#IWSG...The A-Z is into its first week...but I am climbing walls in China!

What an eagerly-awaited month!

 April is here!
The A-Z is here!
But...I am not here.

Alex's awesome co-hosts for the April 6 IWSG are Megan Morgan, Chris Votey, Viola Fury, Christine Rains, Madeline Mora-Summonte, L.G. Keltner, and Patricia Lynne! Please visit if you can!

Click HERE to visit more posts

I am not participating in the A-Z as April is a different sort of month for me. Posting every day and commenting is out of the question...because I AM IN CHINA! Yes, you heard! I've been here 3 days now and no doubt I'm loving it! (If that confuses you, this is a pre-scheduled post).

I mentioned some time ago that China was on my wish list, and I grabbed a fantastic opportunity for a guided tour of Beijing and Shanghai when it came up. So, I'll either be so amazed I'll return and see more under my own steam, or this short tour will be enough to satisfy my China wunderlust.

I love immersing myself in new cultures, do you? China is the polar opposite to Australia in so many ways. The good thing is that several of my students speak Mandarin, so I have the important go-to phrases if I manage to give the guides the slip and do some exploring of my own.

This is not a travel article (that will be written when I return), but for those who're interested, here are the highlights...Can't wait to get photographs of my own, but here are found images...

www.china-mike.com

BEIJING: The Great Wall of China (of course!!).  I'm probably clambering over some of the 5,000 km Wall (3,100 miles - some say 5,500 miles) trying not to think about the skeletons under the cement of those labourers who died during the making of (I used to teach Ancient History), Tienanmen Square (to pay  homage to the students who did/didn't die there in the demonstrations of 1989), The Forbidden City, parts of which are no longer forbidden to Westerners. We get to eat real Peking Duck...hmm...hope the feet have been removed...ogle bogle!

1930 on Tai'an Lu - art deco store
in the French Concession

SHANGHAI: The highlight here to me will be the French Concession. I read a fabulous novel by Lisa See set in this section of the city (it is not on the guided tour, so will have to sneak off..but I AM GOING THERE!). No doubt it'll turn up in a future story.

Click here to read about it...

Then the Bund District (the European section which I suppose they think we'd like to see), but most importantly we spend a couple of days out in the country visiting and staying at two little traditional cities where we can imagine the Old Dynastic China. I'm expecting a photographer's paradise!

So, not feeling insecure. Travel always washes away my insecurities as it's my default happy position. I've been writing up a storm in March...have a novella set in Paris which keeps growing at the suggestion of my beyond-awesome critique partner, and I have made a good start on the sequel to my paranormal romance, Under the Tuscan Moon.

All you A-Zers, I wish you well. I'll be along to read catch-up posts when I return. But the final weeks of April I will spend doing my April NaNoWriMo...writing every day like it's November. In China I will be writing every chance I get. Will have a new big, fat, copious journal clutched under my arm.

Thanks for coming by!

Leave a comment please! Google is out of favour in China, so is Facebook and most social media, I am told, but I will reply to comments when I return to the land of Oz.

Bish Denham's List Bloghop. 8 years of blogging! Travel bucket listl...

First, my thoughts go out to those in Mexico who survived Patricia's fury--the strongest hurricane on record in the western hemisphere. Thankfully the damage has been less than expected from a hurricane of this magnitude, but the storm is ongoing..

Thanks to blogger Guilie Castillo for these links: 

Easy ways to help:

Humane Society International (help for animal victims)

Donations to Red Cross Mexico

AZ Central tells you how to help Patricia victims

CNN's list of sites for Patricia relief

Now... the WEP Halloween challenge is over bar the wrap up and judging, just in time for me to enter Bish's bloghop. The wrap up is today and the winners announced Wednesday. Heads up on next challenge--a sci-fi look at the holiday season...holidays out of this world.

This has got to be one of the most straightforward bloghops ever!

Here' what Bish has to say:

The rules are simple. All you have to do is sign up in the linky thingy below, grab the banner, and make a list. I suggest you keep your list to between 5 and 25 items long. We'll visit each other on October 26th.

You can list whatever you feel like (except for adult type content). That's it! Think about it, the ideas are endless.

You could list:

favorite trees/animals/flowers/insects/pets
favorite books/movies/actors/heroes/villains/music/concerts you've been to
places you'd like to go/places you've been to
make a bucket list
favorite food/desserts/drinks
favorite names
favorite scientists/mathematicians/artists
favorite activists/saints/prophets
favorite myths/mythological places/gods/goddesses
your morning/evening routine
important things to pack when going on vacation
what to take on a picnic
biggest fears
greatest loves
the birthdays of your family members
holidays
things you like/dislike doing
foods you don't like to eat
pictures of your cat/dog
cars you've owned
places you've lived/schools you've attended
musical instruments you play
important moments in history you've lived through
historical eras you'd like to have lived in
famous people (dead or alive) that you'd like to meet

My entry: TRAVEL BUCKET LIST

Okay. I live to travel, so I'm listing some of the places I'm yet to visit...


1. China 


PLAN: Have booked 10 days in China in 2016. Scary, but true. It's on my bucket list. Grabbed a great deal, so we have 10 days in China seeing the main sights--Great Wall, Tienanmen Square, the 'bund' district of Shanghai and more. 

