An immodest "goodbye world" from Cold China

Dear loyal reader(s?),

A couple of years ago, after two years and an even century of "posts" (they're more like open letters home than blogs), "Cold China" reached the end of the road. I do actually have a new blog related to my Phd project, translating and commenting on Chinese media and online opinion on the South China Sea dispute, at http://southseaconversations.wordpress.com

If you've read something on here then i thank you and hope you enjoyed. (Disclaimer: never take anything i've written to be true. I am now a full-time student of China and can truly say that the more i study the country, the more i learn how much i DON'T know. That's why we love China, right?)

If you're new or have just stumbled in, here are a few recommended features:

Great Wall odyssey:
- 1. Onionland through desert to donkeyland
- 2. The Prison Road and associated rear-end difficulties
- 3. Gansu's parting shot & Ningxia's Songyuan City
- 4. Losing the plot in Yinchuan
- 5. Xi'an: "What's my cat gonna do now?!"
- 6. Bike dream ends...but 3-wheel "agricultural vehicle" dream begins!
- 7. Coal country; Don't mess with the mountains of Mongolia
- 8. Muertos che!
- 9. Tianjin: The sea can have it

Songyuan:
- Product hauls, shadowed by men in suits
- The now-extinct villages-within-a-city (城中村).
- Meet Robert Xiansheng, "school-bus" driver extraordinaire
- Oil-fuelled temple boom, denied a 3-wheeler
- Exhibited at Chagan Lake, baijiu madness
- Enigma of Bill, Mongolian millionaire
- Tree spore frenzy [as featured in Paragon magazine!]
- School exam madness
- Purported Olympic torch relay
- The not-so general hospital
- Skeletons at school!

Shanghai:
- Two haircuts and no real jobs
- Found: one Shanghai slum
- We never had it that bad
- Reckless fireworks
- Getting weed in Shanghai
- Romeo

Exile in Laos and Thailand:
- Jinghong and the temple of scorched earth
- Nihilist principles cannot be violated
- The King of Bus journeys
- In the land of hard-knock mannequin lives
- Klongboats ahoy!
- Bangkok's Intercourt apartments
- Stupidity reported in real time
- From Sukhumvit to the Sickness and Vomit Pit
- Menace the Mayor and other characters

Final whirlwind of adventures around China
- El Finale begins
- Lijiang: the city of clean streets and dirty hospitals
- The magnificent Tiger Leaping Gorge
- The badlands of Panzhihua [as featured on Danwei.org!]
- The great toothbrush salesman of Sichuan Province
- The Yangtze's Three Gorges are looking quite full
- A badly connected taxi driver gets me to Xi'an
- Hua Shan
- Beijing, Songyuan and away with me [as also featured on Danwei.org!]

Ok, so i seem to have singled out 43 of the blog's 100 posts for special recognition, thoroughly defeating the original purpose of the exercise. On that note, Cold China bids the the world a typically arrogant and conceited farewell.