Jiuhua Resort Chizhou

We were supposed to meet some friends here, but they got an awesome deal on a side trip. Therefore we spent the 4th sleeping. Not by choice mind you. It was also one of the few nights we spent in town that we DIDN'T hear fireworks. A bit disappointing. On the other hand we did get our paperwork that we ...

This year 28 May is Dragon Boat Festival for the Chinese. This is a very special festival for many reasons. Last year they changed around the holidays a little and Dragon Boat Festival is now a national holiday, so it has become more popular to celebrate it again. The story behind it is about Qu Yuan. He was a loyal political advisor to ...

On a Saturday, the first beautiful Saturday we have had in ages, we decided to go for a walk around the local park. We know one the things we have mentioned before are Michelin Babies, but we have never been able to send a good picture of one until now. This was a beautiful day and Steve and I weren't wearing coats for a good portion of it. One of the traditional things that are done for children is the wearing of massive clothing in the ...

On the 10th, the first day of our holiday, a Chinese friend of Paul's decided to take us around to different part of Anqing that we may not be able to see otherwise. A friend of her's that moved to Anqing from South Korea around ten years ago and was happy to drive us around. We started out by going to the grave of one of Mao Zedong's original ...

Christmas was sure different this year. Christmas is a western holiday, that has little to no presence in China other than consumerism. Sure if you are in one of the big cities or in one of the areas that has hundreds of Westerners, the Chinese people understand that it is something that westerners do. But they don't understand why. They just know that Westerners have Christmas. We went to dinner Christmas Eve with John ...

They are continuing to build onto campus here at school. The interesting part is that they tend to do things a little different over here when it comes to construction. They LOVE cement and safety isn't terribly important. There is also no such things as unions, so the same people start at 7:30am and sometimes go until 9:00pm or a little later. Here are a few pictures and we will continue to post updates here :)

We got to go to a Chinese wedding. The main legal event is when they go to the courthouse in the city where they live and then they are married. Granted this is after months of getting random pieces of paper stamped with their special stamp. (Everything is stamped in the country. You go to the supermarket and when you leave the receipt is stamped.) The fun part of getting married in China is this: The female gets up early and has her ...

... mountain (shan) as there are 99 peaks in total - the highest 1342 metres. It was quite tiring but well worth it! It had hundreds of tiny temples and several huge ones reeking of grandeur. Two even had preserved remains of monks who lived nearby still inside the temple, although they had painted the remains gold or black.

... bike. The problem is when you have a turn to the right and you're going too fast to take it! Now you know what Sam thinks of on long road trips. Well it was a good day driving anyway even if we were freezing because we did a lot of kilometres today! We were so wet, frozen and tired that we stopped for a one hour massage in a small town about 80 km away from our final destination, Anqing. Every time we stop somewhere, in less ...

Amazingly, with all that chaos, we actually got to Huang-shan 1 hour earlier than we had originally planned. I guess (計劃永遠趕不上變化). We arrived at Huang-shan city airport, the driver was already there waiting for us when walked out. It's already rather late and dark outside aleady, as a inexperience traveller and first time visiting China, that really ...