Morning Walk

After a decent night's sleep....

We went for a tour down mainstreet. And because we arrived in the dark, we had no idea the beauty we would find when we woke up. This village is beautiful! Mountains encircle the village, a little river at one end, and a mostly natural setting without much modernization. The nicely paved road was just barely finished through the town. People took advantage of it, going 50 miles an hour through the village, honking to let you know they were coming with no intent to slow down. Hence the decent night's sleep. We were 10 feet off the road and construction trucks came through all night and just as they hit the edge of the village they would lay on the horn. Tim said his back hurt a bit in the morning from jumping out of bed as he kept thinking he was going to get hit!

See the sign in the picture above? It says 10 km/hr, but this is not a speed limit, but merely a speed suggestion that is unfortunately completely ignored.

When they say fresh meat, they mean fresh. Don't worry the pig head won't go to waste, they will eat everything including the brain. (I don't think we were lucky enough to eat that!)

This is the view from one of the houses we went into. Their crop areas are beautiful as well, everything in perfect rows. But lots and lots of hard work for sure.
Rice paddy (field) on the left, corn on the right. The person walking is transplanting rice plants from a preliminary growth field to where the rice will be harvested.

This is at a house off the main street.

Through the fun, winding alleys, all the older houses. Tally has her gifts from the previous stop firmly in her grasp. Her shirt is spotted with the juice from a local fruit that is in-season, yangmei or bayberry http://www.yumberryjuice.com/en/wh.asp. Everybody offered us yangmei to eat, and Tally was happy to oblige.

This is somebody's meat supply for the year. They buy a pig, raise it, and then at Chinese New Year they butcher it and have their meat for the year (preserved by salting). We have this on video, but we will save it for another day. Tally was very interested in the pig until all the sudden it woke up with a snort, she jumped back like five feet and grabbed onto my leg.