In the countryside

Yesterday we took a bike ride into the countryside. For just 1CHY (15cents), you can rent a bike for as long as you want... and take it off road! We cycled over railways, through wheat fields, past mangy looking goats and cows, lotus crops, the foulest smelling rivers, and through gorgeous groves of trees.

But oh! the people! We saw people harvesting branches - the twigs and leaves will become soup. Our host wasn't kidding when he said that the reason there are no trees in China is that they all got eaten during the cultural revolution. We cycled through two small villages, with houses about 200 years old, and people looking as old sitting outside and STARING as the lao-ai (the 'white devils', or foreigners) went past. I wished for a National Geographic type camera with a super duper lens to take close ups of each face. The things that they must have seen in the past 60 years!! Oh how I wished for a couple of days and fluency in Chinese just to be able to sit and listen to their stories.

The evening ended with more delicious Chinese food out, and a movie night... but I can't stop thinking about those faces...