Golden Week memory: Bus on a mission

Venturing out to tourist sites during a holiday can be a risky business. You can be stuck for hours in traffic or, worse, get trampled on.

I won't forget one visit I made to the Great Wall. The human horde inching along the parapet would have made a canned sardine grateful for its spacious quarters.

And so it was with some trepidation last week that my wife and I hopped onto the subway and headed off to the Beijing Botanical Garden. On the bus from the station to the garden's gate, I stoically refused to think about what we were about to face.