dog and snow

After a visit to the largest waterfall in China (and the much better scenic site down the road that no-one goes through) and a trek through fields (can't beat the look on villager's faces when a white boy just wanders down from the top of a mountain -seemingly from nowhere); I left a town with more dog restaurants than cars (pretty dogs smiling all over the windows; no tourists in sight) met with my dad in the capital of one of China's poorest provinces.

After a meal outside on the street the weather just got colder and colder, but the villages got prettier and prettier (as did the comfort and length of the bus and train journeys). My dad managed the 2 hour bus journeys sitting on 6 inch tall wooden stalls fine, although did not try any of the local rice-spirit, for some reason!

It was pleasant to stay in local villagers' houses, go for treks, boat rides, hike through snow storms and ride bikes on the ice. But it was even better trying out my new camera and taking pictures of the beautiful river-side towns and talking to the chinese students we came across at new year's eve and in the awful 'hotel' on top of the mountain.

There was nothing too special about the trip, but it was nice and off-the beaten track.. good exercise (though its easy to order and eat way too much when your dad is paying!) and the occasional nice hotel. I got lots of practise talking Chinese -which has now got much better and i can even talk about micro-finance, achieving balanced development and government policies :)

There are a few things that are typical of China: losing a bank card and waiting for 20 minutes at the window as the bank guy signed, stamped, printed, stamped, chopped and printed documents; whilst also writing everything into a computer; trying to find anywhere in southern china that is warm (no where south of china has heating, and in the villages people sit round a bucket with heated coal in it) and settling for KFC; wondering around Beijing ('s only) international airport and not being able to buy any English language newspaper (even the government's one; though there are a few novels available upstairs in the empty shop) .