Day 251 – Xitang

We checked out of the hotel and got on the bus at 8:30 this morning.  Our destination was the city of Xitang.  It is also a city build with canals through it like Suzhou was.  The ride there took about an hour and a half. 

We walked through part of the old city that was very crowded with all the people still on holiday.  It was pretty hard to get around as a group with the crowds and the very narrow walkways through the city.  David had on his camouflage hat and many of our group were grateful for it, so they could look up and see where our group was supposed to go.  We tried to stay pretty close to the tour guide, so that we didn’t get lost.  Our first destination was the harbor for a boat ride on the canal.

 

The narrow street we walked through to get to the old town of Xitang.

The canals of Xitang.  People live here and most of them seem to run either a shop, restaurant or an inn.

Looks so "romantic," a favorite word of the Chinese.

One of the inns along the canal.  The girl in the green dress was taking a picture of her grandfather on the steps.

On our way up and down the canal, the people were all taking pictures, and many of them were very friendly with us.  We would wave and say, “Hi,” and they would wave back and say the same thing.  It was rather fun.  After going up and down the canal, we were put off at a different place than we got on.  Marvin had arranged for us to have lunch at a small restaurant that wasn’t far from where we got off the boat at.

 

This was some of the food along the street, not what we had for lunch. 

Our boat captain.

These are cormorants, diving birds that they tie the string around their neck and don't let them swallow the fish.  It is a dying skill of the older generation and they just do it for show now.

The meal at the restaurant was arranged quickly, but it was a pretty good meal.  We liked most everything that they made for us.  When we finished the meal, we were given an hour’s free time to wander the streets.  Of course they wanted us to buy things, but we just looked and smiled at lots of babies and posed for pictures with either the babies or people.

 

When they want to mop the floors, they go to the river, dip in their mop in, then go mop the floor.  They also sweep the floors and dump the garbage into the river.  Then there is a person that comes along the river in his boat and dips the floating garbage our of the river.

This man played his erhu for us during our lunch, then passed the hat for tips.  He was good.

When it is wall-to-wall people, this sign was rather ironic.

As we were passing by this food stand, they brought out this mound of white and then carefully placed it in front of the store.  

Then he started carefully cutting into the mound.  You can almost see the little brown balls in the powdery stuff. I don't know if it was sugar or flour.

They quickly boxed them up and had them for sale.  I didn't try any of them though.  Not curious enough to find out what they taste like.

These are steamed dumpling made into little shapes.  They like to do this for the holidays.

Anyone want to eat some octopus?  They would put them on a stick and eat them like lollipops.

When the time was up, we walked back to the bus and then had a two and a half hour ride to the airport/train station near Shanghai.  They placed the two in the same area.  We thought it was a smart idea, because the others had flights to catch, and the Pace’s and we were taking the train back to Jinan. 

We were there two hours before our train left, so we had to try and find a place to sit.  That was a real trick.  You stood around and as soon as someone stood up to vacate a seat, you sat down, and you didn’t dare get up, because it wouldn’t be there when you got back.  There were a lot of people sitting on suitcases and just on the floor, too.

We bought a little supper from McDonald’s, and then I was able to sit and put my leg up.  When it was time for the train to leave, we got in the long line and made our way to our seats.  Shanghai is the origin of this high-speed train, so we had time to find our seats and get settled before we left.

The five-hour train ride put us back to Jinan at 11 p.m.  We still had to take a taxi from there to get home, but we were able to get close to the first of the line to wait for them.  Pace’s got in the taxi with us and it only took us about 25 minutes to get to our campus.  Not bad at all for how far the west train station is from us.