It’s just after 9 PM and I can barely stay awake! Today was a very tough long day! 72 km, about 45 of which were over hard rocky nasty dusty difficult road surface! One flat, one broken chain, no bruised egos…

We were delayed by almost 2 hours by a group member making a bad decision against reasonable logic, ended up going the wrong way. We got to the hotel much later than planned, but this day is done and a new one starts tomorrow.

Tomorrow will be lots and lots of uphill for 60K, but at least the road surface will be smooth!

Random items from today…

Item 1: Chinese people eat everything! From our guide: “Chinese people eat everything with four legs except for tables. Chinese people eat everything with two legs except for people.” (This is so true!! You can see in the markets that every part of the animal gets used for something and it’s all for sale. I could name a few unusual pig parts I saw for sale today, but I will let you use your imagination…

Item 2: Hacking and spitting. Need I say anymore? Well I will… It is incredible the amount of deep seated loud acrobatic hacking and spitting that goes on here by both men and women! That’s all I have to say about that…

Item 3: One child policy. China was criticized 30 years ago as I recall for enforcing a one child policy on parents, but in retrospect it makes good sense. You can actually have more than one kid, it’s just that you pay huge fines to the government if you do. We had a conversation after dinner with the guide about this.

Item 4: Prosperity! With the amount of construction, and in a town like Rongjiang, and the number of stores with modern items available, it’s very clear that there is a lot of wealth and growth of a very strong middle class here. It would behoove anybody with children to think about having them learn Mandarin!!!

Item 5: Road construction! Miles and miles and miles of road construction, most of it done by hand, wheelbarrows, and troubles with a few pieces of heavy equipment here and there… Pretty amazing to see how hard these people work…

Falling asleep…