Going off the beaten path- part 2

       In the morning we went around to different places, trying different foods that looked interesting to eat for breakfast. One of the most interesting things was a plant which I didn't catch the name of. It looks like a flower, but it isn't. If you eat it raw, its very sour, but they also dry it out to make it into tea. I wanted to buy some of the tea to try, but I didn't get a chance to. While we were eating breakfast we went around taking many photos again.

the sour plant I mentioned

  



   

     



Before heading out to our next location, we stopped under a huge tree to have some. We learned how to do tea the Chinese way, and we got to sample some of the local kinds of tea. We enjoyed it so much that we actually bought a small tea set after we returned to Haining.

        I have just done some research, and I found out based on photo matching and such that the place we went to on the second day was called 河坑土楼群(hekeng tulou cluster). We arrived there by paying a man to drive us there on a motorcycle cart, and, as a local, he also acted as a tour guide and gave us information about the places we were visiting. I have a video of it, but I have yet to figure out how to make my videos small enough to put in this blog. Anyway, I have many pictures of all the tulous in that place, and most of them had a description of how old they were and how they were made. I will try to match them up with the pictures. This so far has been one of the coolest experiences for me in China so far, because the tulous were so old, and most of them still had people living in them for generations.
      The man explained to us that some of the tulous did have inhabitants, but the didn't live in Nanjing, and they only came home for holidays. We did see one tulou that was deemed unfit to live in, and it had many chickens playing around inside, so I joked to Hui that it had those chickens' families living there for generations.

This first one I cannot find any outside pictures of, but I think I remember what it looked like inside, because it was the oldest one we saw. It says there it was built during the Ming dynasty, but the ladies living inside told us that it was pre Ming dynasty. There was also a well of super clean water right in the middle of the building that they let us taste. The next picture is what this tulou looked like from the inside.

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      Looking through these pictures, I am realizing that I can't show every tulou with its respective English explanation, because it has been such a long time since my trip now. I think I better just show the pictures. People have told me that they don't take the time to read these blogs anyway. oh well! Enjoy the pictures.

geese!

      After we went through all of the tulous, we started climbing up a mountain next to the cluster to get a very special view. It just kept going up and up. There were always more stairs ahead. haha

       ......and now for that amazing view!

       Back in town, the driver of our little motor cart thing recommended a good restaurant for lunch, and lucky me! They had those little fish that I love to eat! Then it was time to go back to the city so we could get on the train back to Hangzhou. While we were waiting ages for the bus out of town, there was a lady across the street from us killing a bunch of chickens one by one, just cutting their necks with a pair of scissors, and putting them into a big barrel to let them bleed out. I don't know why, but I found watching that lady just completely thrilling. I guess things will be left off on an interesting note with that little story. It was the end of our adventure, and time to get back to Hangzhou and back to work! Thus ended our journey to 厦门 the city by the sea, and 南靖, the land of tulous. For our final picture, we have a couple of souvenirs that I bought to remember our time, a big shell from Xiamen, and a cute little embroidered bag from Nanjing.