May 1 -14 2004
The first week in May is China's May Day Labour week-long holiday, when all 1.3 billion Chinese travel all around the country, 1.2 billion of which will probably be following your exact itinerary :)

You can see this most clearly in the pictures in Tiananmen Square, The Forbidden City, and most spectacularly, at The Great Wall, all in the Beijing pictures. When we were doing the Li River Cruise in Guilin the second week, they were running about 30 boats a day. The previous week they were running up to 300 a day!!

Instructions to navigate this site: If you click on any thumbnail picture that doesn't have 4 dots on either side of the picture name, you will get a full size version of that picture. If a picture does have the 4 dots on either side of the name, clicking on that picture will open up either a series of new thumbnail pictures, or additional sub-categories to click. It's actually easier than it sounds :)

If you ever get lost in the navigation, click on any of the links along the top of the page, or click on the 'tree view' link in the upper right-hand corner of the screen, and scroll down to the entry of interest. Feel free to look at anything else on the site that may interest you.