2. India

PLAN: I was about to book the Golden Triangle of India--Delhi (Old and New), Agra and Jaipur for this year, but family intervened, so is still on the bucket list. When we go, we will: 

• Discover the ghost town of Fatehpur Sikri 
• Stroll the pink-hued streets of Jaipur
• Experience the chaotic charm of Old Delhi
• Explore the Red Fort of Agra
• Sit and stare at the Taj Mahal!

3. The Greek Islands

PLAN: Okay, you would have expected an inveterate traveller like me to have lazed around the Greek Islands, lazily cruising around, swimming, eating fish by the beach, trekking into the hills. Sadly, every time I've planned to go, something stopped me--earthquakes, fires, political unrest--Greece is very volatile. Soon, I WILL go! (And I may even meet Jessica Bell, the resident famous author!)

4. Cuba

Beach front hotel, Havana.

PLAN; Well, I was planning a trip to Cuba, incorporating Florida and the rest of the Caribbean, but Michael di Gesu is still looking for that house in Florida, so I thought I'd wait! Just kidding. And I do wish Michael all the best for his house in the sun.  I've looked at local tours, and now that it's no longer forbidden to fly in from the US, I might be able to catch a few of my American friends when I go. Maybe we could meet up in Cuba and hire one of those cool classic cars and tour around. Dreamy!

5. New York City

PLAN: Well, everyone wants to visit NYC once in their life, don't they? When I finally get to the US to catch up with blogger friends, I intend to visit this world capital. I know I'll be more than happy to jump back on a plane and hightail it outta there, but, just once, I'd like to visit all those 'best in the world' places--well, those eateries anyway (not that I'm a fan of bagels or donuts.) Food is always high on my list of things to, er, eat, when I travel. Partaking of a country's food is part and parcel of travelling. I wouldn't be able to handle American portions--we practise nouvelle cuisine in Australia--we have to use a magnifying glass to find the food on the plate, lol, but I'll take my husband to do his usual food incinerator job! While in NYC I have a dream to visit those islands--Nantucket, Martha's Vineyard, and also Boston. And Ann Best is always wanting me to visit her in Virginia. They're all on the East Coast, right?

So there you go. My List. I hope you're enjoying Bish's bloghop and hop on board. To read other posts, go HERE.

• Thank you for reading. Do you like to travel? What places are on your bucket list?

Prepare to be HAUNTED. A real-life haunting in Beijing. Three Halloween blogfests.

Hello everyone!

Well, it's October which means all kinds of awesomeness. It's the month where writing prompts abound with the theme of haunting. Halloween or All Hallows Eve, isn't much of a deal in Australia, but it is gathering momentum. What better way to celebrate than to write ghostly stories, or to post stories about ghostly happenings?

I was intrigued by a story I read in a newspaper today and I'll share it with you. For those who have entered a haunting blogfest, it may give you an idea...

Chaonel No 81

It happened in 1949. The Communists had just defeated the Nationalists in the Civil War in China. Legend has it that in the rush for the losing army to evacuate to Taiwan, a high-ranking Nationalist official based in Beijing abandoned his wife, leaving her to fend for herself as the Communists marched on the city. This was a bloody time in China, perilous if you did not belong to the Communist Party. 

Understandably, the wife was terrified--it is rumoured she was a Concubine--she chose suicide over her well-founded fear of being slaughtered by the communists. She hung herself from the rafters of the three-story French-Baroque style home. 

Locals say the spirit of the spurned woman haunts the mansion to this day. With its floor-to-ceiling cobwebs and crumbling floorboards, Chaonel No 81 certainly seems like the perfect breeding ground for paranormal activity. 

"Always, people thought the house was haunted," claims Li Yonjie, who grew up in an alleyway behind Chaonel No 81. "As children we would play hide and seek in the house, but we didn't dare go inside by ourselves." Li claims the Red Guards who used the house during the Cultural Revolution got scared and left. I wonder what scared them?

Despite the building's location in the centre of Beijing where a small courtyard home sells for several millions of dollars, there are apparently no official plans to do anything with this abandoned building. The building is on the historic list, so cannot be torn down, but can be renovated. There are no prospective buyers rushing to buy the home, which may be due to the Chinese tendency to avoid all things related to death. Who wants to live in a haunted house? Not too many of us.

The local police and the Catholic diocese (the owners of the building) reject the ghost tale, claiming there is no Kuomintang official living there.

There are conflicting histories regarding the building's provenance, but the most popular is that it was built in 1910 for a French manager of the company that built the railway between Beijing and Hankou. Whatever the history, locals are convinced it is haunted, so it sits there, crumbling, unloved and abandoned, much like the Concubine who hung herself in 1949.

You know what they say...truth is stranger than fiction...

Here are three Halloween bloghops I know of. Perhaps one entry could suit all three.

First, if you would like to post something just before Halloween (October 30) you are welcome to join my Write...Edit...Publish blogfest---theme--HAUNTING. Francine Howarth is donating a Kindle book to a random WEP entry and I am donating a $10 Amazon Gift Card to the most captivating entry.

Francine Howarth is running her own Halloween blogfest, where authors, writers and readers will be TRICK or TREATING. 

Devin Berglund has her own Haunting October Blogfest. Each day she posts an image to stimulate your writing juices. Go to Devin's blog to learn more. 

You can sign up here for the WEP blogfest in my right-hand sidebar and visit the other ladies to check theirs out.

I'd like to recommend an excellent book I bought on writing ghost stories--Ghost Stories and How to Write Them by Kathleen McCurl.