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Arnaud Bertrand Profile picture
@RnaudBertrand
Aug 13 • 33 tweets • 17 min read Twitter logo Read on Twitter
This is day 32 of our RV road trip in Northeast China and... it ends today 😭

So time to do a little retrospective. This is a 🧵 with the highlights of our trip.

As a reminder we're a Sino-French family of 4 who rented a RV in Shenyang and proceeded to tour the 4 provinces of… https://t.co/JbmoggRq9Stwitter.com/i/web/status/1…

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Day 1, July 13th. Just to get the hang of the RV, we do a relatively short trip from Shenyang to MeiHeKou, where we discover an awesome night market ( ) and a very charming little village built during the cultural revolution (https://t.co/th3i0E8ecJ ).
Day 2. We drive from MeiHeKou to Changbai mountains. We pick fresh blueberries in a small farm ( ), eat TieGuoDun and watch a show in a great local restaurant (https://t.co/MLfbbWW41g ) and sleep next to a flower field (https://t.co/D5CWgczxvc )

Day 3. No driving today! We climb ChangBai mountain ( ), a volcano that's sacred to both Manchus and Koreans and we eat freshly caught eel for dinner (https://t.co/7rXlperMCm ), Korean barbecue style!
Day 4. Water rafting in the morning ( ) before driving to the other side of ChangBai mountain to a charming little town called Erdaocun to go to awesome volcanic hot springs (https://t.co/LZiafOZcbJ ).
Day 5. We drive to Tumen, a border city with North Korea and get a taste of North Korean culture, ( ) including eating the best rice cakes we ever tried (https://t.co/QirU5kWmgq ) and we spend the night next to a Korean temple which we visit in the morning… https://t.co/KNOmwaB8V0

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Day 6. In the morning we do a boat ride on the Tumen river ( ), which separates China and North Korea, and we drive to Yanji, a town famous for its food scene. For dinner we eat an extraordinary roast fish in "the wall", a collection of buildings full of… https://t.co/JBnVri3rKI
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Day 7. We spend our morning in a local market in Yanji ( ), get surprised to see how everything is written in Korean around here (https://t.co/K2X1hCVQsh ) and visit a nice park (https://t.co/pGG3UPATrq ).

Day 8. We drive to Changchun and visit the last palace of Pu Yi ( ), the last emperor of China. In the evening we eat Sichuan food in an incredible mall called "the hill", with a village on a hill INSIDE the mall (https://t.co/qG6vsD5KuB ).
Day 9. In the morning we visit Changchun Film Studios ( ), one of the very first movie studios of China, and then we drive to Harbin, the capital of Heilongjiang province. We spend the night on the parking of the Historical Museum of Shangjin of Jin Dynasty… https://t.co/jSYPTlwVU4
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Day 10. In the morning we visit the Historical Museum of Shangjin of Jin Dynasty ( ) and spend the afternoon in a beautiful Russian village right outside Harbin (https://t.co/lCb2QIb5ax )
Day 11. We spend the day visiting beautiful Harbin ( ) and have dinner in a great Russian restaurant with some local friends, @AdrianG4 and his lovely wife (https://t.co/h3yQJeq6Yd ).
Day 12. We drive from Harbin to the outskirts of Qiqihaer, in a small village next to a lake ( ).
Day 13. We visit Zhalong National Nature Reserve, the world's biggest reserve for red-crowned cranes, a magnificent bird ( )
Day 14. We drive a long road to Hailar, the main town in Inner Mongolia's famous Hulunbuir grassland. We join a Mongolian party as we arrive in the evening ( )
Day 15. We visit the "Hailar Memorial Park in the World Anti-Fascist War", located in the largest out of 17 fortresses the Japanese built in Northeast China after they invaded ( ). We then finally drive to the Hulunbuir grassland where we spend a great… https://t.co/OEWmWtzFSi
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Day 16. We spend an incredible day driving through the Hulunbuir grassland ( ), and I mean this literally (at some point there was no road and we were driving THROUGH THE GRASSLAND 😅)
Day 17. We reach a national park around the Gen river, famous to be the coldest place in China (-58C in winter) and one of the wildest. This place is so beautiful we feel we're in heaven ( )
Day 18. We get the extremely rare opportunity to spend the afternoon and the night with some of the last reindeer-raising Ewengkis in China, deep in the forest around the Gen river ( ). Absolutely unique experience!
Day 19. We drive to the Russian border, to a small village populated by some of the most unusual people in China: Russian-Chinese! They look absolutely Russian but speak Chinese with the local Dongbei accent ( )
Day 20. We drive alongside the Russian border and visit an amusement park, right on the border alongside the Argun river, which boasts the biggest Yin-Yang sign in the world ( ), drawn with crops in a field. We also visit an extremely charming little farm… https://t.co/UcBtFH5zJo
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Day 21. We keep driving on the China-Russia border, alongside the Argun river, which is one of the most scenic drives in China ( ). We spend the afternoon in a Mongolian amusement park, right on the grassland (https://t.co/dJ3mSzQKch )
Day 22. We drive to Jalainur, in the outskirts of Manzhouli. Since it's a rainy day due to the typhoon over China, we visit a local mammoth museum ( )
Day 23. We spend the day in Manzhouli where we visit a former Russian imperial prison ( ) and have dinner in a revolving Russian restaurant on top of a tower overseeing the most important China-Russia border crossing for trains (https://t.co/Glcv6NYaWU )
Day 24. We spend the day in a matryoshka dolls theme park in Manzhouli ( ). Probably the only such theme park in the world!
Day 25. We drive to Hulun lake, one of the largest in China and an unbelievably stunning place ( ). However we somehow manage to get the RV stuck in the sand on the shores of the lake but thankfully the people around us pull together to help us out… https://t.co/WhCAusAWTq
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Day 26. We visit Kanjur Temple, a fascinating Tibetan temple deep in Inner Mongolia that was used by the Japanese as one of their headquarters during the occupation ( ). We then spend the night in the most important WW2 historical site you've never heard… https://t.co/7GTXnWUmeV
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Day 27. We drive to Arxan, a little town with a very special - almost European - architecture and with the statue of a French Jesuit priest on its main square ( )! We then drive again to beautiful Wulanmaodu where we spend the night (https://t.co/6DNgibz3DE… https://t.co/S5PPJleDCi

