Forgot to add the photos at the company that makes these high-speed rail networks. As you can see, they rival (if not outperform) the Japanese Shinkansen and the French TGV.

These were our lovely guides, all three of whom are highly educated and wonderful young women (although you wouldn't be able to guess if they were in their 20s or 50s because of the unrivaled vitality of Asians). The first image shows much of our group (there were a lot more people in other images).

These are the invaluable historical artefacts in the Chinese national museum, roughly 3,000-7,000 years old. What you probably cannot see are the highly intricate internal moving mechanisms in some of these figures. This is only a fraction of their impressive collection.