It's Tuesday morning and I'm going to spend the day hanging out in Tunxi. I was originally planning to head up to Huang Shan (Yellow Mountain), but the weather has not cooperated. The whole region is getting rained on. However, the weather report indicates that it will be mostly cloudy tomorrow, with only a slight chance of rain, then rain and thunderstorms for the next 8 days or so. So I'm keeping my fingers crossed for tomorrow.

Yesterday I got hit with my first "food reaction". The previous night I met my friends Gaby & Alex at their hostel. I'd had an excellent beef and onion dish. At 5:30 am I was running downstairs for the bathroom (because the toilet in our room is broken). After 3 more runs, I was feeling relatively stable, but I was worried about getting on the tour bus to the villages. But I held it together - or perhaps "clenched it together" would be a more accurate statement. By the time we arrived at the first village I was fine. I'm sure that was just the first of many food incidents to come. Actually I'm really surprised that it took this long to get hit - the food in this country is pretty sketchy. I'll write a post on the food soon.

The villages, Hongcun and Xidi, were both interesting. Both very picturesque, with tiny narrow passages crisscrossing throughout the city. Many of the streets have small stone irrigation canals on the side, and with the pouring rain, these were flowing full. The architecture was pretty cool - many of the buildings have open roofs. So you walk into the front door to enter the first room and notice that it's still raining in the center of the room, then you walk into the next larger room and it's also raining. Seemed a bit odd - like huge skylights, minus the glass. Since our tour guide only spoke Chinese, I immediately ditched the group and went exploring on my own. It was much better than being shuffled along by a guide wearing a high pitched speaker strapped to her belt. In fact the city was filled with groups being led along behind loud annoying speaker wielding tour guides. I did my best to find side streets away from everyone.

On a side note, what is with the speakers in this country? I'm not talking about people speaking, but Chinese audio speakers. Why do all speaker systems seem to the volume and treble cranked to 10, and the bass turned off???? There must be no concept of good tone in China. I had the misfortune of sitting in a seat under a speaker on the tour bus, and I had to stuff toilet paper in my ears because it was so loud and abrasive when the tour guide was speaking. There was a couple from Australia on the bus who were waving their arms and yelling "it's too loud, it's too loud!!!" but the guide had no idea what they were saying, so she ignored them.

After the villages, our tour bus stopped for a "tour" of a discount warehouse, where you could ogle all the plastic wrapped dried mushrooms, and candies, and dried fish, and tea that I suppose is grown in the area. All in all, and interesting day.

It's been 5 days since I left Shanghai, so I suppose I should write a little about it. I didn't get out too much while I was there, since I ended up working on this site much of the time. I kinda expected that would be the case anyway so it wasn't a big deal. Plus it was just too hot during the day to do anything other than sit in the air conditioned area of the hostel. I did get out for short periods each day though. And I also went out quite a bit at night, even though it was still ridiculously hot and humid.

I was shocked by all the crazy high rise buildings that are fighting for attention. It's like Los Vegas on steroids. The whole skyline is filled with buildings that have their entire outsides covered with LEDs - whole skyscrapers that run animations on the outside, buildings that change colors, super bright house sized LED screens dot the horizon. Then there are the river cruise boats that are covered in multi-colored flashing LEDs - they look like massive art cars from the playa of Burning Man. The money that goes into electricity and construction must be staggering.

To contrast all the money and modern architecture are all the tiny side streets that run through the city at crazy angles. It was so easy to get turned around in the city when I was in some long winding side street with no view of the buildings to orient myself. These side streets are filled with small convenience stores, fruit stands, noodle shops, "slop houses" - little fried food stands, dumpling stands, fried bread & pastry stands, and all sorts of shops selling all sorts of cheap crap - clothing, tools, house wares, you name it - all crap....

The streets are total chaos. Stop signs don't exist, street lights seem to be only suggestions, and cross walks are a joke. The rule seems to be "The one who gets there first wins" along with "Survival of the fittest", and luckily "Under no circumstances hit anything". In order to cross a street on foot it's just like a game of Frogger - nobody will stop for you, you just have to run in front of moving vehicles when you can. They'll swerve to get around you, but they'll not hit you. The tiny side streets are packed with Mini trucks, Mini vans, cars, taxis, motorcycles, scooters, bicycles, and pedestrians - all moving on both sides of the streets and weaving in and out of each other. For some reason, I feel safer as a pedestrian here than I did in San Francisco, even though it's much crazier.