After Japan, the next travel opportunity I had was at the invitation of Tunney Lee, chair of the newly founded School of Architecture at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Before arriving in Hong Kong in 1993, however, I made brief stops in Beijing and Nanjing. In the journal I kept for these visits, I wrote more of my day-to-day experiences, something I regretfully did not do in Japan. You can see a portion of my writing to the left of these small sketches I did as we flew into Beijing and drove into the city.

While in Beijing, one has to, of course, visit the Great Wall, the Ming Tombs, the Forbidden City, and the Temple of Heaven, all monuments of impressive scope and scale.

While thirteen of the Ming Tombs are near Beijing, one is outside Nanjing—Mingxiaoling Tomb (tomb of the founder of the Ming Dynasty). I used this small, pictorial diagram to remember the configuration of the path and the Spirit Way (Shen Dao) leading to the tomb.

In contrast to this small diagram, the expansive view often tempts us. In Hong Kong, this would be the Hong Kong Central skyline as seen from Kowloon.