Yunlongshan Hotel Xuzhou

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 ...

... I decided to return to Kaifeng because I like this city. I have friends. I know my classes and have a curriculum. I want to improve my Chinese, and I want to spend other time reading the 100 pounds worth of books I carried here from the US (I will be buying a Kindle when I can afford one and when there is a trustworthy model out. Though a skeptic, after lugging a bookshelf of reading material here, I am sold on digitizing books! Though I firmly believe we should still print.) The ...

So I haven't updated in a while because i just had a test! I'm so happy for it to be over with! So last weekend the whole program went on a trip to the Shangdong province, specifically to two cities, Tai'an and Qufu. We took a sleeper train there, and that was really cool! The beds were in compartments of 6, with three attached to each wall and stacked on top of each other! In Tai'an we got to climb ...

... stay in a hotel like this but as I haven’t seen Luo Wei for over a month and as I have said above it was her birthday so I chose the Youth Hostel to begin our journey together for the next three weeks to one month.

Luo We arrived around one and by two she was impossible to wake.

I spent the rest of the day and the evening walking all over the old walled core of Qufu. As ...

... but is now something that easily resembles the river Ganges with its colour and speed. Huge claps of thunder intermittedly overpower the blues that is softly coming from the roof speaks and lightening allows the hour to return to daylight in large flashes that last several seconds after which we are plummeted back into something that sits between afternoon and evening yet the hour is half past four.

I left ...

... it was again rather foggy. This did produce a few spectacular swirling mist moments though, although I did avoid going right to the furthest viewing platform as the wind had got up so much that I feared a Crouching Tiger style finale dive off the mountain for me if I went too close to the edge, and definitely with less finesse than Zhang Ziyi manages. Legend has it that anyone who climbs the mountain will live to 100. I'm not sure what the gods of fate's ...

... out of their way to help you.

On the way back, Mum recognised a dumpling restaurant near my house, so we jumped off the bus and made it home about an hour or so earlier than if we had gone all the way back to the central station. How Mum managed to recognise the place even though unable to read any of the signs when I could not, despite living there for six months and being able to read Chinese is a) really embarrassing and b) a sign of how terribly vague I have become!

... that we were just walking around the city and we saw this garden, it turned out to be one of the most famouse in China so of course we went in. After that we headed to the outside of town to see the Yangzee River it was a long walk after we took a 30 min. bus ride on a double decker bus. On the bridge they had these monunets that you could climb up inside from the top there was a great view of the city. Then we went to Hunan Lu it is one of the famouse ...

... terracota warriors. I had seen 30 or so when I was in China in 97, and was quite looking forward to seeing 3000 all lined up, still in their pits. The reality was slightly different however. The tourist guide neglected to mention that instead of life-sized, imposing armies, Xuzhou's possession were foot-high, little doll-like models. We had seen them in the museum, but just not clicked ...

Kit: Today in the morning we went to the bus stop but no bus came for an hour so Mum and I went back to the hotel and got a taxi to the train station. The driver cheated us and he made us pay 8 Yuan (four dollars Australian). We left for Zangchou on hard-seaters. When ...