Digging Holes To China: Awesome Places At Opposite Ends

When I was a small boy, my sister and I use to dig in the dirt. We were told we were digging to China, and were amazed. Of course many parents played this trick. An actual direct hole would probably end up somewhere in The Indian Sea.

Some fifty years later, traveling all over China, I noticed how similar some places were to places in America...not just physically, but in the ways things were going on. So I took many photos and wrote magazine-like stories to go along with all these places in China, originally intending just to publish that.

But when I got back to the states, I saw a real correlation again...many places and things in America were similar to places I had just been in China. Fortunately I have been all over the Southwest, and had had many magazine and newspapers published. So I took the places I thought most similar and updated them to make this e-book.

A river-running town in Tennessee goes with The famous Li River in eastern China. Two fabulous islands saved by nature are compared: North Captiva Island in Southwest Florida and Weizhou Island in South China. Hunting elephants in Shanghai is sister to tracking panthers in the swamps of south Florida. We look at the tourists of Ding Darling National Wildlife Area, hikers on the Blue Ridge Mountains along the east coast of America, and to my Chinese wife and I in a lot of good and bad trouble in China. I tell you how "doctor fish" suck on Hainan Island in China and why Beihai is booming. Then I get lost, am homeless, and teach lovable fifth-graders in Shenzhen. Finally I take you to weird and wonderful Austin, Texas, where I am as I write this.

I hope to entertain, make you laugh, and maybe actually use some of this information to go to these places.