I'd like to let people who have not had a chance to see as much of China as I have know a bit more about this fascinating country. I almost feel I owe it to the countless Chinese people who've made my stays and journeys so memorable.

Another reason is that I have this thing about barriers between people. What kinds of barriers am I talking about? It's the artificial barriers that we humans are expert at erecting - the me or us versus them, the fences we draw around us based on membership of groups: country clubs or nationalities, fraternities or passports, sports teams or races. It is one of humanity's curses that we tend to focus on the 0.0001% that make us different rather than the 99.999% that we have in common.