Jianshui or Caves and Confucius

What can you say, our hotel was a 120 year old merchant's house with 14 courtyards a private pond and lovely wood carvings. The family got rich in the opium trade, and then lost all their fortune in the change of a political wind. One of the entertaining things was the period dress hanging in the closet in each room next to the intricately carved canopy bed and the computer. With some significant persuasive tactics, Katie was able to get her brother dressed up and photographed in a public place.

We were able to visit Swallows Cavern outside of Jianshui. The cave is enormous with an underground river flowing through it. In the spring tens of thousands of swiflets come here to nest, building nests on the roof of the cave from their spit. In the fall the locals come to harvest the nests and sell them to upscale restaurants for birdnest soup. For Li her experience was complete with a ride in a dragon boat on the underground river. For me it was watching the unroped, barefoot climber ascend and descend 150 feet of cave wall. For Steve it had to be either the shopping area a 1/2 mile into the cave or the "smoking rooms" which were simple little alcoves in the cave where you could sit with your cigarettes and watch the stalactites grow. Needless to say the key features were lit up by colorful lights and the trail was paved. As we have learned, very Chinese.

We rounded out our experience with a visit to an enormous 1000 year old Confucian Temple/School. It was so remarkably peaceful that we all thought we could be excellent students if we studied there. Li and Silas preferred sticks and leaves to historical placards.

Coming home from Jianshui we watched our bus driver masterfully fix the fuel line on our bus and smoke a full pack of cigarettes in 4 hours. That's talent.