We have been back in California for a while now, and China is starting to seem like a million miles away, and yet my mind is still whirling with thoughts about the trip. We talk about China during our various hikes, continuing to process and clarify details and meanings, and thus it is that the trip will have a life well beyond the actual days we were there. When I last left off, we had finished our now infamous climb of Mount Emei, and were headed south, out of Sichuan Province. To reach Panzhihua, the jumping off point for the next stage of our journey, we decided to take the overnight train, traveling on what the Chinese call the "hard sleeper." This is a class of train between the hard and unreserved seats for cheap,
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