Wow, Yangshou!

Hey all. we are still in Yangshou. i am writing from an internet cafe, surrounded by chinese in their 20s playing online games and smoking away. I am sipping iced green tea. They are all drinking coke in bottles. Also, the letters are worn off the keybaord so I am typing blindly and as you know, I make enough typos under the best of circumstances. My keyboard knowledge s better than I realzied, however.

becky and the kids are all asleep around the corner in out adjoining rooms at the grungy but nice New west St. Hotel. She was beat. We rode about 30 km today, mostly on rutted country roads. eli was in a seat on my bike. jacob and B were on a tandem with anna attached. We had a great guide. We could only understand 25 percent of what she said but she knew the backroads beautifully. we rode a long stretch, past water buffalo, rice paddies, roosters, baby chicks running wild, ocassional pigs and cows and, of course, dogs. it is very green and every inch is planted inthe valleys — pomelo and orange orchards — they are green as limes, but taste like awesome sweet/sour tangerines and we have been gobbling them up — peanuts, soybeans, cotton, persimmons.

Then we got to a river, and rode on two bamboo rafts, with bikes on back, about an hour and half. we were worried about the kids but they loved it and were great. jacob has turned a corner and is mr outdoors now. loves hiking, biking and asking the guide a million questions which she can’t understand.

this place is amazing. the scenery is spectacular. as good as the pictures if you looked. it is very otherworldly and looks nothing like your conception of china — or at leat mine until a few weeks ago. it looks much more like vietnam — which is not far south from here, actually.

if you read his comment, art made a good call on the geology — devonian limesteon karsts. when we get back, i will post photos and more extensive commentary.

It is nice to be so out of the loop. I just looked and checked in on the playoffs series, which i had forgoten about, and got an email from ronnie at slam about recent nba trades. i enjoy not knowing eveything the minutes it happens, for a few days.

becky turned to me at dinner the other night and said, “it feels like we are on the other side of the world” and I said, “we are.”