Sheng Shi Hotel Huaibei

Bonjour a tous,

hier nous avons pris lavion de Xian vers Shangai puis ensuite 2 heures de transport pour Suzhou. Cette ville na que 6 milions dhabitants et ca en fait une plus humaine que les autres que nous avons vu avec plein de gratte ciel a perte de vue. Imaginez un peu, il y a des autoroutes peripheriques comme dans les villes americaines ...

... rising from various burn piles, coal plants, and who knows what else. Stares, everywhere. We have lived here a year. And still it is an event to go do anything normal. Exciting? Of course it is exciting to go out and get toothpaste. And annoying. I like being able to function independently and unfettered. The staring, the calls of “hello,” the speculations—all of these act like tiny ropes or cordons, around us wherever we go. It is possible to block it out. But ...

Next we arrive in Shangqiu. This is a very small town and I swore they have never seen a Westerner. We stayed in this small hotel. The price for the room was RMB50 ($7.35) and it was worth all of it! We were on the fifth floor and for the entire night it sounded like a waterfall trickling above us. The bathroom there was a sink and next to that was a toilet. Between ...

... along Xinhua Lu. Take the second little road on your left. It's a quiet street and it won't be long before you'll find a Net Bar on your right. The temple is not far from the Net Bar. If you judge it from the front you will mistakenly believe it is a small place with small grounds. Wrong! After paying your 10 Yuan entrance fee and have finished walking around the main buildings take one of ...

... unexpected wonderful time. As far as I understood they had never had a foreigner in their church before and the priest/minister proudly turned on the lights that lit up the cross for me to take several photos.


After saying a sad good bye I headed back up to Guquan Lu and spent an hour or so walking around the old quarter and amongst its people. I then made my way across Weiwu Dadao ...

... there was! Bugger! The journey to Bozhou was around five and a tad hours filled with MP3, reading my novel and firing text messages to and fro between my bus and Kaifeng. Soon the air conditioning broke down and bucket loads of sweat were soon added to the above list. When I arrived I was so hot and tired and not in the best of moods. I really couldn't' be bothered walking the streets in search of a heap hotel ...

... whips, nunchucks, swords, lances and god knows what else yelling like crazy and swinging they weapons all over. It pretty scary. Then they do all sorts of demonstrations with swords, whips, etc and different fighting styles, where they move like monkeys, frogs, eagles, scorpions. The best part comes with the "special talents" show. First a monk comes on stage and slams a long metal rod on his forehead. The rod breaks and the guy walks away! Then they bring another monk and place ...

... other then in the morning when I woke up about 2 hrs before we got back to Jingdezhen. It was a great trip but it's good to be back even though it only for a day because we leave next week for Xian. In the afternoon I played football with a couple of my friends and then I went to go see GuJuans room, she did a great job decorating it and she don't have to share a room because she lives of-campus. If she lived on-campus she would be living with 6-8 girls in one room.

... rankles his sense of bureaucratic order--and from now on he's going to be known as 'the first conductor to allow bikes on the train.'" Jay and I go back and forth on this for a while. To be honest, I can't remember most of his arguments. Not because they weren't any good, they just didn't alter my opinion. If I ever attempt to publish this, perhaps I'll ask him to fill out his side of the story. I know he'll want some input on what happened next. While we're looking ...

... arrived we spent half an hour finding a hotel and then a lady took us right there. It was in a small street at the end of a small alley. We tried looking for a tea-house which has been closed for years. We eventually found it, but couldn't go in. Raymond's Travel Page