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Day 28. We attend a Naadam, a traditional Mongolian festival ( ).

It was a truly unique event with 100s of horses running in the grassland, Mongolian wrestling, a fantastic Mongolian concert, etc.
Day 29. We go back to the naadam in the morning to attend a Mongolian dairy competition, and taste horse yogurt for the first time ( ) and we then drive to Gegen temple, the biggest Tibetan Buddhism temple in Inner Mongolia (https://t.co/Mbr5R8rapb )
Day 30. We drive to Faku in Liaoning province where we have an epic dinner ( ) and sleep next to a 1000-year old 52m high Liao dynasty tower (https://t.co/nXlX4yLTz1 )
Day 31. We spend the morning in the official winery of the Qing imperial family ( ) and the afternoon in a farm where they make unbelievably well-done large-scale drawings in their fields by combining different varieties of rice (https://t.co/PTkKTvid64 )
Day 32. We're back to Shenyang to give back the RV 😭

Thanks to everyone who followed us during our journey.

Hopefully we've been able to show you a somewhat different image of China than the one you're typically shown!

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More from @RnaudBertrand

Arnaud Bertrand Profile picture
Aug 15
Long time followers will know that the RV road trip we just finished in Northeast China was actually our 2nd such road trip in China.

We did another one 2 years ago, in the middle of Zero Covid, which in many ways was even more epic!

Since it ended somewhat abruptly (see below) I never got a chance to write a retrospective.

So here you go, a 🧵 thread with the highlights of our 2021 RV road trip!
Day 1, July 26th 2021. We drive from Zhengzhou, Henan province (where we rented the RV) to Luoyang to see the famous Longmen Grottoes.


Day 2. From Longmen, we drive to Xi'an in Shaanxi province to see - what else - the world famous Qin terracotta army! We spend the night right next to the site in the front yard of a local farmer.
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Read 21 tweets
Arnaud Bertrand Profile picture
Aug 12
We're now in a very special farm in Liaoning province called "Tanbo Art Kingdom" where they make drawings in rice fields out of different varieties of rice.

Extremely cute place! https://t.co/1dVUw4bcfptwitter.com/i/web/status/1…


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Some of the drawings are extraordinarily impressive! They even have a QR code, which you can apparently scan (I haven't tried it though) 😄


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If you wonder how we can take such bird view pictures, we're on a platform
Read 11 tweets
Arnaud Bertrand Profile picture
Aug 12
Fascinating article in @AmericanAffrs that looks at public opinion research in China and the 5 "surprises" it reveals:

1) The Tiananmen protests in 1989 was not a "pro-democracy" movement but an anti-reform movement
americanaffairsjournal.org/2018/02/surpri…
2) the Chinese government enjoys strong public support

3) Mutual trust between people in China is among the highest in the world

4) the government is perceived to be highly responsive

5) Chinese citizens are politically active and enjoy a strong feeling of political efficacy
You could also come to China, spend some time here, speak to the local population and understand that those "surprises" aren't in fact all that surprising.

They're just surprises if you've only ever understood China through the prism of Western media...
Read 4 tweets
Arnaud Bertrand Profile picture
Jul 22
Everything looks Russian but... we're still in China!

That's because we're in a Russian village in the outskirts of Harbin, the capital of Heilongjiang province. https://t.co/9pb9xxPXpttwitter.com/i/web/status/1…


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This is the exact spot
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The Petrov Art Palace, where we're about to step in to watch a performance
Read 5 tweets
Arnaud Bertrand Profile picture
Jul 9
Yesterday we had a short layover in Beijing where we jumped on the opportunity to visit the National Museum of China, where they keep some of the most precious treasures of ancient China.

A few items we saw 🧵
The famous sculpture of a Han dynasty dwarf "Pai You" (jester?)
An incredible Han dynasty 2,000 years old rhinoceros wine vessel
Read 10 tweets
Arnaud Bertrand Profile picture
Jun 26
Harvard's legendary professor @GrahamTAllison is probably the closest thing the world of International Relations has to an oracle.

Here he predicts India will not emulate China's rise, because of "4 inconvenient truths".

Let's have a look 🧵
foreignpolicy.com/2023/06/24/ind…
1st "truth": "analysts have been wrong about India’s rise in the past".

Allison reminds that India's rise has been predicted for decades (just as China's downfall) but the optimistic (or pessimistic in the case of China) predictions were always proven wrong.
2nd truth: "despite India's growth, India’s economy has remained much smaller than China’s" and the gap between both has actually considerably widened in China's favor.

Here Allison shares 3 graphs that dramatically illustrate this.



Read 9 tweets

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