available for this previously sold-out event (see details at the end of this post). In the meantime, the travel website WORLDHUM has published an interview with Hessler, in which in discusses the epic drives he undertook in writing his new book.

TED – Technology, Entertainment, Design – is an annual gathering of the world’s leading thinkers that has been described as “the ultimate brain spa.” Speakers have included everyone from Bill Gates to Jane Goodall, Bill Clinton to Sir Richard Branson. On a more humble level,  TEDx is a program run by local groups in various cities around the world, bringing people together for talks from local innovators and thinkers. The first Beijing TEDx took place in November last year and videos of the talks are now being posted on the TEDxBeijing site.

As huge, developing countries with burgeoning economies, China and India are often seen as rivals on the world stage. Now both countries have ranked highly on a list they would probably prefer not to be on. For the second year in a row, Beijing Capital International Airport holds the world’s worst departure record, with just 38% of commercial passenger flights leaving on time, according to Forbes.com. The worst airport in terms of arrivals was Delhi's Indira Gandhi International Airport, with just 45% of passenger flights arriving according to schedule.

You’re familiar with the stock images. The big crossing with the neon lights, the robo-punkettes, the Hello Kitty girls, the besuited salarymen, the Blade Runner parallels. Yeah, you know Tokyo, don’t you? Visit Japan’s capital and find out.

With many Beijingers fleeing the cold over the Christmas and New Year period and heading for more tropical climes, Dr Richard has done a useful post on the relative safety of various anti-malarial drugs.

You've probably seen the adverts with the woman singing, "Malaysia, Truly Asia," hummed the tune a little in your head, and thought about how long it's been since you last had a beach holiday. Fair enough. Malaysia does have more than its fair share of beautiful beaches, but it also has more than that - a stunning capital city that embodies the very spirit of this multi-cultural melting pot. But, I hear you asking, can it beat Beijing? And if not to relocate there, is it worth considering for property investment purposes.

This weekend Singapore-based real estate enterprise Orange Tee hosts a property investment opportunity (details here) at the Park Hyatt in Beijing – and this is why real estate dabblers in Beijing should take a closer look at what’s happening elsewhere in Asia.

Winter is here.

Many will be hibernating until spring. But some of us are polar bears, and to us, the frosty paradises of Dongbei call.

Only 40km outside of Jilin City, Jilin province, this jewel of frigid Dongbei has earned itself a reputation as a photographer’s paradise.

Many expats are vaguely aware that below Beijing’s streets lies an immense network of tunnels dating back to the late 1960s and early 70s, when nuclear attack from either the USSR or the US seemed a real possibility. The tunnels form an underground city that was designed to house much of Beijing’s population in the advent of a nuclear strike. Unfortunately the small section of the network formerly open to the public was closed prior to the Olympics and has never re-opened. Vice magazine, however, recently provided a slightly illicit peek into what lies below our city streets.

Fragrant Hills: Beijingers flock here in autumn when the maple leaves saturate the hillsides in great splashes of red…
–Lonely Planet: China

…and it can be a nightmare.

Even the emperors of ancient times needed the occasional break from Beijing. Fortunately for them, the Summer Palace complex, a little over 200 kilometers away in Chengde – now a mere two hours by car thanks to the newly opened Jingcheng Expressway – was the ideal 18th-century solution to the problem of how to rule an empire whilst languishing in all those hot yellow robes.