Market Day

Market Day today! This small village in Shaxi is packed to the brim with people from the area selling literally EVERYTHING. My favourite item so far has to be the cones of sugar - - sugar is no use to the common man in a jar, oh no, it is to be sold in blocks or caramelised cones ^^ Very tempted to buy a cone and eat my way through it...

Louise and I are trying to shift a few of our days in Lijiang (the next, tourist-heavy town) to Shaxi, so that we can stay a bit longer. This area is so peaceful compared to even Dali that I really don't want to leave.

When we arrived it seemed that the hostel really wasn't as organised as the one in Dali (which, admittedly, it isn't), with its horse stalls serving as bedrooms - - really should have guessed form the name, Horse Pen 46. The room is an old stall with a raised area for the beds, a shower in the corner (nice and warm) and a toilet near the door. Fortunately there are communal toilets (never thought I'd say that), which mean Lou and I can remain acquainted after this trip. The hostel is an old (apparently Bai-style) building. It's entrance is in a tiny corner of the old town square, facing the newly restored temple. There's then an electric door to pass through, which is required to prevent the small herd of dogs escaping. Yep, there's a St Bernard called Mary 玛丽, a Tibetan Dog (NOT a Mastiff, emphasis on that) called Luoxi and a wee Golden Retriever-type thing called Fish (apparently adopted in a fish restaurant). There're also two white cats, both rescued from Beijing, one is deaf and the other has a mutilated paw. ← Tis animal heaven here ^__________^

Yesterday we got up as late as possible, there's something in me programmed to wake me up just before 8am... literally just before classes start -_- There's a small café/ living room, which usually has its windows all open so it's not as if anyone in there is shut out. That'd be where I stayed for the morning, eating REAL Muesli (oats, banana and yoghurt, none of this dried fruit rubbish *sniff*), many cups of coffee (there's something addictive about Chinese packet coffee) and trying desperately to get the internet to load a single web page. That is a problem, the internet speed here is slower than at the flat in Qingdao, so a VPN is not possible. At the moment we're both using Lou's iPod for internet, as that seems to be able to do speedy quite well.

After lazing a bit, we went walking around the fields, which the farmers themselves didn't seem to mind. I come to this conclusion through the fact that no one yelled or gestured at us (-__-). The air here is incredible, no clouds, no rain even, unlike Dali. There's a vague heat-haze over the fields, but there's haze in the UK for Pete's sake. The fields are all divided by embankments, most of which have been flattened on top to make paths. The culverts are all very deep and well-defined, helpful for us tourists to notice that the crops in each section are different. As there aren't any fences, animals are tied to a pole in a field (if there's one), if there are several they're kept near the owner's home. Lou attempted to locate a special pony she's looking for, called the Guoxiama 果下马, literally “fruit under horse”, the point being that this pony is small enough to slip under fruit bushes. One horse she approached wasn't very friendly, there's a good photo of her holding its reign as it bucks away. The other was just too big. After pony-spotting we wandered back through the villages and fields. I attempted to covertly take pictures of broken graves – the graves in this area look like small stone doors, with what could be a soil tunnel behind, leading in to the earth. Anyway, these broken graves showed that the door is more of an altar and the soil tunnel isn't actually a tunnel, or if it is the two I saw had both caved in (very possible).

The evening was coloured by one of the guys trying to discipline Luoxi. Luoxi is a guard dog basically, so whenever something moves she barks. At first he was simply hitting her, but then he got a bamboo rod and started giving her a smack on her spine. As soon as he started this, each hit was followed by two of the girls here madly stroking Luoxi, so it was a bit of a discipline fail. Later on he tried picking Luoxi up by her collar and threatening her against the pillar, but he failed and ended up smacking Xiaoyun down the stairs. Major Fail. At this point we were playing pool... or snooker... not a clue which. AND I WON! HA! 2 out of 3 ^^ Lou said it was what her brother calls “Girl Play”, so no matter how hard we both try, we're hopeless. I hope I proved this wrong by discovering that if you hit the ball a certain way it quite often goes in the hole... *head-desk*

The first night was disturbed by a VERY old American couple narrating every movement. When the old man decided to give us a step-by-step guide to the in-room toilet I waited a bit, then went round to inform them of the paper-thin-walls concept. Turned out they were quite a lot older than I realised, so as soon as they opened the door I felt like I was yelling at my grandparents. I donned my best American accent, asked them to keep it down, then fled. A good plan. Last night was disturbed by the lady next door's collapsing airways. I know some people snore, but honestly! If she didn't have a sore throat this morning I'll eat my hat... if I wore a hat.

The market was way cool! Pretty much everything was on sale, minus puppies We wandered for a while, then turned back because we thought Shirley (the hostel manager) had lied about there being horses. On the way back we ran in to Caroline (English conservationist) and her Australian friend (the woman next door, eek!). Caroline worked here for a German botanist many years ago, drawing medicinal plants for him, so she knows the area and the people quite well. She told us where the animal section was, so we wandered down and found stalls stuffed with pigs (worst part is the squealing ) and lots of cows and horses. As unimportant as animal rights seems to be in China, the cattle and horses were in pretty good condition. All the sellers stared at us continually as we wandered round, mainly because I was having fun photographing pigs and ponies ^^ Lou nearly bought one horse, the only pathetic one in the area, because it was covered in scars and had an open wound. Unfortunately there's noway to get it home or keep it in China, so that plan went down the drain.

A while ago the family running the hostel returned from the market. Shirley is very good with English, whilst Xiaoyun I assume is a niece (she's too old to be daughter?) seems to like Lolita style. She always has fake eyelashes on (big eyes) and when she came back from the market she was wearing a sailor-pattern coat, a mini-skirt and patterned tights. She's very cute, but I was under the impression she was at least mid-twenties...

In summary: a band of Americans have walked in (no sleep tonight then. AGAIN – every American I have been near in the past two weeks has taken shouting as the default speaking volume), one of them is now declaring how his old St. Bernard was also called Molly and looked exactly like Mali -_________- Don't want to have to explain the fashion of name translation in China.