Peter Neville-Hadley

Nov 1, 2024 | scmp.com | Peter Neville-Hadley

The visit to Longzhou begins unpromisingly. Why, the policeman at a checkpoint on the edge of the city wants to know, am I going to a little-known town two hours’ drive southwest of the Guangxi provincial capital of Nanning. “Lüyou,” I say. Tourism. “Mei you shenme hao wan,” he objects. There’s nothing interesting there. He flicks nervously through the pages of my passport. “There’s the old French consulate,” suggests the minibus driver, who has come over to see about the delay.

Oct 5, 2024 | scmp.com | Peter Neville-Hadley

Looking down from atop Dubai’s Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world, it is difficult to believe that the tiny territory’s first paved road was completed only in the early 1960s. Now this great spire of a tower acts like the gnomon of a sundial, throwing a long shadow far below that slowly swings across a cityscape of multi-lane highways and a forest of eye-catching constructions by every fashionable foreign architect from Tadao Ando to the late Zaha Hadid.

Aug 26, 2024 | scmp.com | Peter Neville-Hadley

Although travel agencies have been vanishing from high streets worldwide, it seems that reports of their complete demise may have been exaggerated. For those concerned above all to obtain the best price, the internet now provides the opportunity to compare the costs of 17 alternative ways of going almost anywhere, and then 17 ways of booking, be it flights, hotels or entire packages.

Aug 16, 2024 | scmp.com | Peter Neville-Hadley

Do animals really talk? Sort of – but don’t expect Dr Dolittle, says zoologist Arik Kershenbaum’s Penguin book“Let’s face it”, writes Arik Kershenbaum, “we all want to believe we can talk to animals – even animal communication scientists like me.

Jul 29, 2024 | silverkris.com | Peter Neville-Hadley

7 min read Published On July 30, 2024 Beijing’s rapid modernisation since the 1950s has seen the city gradually encircled by six ring roads at ever greater distances from the centre, like the ripples in water created from a dropped stone.