Sleeping with Cannibals

Mao and Then.

Many pasts catching up with China.

Few countries have a history to match China, and few are changing as fast. Roderick Eime tramps Beijing from the Great Wall to Tiananmen Square and finds the past overlaid by an exciting, dynamic future.

"You are walking ..puff.. on the world's longest .. puff, puff...cemetery," said Miranda, our guide, as we heaved and wheezed up the near vertical inclines of China's Great Wall. She was talking about the horrendous toll of slave workers who perished during the building of the world's longest man-made structure that snakes across the Chinese landscape and, just at this moment, seemed more like a mountain than anything built by hand.

RIDING THE RAILS IN TAIWAN

Even though Taiwan is a small mountainous island nation ringed only by a narrow coastal strip it offers a number of world-class rail journeys.  From humble beginnings when the first tracks were laid for goods trains some 100 years ago the dynamic Asian country has developed a modern rail network that today extends for some 4500 km.

World Heritage - July-August 2006

Pandas roam free in China

My first 24 hours: Phnom Penh

When you apply for a visa at Phnom Penh airport, eight uniformed soldiers will check your passport. Eight of them. If you've been reading about the Khmer Rouge and civil war, about corruption and kidnappings, you might be feeling a bit nervous as, one after the other, those eight uniformed soldiers flick through the pages of your filthy, foreign passport.