Recently the papers buzzed with news of Walmarts being shut down in Chongqing due to their selling ordinary pork as organic. News like this seems to come up so often that it's quite often scary to think about what you're eating. But then you visit a beautiful vegetable market and you look at the fresh produce and you hope upon hope that the fertilizers will come off after vigorous washing because everything looks so good.

Markets make great stops for a visitor to China for curiosity as well as great photo-taking. I do think there are more vegetables available in a Chinese wet market than anywhere else and the beauty of buying things only when they're in season makes my meals even more delicious - but also makes me wait in anticipation for certain things to come in. I actually appreciate it that I can't get certain things at any time of year.

Take a virtual walk through Xizhou's town market and enjoy the sights. If all this fresh produce makes you hungry, check out my colleague's articles at Chinese Food to get some good ideas to try at home.

Photos: top - Chinese radishes piled high at Xizhou market; bottom - a vegetable vendor in Xizhou. © 2011 Sara Naumann, licensed to About.com.

My colleague writing About.com's Asia Guide has a great article about Responsible Travel. It has some very good tips, especially for those of us living and traveling in China. Shark's Fin Soup - or avoiding it - is always an easy thing to do, but there are a lot of other little things to keep in mind.

One reminder for me, and it's something I used to do when I lived in Japan but have since gotten lazy about: BYO chopsticks. When you eat out, if you're offered disposable chopstcks, that's a part of a tree that's been chopped down and will get discarded as soon as you've finished your xiao long bao. Carry your own re-usable ones and help the planet just a little.

Read more from Greg Rogers' About Asia Travel | Responsible Travel in Asia.

You've heard of the Silk Road but have you ever heard of the Tea Horse Road? It was mentioned in every other sentence during my tour last month of Xizhou in Yunnan Province and explained very briefly. Since coming back, I've been doing some research and the results are fascinating.

I guess it goes to show you the power of need when it comes to desired commodities that are in short supply. The Chinese needed horses. The Tibetans were addicted to tea. Result: The Tea Horse Road. Porters and muleteers risked their lives over the incredibly inhospitable terrain that lies between western Yunnan & Sichuan Provinces and Tibet. But when there's someone willing to pay, and you've got goods to move, you do it.

Read all about the Tea Horse Road.

Map © Copyright CRIENGLISH.com.

Recently on a family bike ride, we had already done our usual trip around the French Concession but weren't ready to get off our bikes. We wanted a longer ride and ended up close to the Bund and the Huang Pu River. It was there that I remembered a friend used to regularly entertain her transportation-obsessed son with rides back and forth on the Huang Pu ferries. We thought we'd give it a try and see how life is across the river.

We found the ferry at Shiliupu or Pier 16 near the Hotel Indigo. For 1.3 rmb per bike, we managed to get on the ferry with all the other commuters. For a slow Sunday afternoon, the ferries were quite busy and the queue started immediately when the gates closed and our ferry started across. Commuters don't have to wait long as ferries go back and forth all day and the wait is only about ten minutes.

We disembarked on the Pudong side near the Expo grounds and had an interesting ride around the site. Just a year ago it was celebrated as the most successful World Expo ever and now it is a ghost-town of derelict buildings and parking lots full of weeds.

On our way home, we took another ferry that let us off near the Cool Docks and the Waterhouse Hotel a little bit farther south. There are terminals dotting the river up and down making it very convenient, and cheap to back and forth across the river.

Photo: commuters on the Shanghai Huang Pu River Ferry. © 2011 Sara Naumann, licensed to About.com.