Zhejiang Province

With new visa's collected we caught a train to Wenzhou. Plan A was to make it all the way to the rural villages of Nanxijiang. Plan A was a failiure. When we arrived in Wenzhou it was already getting late, and the language barrier since Shanghai had recommenced. For some reason unknown to us, the accomodation prices in Wenzhou are really steep in comparison to the rest of the places we have visited so far. We decided to catch a Y1 ferry across the river to the city of Oubei. Here we stumbled into the first hotel and after an intense chinglish conversation, we managed to get a room for Y100 for a night, unbelievable luck. We went to a Muslim owned restaurant next door to get a late night snack and we met the cutest little kids ever. They were scruffy little gits, but their attempts at talking to us in English was so funny. The older lad, who was working for the family buisness served us our food and was trying to learn new words. We gave him a tip when we left and he was overjoyed. No doubt big poppa took the tip for himself.

The next morning we headed for Nanxijiang. It was further from Wenzhou than expected but really cheap to get there by bus. We went to 2 small rural villages in Nanxijiang, both really beautiful. Small canals ran through the villages with the odd waterwheel and pagoda dotted around making the place nothing but picturesque. This was defiantely the most rural place we had visited so far in China, and hardly a soul spoke a word of English. Good thing our Chinese was getting better, liang-er newro mien, xiexie. (2 beef noodles, thankyou).



The amount of stares we got in this area was unreal. Its probable that we were the first westerners some of these people had ever seen. They lived in cobblestone villages with their own farms and barns and fields surrounding their homes to provide them with a livelyhood. Only problem was that there was no disposable unit, so the amount of rubbish that built up in the streets and canals was beyond dangerous. But these people manage to live with it (somehow), and it only demises the beauty of their villages by a fraction. Truly stunning.



Zhejiang Photo Link:
http://www3.snapfish.com/snapfish/thumbnailshare/AlbumID=3212574011/a=2264773011_2264773011/otsc=SHR/otsi=SALBlink/COBRAND_NAME=snapfish/