China Trip - Post #3

OK, I'll do one more post tonight.  Mom mentioned a couple of things I forgot to tell you in the earlier post.  The house we visited was OLD, having been occupied by the same family for 12 generations in essentially the same form.  And the Five Poison jar had those little beasties in there for nearly 50 years!  Think of drinking formaldehyde in your biology class!

Back to the narrative - I told you that we went to a little village high in the mountains where the people over the generations had carved the mountains into terraces to allow rice planting.  Well, we arrived at night and the "'walk" up to the village was more like a rigorous hike in pitch black on wet stones set in a muddy hillside.  We couldn't see anything so had no idea where we were or what the surroundings looked like.  The hotel was a palace for where it was, but no where near what we had experienced - certainly wouldn't rate many stars.  The bathrooms were spare, the bed was nice but the sheets felt damp in the jungle climate.  But we slept great, in spite of the fact that I was concerned for other members of the party and the challenges that some of them faced in surmounting the hill climb.

When we woke in the morning this is what we saw outside our window.  We had arrived in a 3rd world country, definitely!  There were no clocks in the room, but the roosters started crowing about 3 AM.

Mom slept so well that I let her sleep in and a few of the party took a further hike up the mountain to see more.  The terraces in the picture below give you an idea of the magnitude of the task of carving them in the mountainsides.  They go off into the distance for miles.  This way the village would be able to take care of itself without ever coming down off the mountain and exposing themselves to enemies.  Keep in mind that these are hundreds of years old, having been done with shovels and hoes by hand.

 This is the view immediately outside the village.

 This gives an idea of the hike up the hill, about a third the distance of the hike up to the village the night before.  We are climbing up to the three flags you see at top.

 Evidence that I made it to the top!  Note the terraces on all sides.

 This little grandmother was making her way up the trail as we were coming down.  Don't want to even think how many times she has climbed this in her life, carrying heavy loads. 

 We hiked back down the hill in the late morning to catch our bus back to the airport.  You can see from this picture with Mom how the village is cut right into the mountain side.  Very rustic adventure, to say the least.

One more picture near the bottom of the hill.  There are red lanterns all over the place in China like the ones you see in the covered bridge.  They just celebrated their new year of the dragon, plus red is a sign of happiness.  You see red all over the land.

One thing I forgot to mention.  The driving style is not limited to the city.  The bus ride up and down the hill was more exciting than any ride at Lagoon.  The driver had the bus going full speed on corners, barrelling through little villages along the way, shooting for a record on how fast he could get his bus up the hill.  WOW!  Half the group was terrified, half of us were having a ball.

That's it for now.  Next post we go to the ancient city of Xi'an.  You will love what you see!  Dad/Jim