One true ring

Trip Start Sep 10, 2006

Trip End Mar 10, 2007

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Flag of China Xiamen, China
Thursday, February 15, 2007

Hello, made it to Xiamen this afternoon and just visited a local market near our hotel with Kathleen. Was quite interesting, we were the only non-Chinese people there sowe pretty much got stared at the whole time we were mooching along and were even followed by the more curious of the locals, many of them spitting along the way (just cant stop feeling grossed out by the whole spitting thing). This was only exacerbated when I tried on a jade ring, then couldn't get it off my finger without using enough force to fling it across the street where it broke into two. The woman storeholder then just started repeating the same phrase at me, refusing to take the ring back (cant really blame her!) and quite a crowd gathered around us. I tried to give her 2 Yuan after she kept flashing a V-sign at me, but she wasn't having any of it. Eventually I managed to mime a pen action so she wrote '20' on her hand. As it could have been alot worse and I was starting tohyperventilate I gave her 20 Yuan (just over a quid) and walked away with, my purchase(s); am in a quandry as to whether to make them into earrings or glue the 2 pieces back together to create one ring again

10 thousands buddha's temple in Xiamen

. Anyway was fairly traumatic and Kathleen and I have decided it is probably best not to wander around on our own after all....
The next day we took a trip to Gulang Yu island off Xiamen. It is supposed to be a must see in the area, with lots of colonial buildings and old european embassies, but not much to do unless you are really into piano museums and want to buy some rubbish souvenirs, the interesting architecture seems to be falling apart which is a shame as dont think it will be long before they lose their best assett on the island, if they dont start some maintenance programmes.
We next took a night train to Yongding, where we transferred by bus to a Hakka village and celebrated the first night of the lunar new year by cooking ourselves a meal (one dish each from your own country- welsh cakes for me natch), and watching the fireworks. We spent the night in a huge old round house that used to house hudndreds of people, but seems only about 70 people live there now, still more room for tourists! We had a tour of the village the next day by a local woman; the villagers have been living here for a few hundred years having fled persecution in the north of China, and building their round houses to withstand earthquakes, they used to live by farming but now seem to be doing quite well supplementing their income through tourism. Was a good trip, although facilities pretty basic, and not everyone happy with the bedpan in their rooms!

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Beach on Gulang Yu Island, near Xiamen	Eating in temple dining room, xiamen, china	Hakka homestay	Hakka village, Yongding china
Kids with firecrackers, hakka village Yongding