After falling asleep on the train to Zhangjiajie, we woke the next morning (OK, I woke several times during the night when we stopped at various towns. The first time, I wandered down the hall to use the squat toilet only to be stopped by the warning not to use in the station.) to the end of the ride in a mountainous area.

By then it was starting to rain and by the time we got to Zhangjiajie, it was really pouring. Unfortunately, from the station (which was magnificent)

to the taxi stand was a about a 1/4 mile in the rain, so we were pretty wet by the time we got in the cab. The trip to the National Park at Wulingyuan was about 45 minutes in the rain and we got to our hotel damp but unscathed for our first real travel with no English speakers to help. (At Moon Hill, we had somebody write the name of our new hotel in Chinese so all we had to do was show the name to the taxi driver and argue price using sign language.

In the mini-series, Shogun, about half way through, after the hero has been living like a Japanese for a couple of years (maybe five one hour episodes in our time), the hero runs into a group of Dutch traders. They are shockingly gross: pinkish-red, fat, loutish Europeans. That's how I felt when we checked in to our hotel: we had been on train all night, hadn't bathed, walked through the rain, and the girls behind the counter were impeccable in their purple silk.

When we left the Yangshuo area, we felt like we had really entered China. No internet, no English signs, nobody who spoke English to help us. First we took a three hour taxi ride to Liuzhou. We rode through miles and miles of farming country under a heavy sky that got darker with each mile.

We thought that we had no idea what to expect when we got to Liuzhou, but, when we got there we realized that we had expected some signs in English. There were none. The train station was big and looked great from the outside but the inside was sort of sterile and dirty at the same time.

We got there at 7PM expecting to  eat before our 9:15 "soft sleeper" to Zhangjiajie and we sort of fantazied that we would have an internet connection, but there was no restuarant, no snack shop; so Michele wandered out into the city and got some food in strafoam boxes that we ate in the waitingroom.

We were the only westerners in the train station and everybody watched us as we ate. The schedule sign did have our train number, 2012, so we felt fairly confident that we would get on the right train.

The train ride turned out to be completely painless bordering on comfortable.

Because we are trying to stay loose, we are spending alot of time on logistics – and everything doesn't always work out. We had expected to leave Yangshuo a day earlier but we couldn't get train tickets from Liuzhou to Zhangjiajie on the day we wanted to leave. So we spent a day hanging out, taking portraits of some of the women working at the hotel and watching the locals staring into space.

In the late afternoon, we climbed the local star attraction – the moon palace at Moon Hill – which is an arch in the mountain overlooking the valley.

Climbing a to a star attraction in China is really walking up a paved path. But, in this case a paved path that does go on for a good bit and one that gets steep at the end.

At the end, we got above the arch

and had an impressive view.

-S

The second half of our big activity day was a trip on the Li River. There are all kinds of options from a full day trip on a fairly large boat from Guilin down to Yangshuo to an 1/2 hour trip from Yangshuo to Yangshuo. In our quest for information on Wulingyaun, we came across the only travel agent (here) who knew how to get there.

Sort of in passing, we decided to to go on a "bamboo raft" trip on one of the most famous parts of the river; the Xingping Town area. It was already pretty late in the day, after cooking school and lunch, so we got our stuff together and took a local  bus to Xingping. It is about an hour trip, past miles of farms and the usual surreal landscape.

At Xingping, we get on the river on our "bamboo raft". On the Li, the bamboo is really a set of ten metal tubes that look like bamboo including the slight taper and the ridges; the boatmen use outboard motors rather than poles which is a good thing because the river is big, fast, and strong.

Almost every hill seems to have a name – sort of like Yosemite. One of the most famous, of which we have no idea of the name, is on the 20 yuan bill, and a very popular location for weddings. As you can see here, there are several lucky couples checking out the location.

Along the river there are flocks of ducks that we thing are domestic ducks just out for an outing. They are great fun to watch, sort of popping out of the water to shake out their tail feathers. Ducks really are intrinsically funny animals to watch.

Along both sides of the river, the area is pretty wild, which is one of the most surprising things about China; how much of it is still wild. I guess it is a result of being wet and hot, if not outright tropical, so everything grows quickly.

Also, the farming seems to be in harmony with nature. Chickens are running around the farms eating the bugs, the irrigation ponds are also carp ponds, on the side of the fields are little clumps of mint and basil. This is not like the Italian landscape where the Romans cut down all the trees two thousand years ago for their hot baths. (From what I've read, The Romans were as addicted to wood as we are to oil – finally denuding Italy and north Africa and then fighting the Germans for their forests.)

Anyway, at one of the most famous hills (something like "seven horses jumping"),

we turned around and went back down river as the sun was setting.

The boatmen at Xingping were wrapping up the day, 

and we got on a local bus for the trip back to Yangshuo. But we were early, so we sat and watched the bus driver, the conductor, and a few regulars play cards to pass the time. All the buses seem to have a flat table over the engine which makes a great place to put packages or play cards.

A long day that ended with our first Kung Pao chicken since we have been in China.

-S

Some of this may be repetition from Steve's post, but I wanted to add my own comments here.

Digital photography is an interesting thing. We were standing outside the market and I was aware that that everyone coming and going on bicycle carts was different than it was at home, but it didn't really strike me as "exotic" until I looked at the display in my camera (chimping as Steve calls it).

But when we entered the market and saw all the plastic bowls of eels, frogs, snails, and unrecognizable squirming things, then I really knew I wasn't at the farmer's market at home.

Some of the food was ready to eat,

but mostly the market was filled with people shopping for what they were going to cook that day, which was what we supposed to be there to do. (Actually, they had done the shopping for us already, we were just shown everything we would be using in our class). What was great about this, is that I frequently go to 99 Ranch or Marina Foods at home and have no idea what many of the produce items are, so I took the opportunity to ask lots of questions about what things are while Steve focused on taking pictures ( you can see his blue jacket in the middle of all this):

Then we went to a small village where the cooking school was located.

The first item we prepared was steamed chicken:

The complete menu was:

• egg wrapped dumplings
• steamed chicken with mushroom
• eggplant with soy and oyster sauce
• stir fried pork with vegetables and oyster sauce
• green vegetables with garlic.