Going off the beaten path

      For the second portion of our national holiday trip, Hui and I traveled to a small countryside town called 南靖 (nanjing), which is famous for its earthen houses, or however you translate 土楼。It was also featured on an extremely famous Chinese television show called 爸爸去哪儿(dad, where are we going?), which made the place filled with travelers. I read an article yesterday that explained the difference between tourists and travelers. While tourists stick to the big cities and easy to get to places, travelers go of the beaten path, and aren't afraid to get their hands dirty when it comes to traveling. After this trip, I would like to think that Hui and I have become not just tourists, but travelers. I personally have gone to places no foreigner has ever gone before, and done things that your average tourist might not even know to do.
      Going to Nanjing made me really feel like a traveler. We had to 打车(find a random person to drive us) again, which I was really not a fan of, but when you go to such a rural area, and you are with other Chinese people, you are almost guaranteed to be safe, so I let it pass again. The place we were headed for was called 云水谣(yunshuiyao), which is not only famous for that television show, but also has a movie about it. Hui and I made sure to watch the movie before we came, and we were able to point out specific places around that we had seen in the movie. I have sooooooo many pictures to show you, even more than from Xiamen.
      first I thought I might share a few pictures of our hotel. It was a traditional Chinese kind of hostel, with a nice big social area in the middle where we could spend time talking with other travelers and sharing stories, which we did during the night with another couple while drinking complimentary tea served by one of the owners.

      We also brought a traditional Xiamen snack called pineapple cakes, which are also a famous snack in Taiwan. The famous food in Xiamen and Taiwan are similar, because they are so close to each other. Hopefully I will have a picture here of the pineapple cakes to show you. We just bought them in the train station while we were waiting along with some durian candy and other things, and they were really delicious.

      On the first day we visited the tulous that were close to use, and they were awesome. At the first place we bought some home made taffy like candy and a little bag as a souvenir to remember our time in Nanjing. Outside the first big tulou there was a line of stalls selling things, and we saw a man dressed as a pig selling bbq and dancing. I found that hilarious, and therefore took pictures. 

its funny because the sign says look but don't touch

I liked this sign because it has a little picture of a tulou on it

云水谣

      For dinner we went to a restaurant that was very highly recommended by the people living around, and they weren't wrong. They recommended us to buy their chicken, and they said that every table that orders it eats every bit of it. Along with that we ordered little shrimp and some countryside vegetable that I didn't know the name of. I thought it was interesting that that vegetable was green, but the juices were purple. Thinking about it right now I really want to go back to Nanjing and eat at that place now. I know I always always say this, but I can't stress it enough. You have not eaten the most delicious and real Chinese food until you have gone to the countryside! If you travel to China, you have to get to the countryside at least for one day even if it is just to try the food. You will eat things you've never even seen before, and everything with be the most delicious thing you have eaten in your life.

the soup was really great too! I've never seen anything like it.

      In the evening we traveled around some little shops near the place where we were staying. Nanjing is home to a Chinese minority group, so they had some special clothes you could buy. Hui picked out one for me to try on, but I didn't think it flattered me very much, so we didn't buy it, but I still took a picture in it for the memory. Before we went back to sleep we went to see a unique kind of tulou that was very old. Its unique because it is actually square, and not round like most of the tulous around Yunshuiyao and Nanjing, and also because it is very tall.

I think I will end this post off here. There are so many pictures for the next day, so I think they will definitely need their own blog post to fit everything in. That was the end of day one in Nanjing, and it was a great day that started with miles and miles of endless banana fields when we got off at the train station, and ended with having tea together with nice people and talking about our adventures together. It was a great first day, but get ready for an even better second day!