Words and Pictures

For many years I thought the Forbidden City was “red”, but in my heart of hearts I knew it was not an ordinary red. Eventually I learned that it is called ashes of roses. The materials used to make the paint are local to the area and have been used for hundreds of years. The [...]

No I haven’t vanished off the face of the earth. In fact, I have seen more of the earth in the last two weeks than I have in some time. We just returned from a 4100 mile road trip through North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas, Tennessee and back home again. [...]

It was the end of a long day. We had walked extensively and finally just as the light was at its useful end, these two men came down a lane near one of the un-restored Ming Tombs on the outskirts of Beijing. Sometimes it takes all day for everything to come together.

For many years, China has had a one-child policy. That policy combined with the historical preference for boys, has resulted in an imbalance of men to women in China with men outnumbering women with numbers around 117 men for every 100 women.
When we lived in China, people would often tell us there were “too many [...]