No spitting please!

Hi! Thanks for the messages! It's nice to hear from you! Just a short message, because we're having a busy schedule of seeing a lot in a short time ;) where was I? Ah, hanging monastery, yes.

The 7th we went to this monastry built on the side of a mountain. We met a Chinese English teacher who also went there so that made it easy :) The monastery was in the middle of the mountains; There used to be a river next to it, and the monastery was built higher and higher to protect against the water. We could walk through it, but this was a bit scary. The poles that support it were slowly rotting away, and I wouldn't be surprised when it will collapse one of these days. But we walked through it anyway, and survived ;) We were wondering how the monks could get to their monastery. Probably they had to climb the mountain from the other side... I guess China was already so busy by then that they had to make all this effort for some peace and quiteness... The same evening we took the nighttrain to Pinyao.

The next morning we arrived and it was raining really hard, so we took our poncho and walked through the city (which was very quiet then). It's a really nice (and clean) preserved old Chinese town, which is on the list of Unesco World Heritage. It's very touristy, but after Datong we were kind of happy with this. Next day we rented a tandem and cycled through the city and to a temple 6 km's from the city. This bike-ride was through the mais-field; really nice. Then the next day we took the bus to Xi'an.

We arrived in the evening, the bus-ride was quite comfortable, but I was a little fussed by the guy next to me who was spitting on the floor in front of him all the time (making some really disguisting noises...). Again we were lucky that there were also two English-speaking Chinese in the bus, who helped us finding our hostel. The hostel was really nice, with a big bar downstairs. Although we were too tired so we went to bed after one beer, but then some American guy kept us awake all night snoring extremely loudly! (we slept in a dorm.) The next day we went to the famous terracotta army. We heard from a lot of people that it was a desception, but we really liked it! It's amazing how many terracotta soldiers they found there! And they all look a bit different... Next day we made a little Xi'an trip; it's a really modern (and again clean) city but still has some Chinese architecture (on top of the skyscrapers) so that's cool. We went to the great mosque, that actually looked like a temple with not only Chinese signs but also some Arab. We cycled all around Xi'an on top of the old wall, which was really cool! And in the evening we saw a light and water show at the big goose pagoda. Our last day in Xi'an we went to the Jingdi tombs. This is a bit like the terracotta warriors, but more recent (discovered only about 10 years ago) and therefore way less famous. But it was even better! They found a whole city made of pottery; little man (and woman) but also horses, pigs, dogs, chickens etc. And they used to have clothes made of cotton and wagons made of wood, but this was rotten away offcourse. There were also little pots and pans, weapons and even a tiny little chess-board. All to make sure that the former emperor would have a good after-life. In the evening we took the nighttrain to Chendu (Sichuan province).

The train took 16 hours, so we had a really nice long sleep. Accept for the fact that they put the radio on max volume at 6h30 in the morning... :( In the afternoon we arrived. We were supposed to go couchsurfing in Chendu, but the girl that was going to host us texted us that her aunt was coming so that it was not possible, dommage... So we found a hostel. Chendu was struck by a earthquake about a year ago, we saw some photo's of it; it looked pretty awfull. But we didn't see any damage anywhere, so they were really fast with reconstructing! Someone told us that there was a nice area around the Wuhou temple, so we took the bus to go there. We first went for dinner; the famous Sichuan hotpot, which was indeed hot but also really nice! A bit like fondue, but then spicy. Then we walked around the streets around the temple, which were really nice. It's recently built but they tried to make it look ancient, and there's a lot of water and plants. It didn't feel like walking through a city with 4 million inhabitants at all! Rather like walking through one of those tropical greenhouses in the zoo. I feel like walking through a greenhouse here all day anyway because we're really in the tropics now! It's really humid and warm. But I guess it's good for us, because the people here in general have a really good skin :) Well, then I arrive at today! We went to the famous giant panda breeding centre close to Chendu, where we've seen many panda's! Red panda's and giant panda's; they're really cute, look like giant teddy bears. After this we went to people's parc; also a very tropical parc with many teahouses, so we had a nice Chinese tea :)

And that's it uptill now. Tomorrow morning we will leave for Emei Shan to climb a mountain. We'll sleep on the mountain, then go back and go to Leshan to see the largest buddha worldwide. Then we'll go to Chonqing to take a little boattrip over the Yangzi river and then Shanghai as our final destination with Dian! I'll try to upload some pictures now. Hm, battery is gone so the last 3 pictures does't work anymore, but it's already quite some pictures... Oh our international simcard is expired because it didn't have money for some days... We use the non-international one now. (but also still my french number.) I hope I didn't make too many errors and the story is understandable, as I typed it quite fast. Still not such a short story after all...

Finally, just some typical Chinese things that we experienced:
- Chinese people are really friendly and helpfull, whenever they speak English they come up to us to ask if they can help us
- Kids really seem to like us; they try to practise their few words of English and like to make pictures with us. Today I was very happy when a little boy told me in Chinese that he was really happy to meet us and I understood it!
- Chinese people also spit a lot, making really disguisting noises with it (which we're not very enthousiastic about). By the way, only man do this.
- You can still smoke everywhere here, and they smoke really strong smelling cigarettes so it's kind of annoying sometimes (like now, someone sitting next to me smoking one)
- kids don't wear diapers; they just have a hole in their pants and whenever they have to go to the toilet, the parent holds them above a well and they can do it there...

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