Shahe

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Hello everybody.

Sorry I haven't written for a while (again), I put it off and then we've had electricity issues the last couple of days, so I haven't been able to write anything out.

Firstly, sorry, there are no photos this time, I didn't expect to be going anywhere worth taking photos of because I was just doing a bit of work with Lloyd, but the place we went to had some pretty amazing things to look at, so I'm a bit disappointed. Anyway, perhaps I can paint a vivid portrait with my words. Unlikely though.

So we went to a place called Shahe (sort of pronounced as "sha", and then "heurgh"...that's the best I can approximate it to - say the word but get somebody to punch you in the guts as you say it and you'll pretty much be there). It's not a nice place, I'm not really recommending it as a place to visit, it's just not nice, but, it is one of those places that have a few awesome, typically Chinese things, that you can't find in the middle of Beijing, and they're the sort of things that you really want to see most of the time. I think I contradicted myself, but hopefully that makes a bit of sense.

First thing in the city is that it has an old wall. It must be about 15-20 feet thick and at leat 5 metres tall, although a lot of it was destroyed either by the British, the French, the Germans, the Japanese, or a flood...it's kind of been through a lot. But there's still quite a lot of it standing. We walked up to one of the gates (门 - one of the very few characters I've learned) and then followed the wall around to another gate where you could actually walk through. There was an old settlement there that hadn't been touched in a million years. There were chickens running around everywhere, and a fat old guy with his shirt rolled up above his belly that looked at us like we were aliens. And in the middle of the square was an old, old tree that looked like it was a squillion years old. It was just perfect, I will definitely have to get back there if I can to get a few photos.

Following that, Lloyd got into a conversation with a street vendor who was selling some steamed buns. I figured they would be relatively harmless so I bought one (cost me all of 8 cents) - it was really, really nice, and I'm not dead, so I'm thinking of maybe trying to become more adventurous with my food choices - although there are some things I'm not going to try - smelly tofu being at the top of the list. Right, so after we chatted to him for about half an hour about who knows what - I have no idea, we found a market and stepped inside there and bought some stuff for dinner - everything that has ever been grown in China was for sale in that market, fruit, vegetables, every sort of mushroom, spices, herbs, and meat - the meat was a bit gross - it was just gigantic cuts of port, lamb, chicken and beef sitting there and they'd just slice of a bit for you - we bought some just for fun, so we'll try a stir-fry one of these nights. They had some massive fish there too - looked like what I guess we'd call barracuda's at home, with ferocious looking teeth, but there was nothing that could compete with the ferocity of their odour, so we left them well alone. After that we got on the bus. Or the sardine can, I'm not sure what we got on, but it was exciting and surreally unpleasant at the same time.

That's about all we got up to today, but it was a good day. Once again - sorry about the lack of photos - I didn't expect to have a touristy day!!!

Hope everybody's well.

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