I’m always fascinated by ugly towns: Chongqing, Nairobi, Detroit, Dundee. They’re ugly because they are (or have been) centres of industrial-economic activity: working towns. They may not have a Hyde Park or a Champs Elysee, but if you scratch just a little beneath the surface of an ugly town, you’ll find hidden treasures, quirky stuff which doesn’t exist anywhere else. For example, next time you’re in Detroit, check out the Cadieux Cafe, one of the last places in the United States where you can play authentic Belgian feather bowling and enjoy a bowl of steamed mussels at the same time.    more »

One of our brilliant guides is standing by the sink-hole to hold on to each visitor while we look down. I am about half way down the queue. Everyone else has made it more or less intact and is now climbing the other side. I keep my penguin walk going steady right to the last step, and then start to feel my balance going. Instinctively, I push one leg out to balance myself, then realise I am going the other way. So I push back - right into the arms of our guide who grabs me with all the strength he can muster and utters a small cry of genuine concern. Without him there, I would probably have disappeared down that sink-hole forever.    more »

In a city which is know for its magical realism, the Faena Hotel & Universe is, in many ways the ultimate location. Just a few miles from where Borges wrote about fantastical other worlds - some fiction, some fiction within fiction - the Faena is almost certainly on another planet, although which one I’m not entirely sure.   more »

KB is driven mad by those documentaries on satellite TV about Rome, which constantly refer to 'the greatest Empire the world has ever known'. The worst offender recently was the bombastic Boris Johnson in his BBC series on the glories and grandeur of the Romans. As an educated, worldy, Asian-born scientist, KB finds this kind of casual, narrow-minded claptrap infuriating; and who can blame him? By the time Julius Caesar was rolling around the Dordogne, the great Chinese Emperor Qin Shi Huangdi had been underground with his Terracotta Army for over 200 years, having created what was (and is) really the 'greatest empire the world has ever known' - with a culture, arts and sciences far ahead of anything which existed in 'the west'.   more »

Before dinner, we head down to the ground floor for a stroll around Pudong. It’s all brand new, bright and shiny, big and bold - just across the river from the old town. This is where Shanghai is building its world financial centre. At the end of this century, if our species is still here, that’s almost certainly exactly what it will be. Old Europeans may not like what is being built in Pudong, these massive temples serving international trade and business. But I find it oddly comforting, this confident vision of the future. It’s certainly a lot better than the alternative.   more »