to the country

This weekend we travelled to the country. We took the night train from Xi'an to Yannan. I t was fun i have never been on a train before. We had a private cabin which i shared with three other girls. The boys slept on the hard sleeper which is pretty much a communal car. We were told that we had to have passports to stay in the softsleeper because a lot of prostitution happens in these cabins. We never got carded so maybe we weren't dressed up enough, either way it was an okay sleep.
We arrived at about 8am. We toured the city for the day. It was about the same size as saskatoon and oddly enough alot of bridges. Although the river is pretty much dried right up. It is about the width of the south sask. river. The city was really dry and really dusty.
We visted chairman Mao's old house and where he held all of the communist party meetings. It was fun- you could feel the energy in the meeting hall- that was kind of a weird feeling. There are so many shrines and many pictures and statues. They still think that was a very good man.
We then sat through a folk song and dance. It was so funny- the man was chasing a donkey- i have pictures, that might better explain the event. While we were there everyone felt like taking pictures of me. This guy showed me what pictures he had of me on his camera, it was creepy, there were close ups- it was very odd.
The next day-saturday- we drove for about 15 hours back to Xi'an. We drove to the Yellow River valley and to the Yellow emperors tomb. The drive was awesome it was very similar to the drive from calgary to golden- without the really jagged stone mountains. It was so nice and so fresh. Finally there was no smog to be seen. We even got stuck in our first cattle jam. A farmer was moving his cattle down the road. On this highway we drove up on many things including this gigantic oil refinery. It looked like Gotham city from Batman- a little unreal because it was so massive. So along this road we passed an oil tanker about every 30 seconds. It was slow going through those parts. The roads were very steep and very sharp, so meeting one of this trucks was a freaky.
We also drove through many villages and many orchards. It was so beautiful. The Yellow river valley is the where the chinese Han people were said to have originated from. It is very lush. But the river is called the yellow for that reason. It was really dirty. The water was very powerful and there were a few waterfalls as well. The water level was pretty high but i don't i was at its peak.
So we drove some more and ran up the side of a mountain to see the Yellow Emperors tomb. He is said to be the descendent of all chinese peoples. We had to run because the sight closed in 30 minutes. We ended up having to jump the fence to get out anyways- so we shouldn't have ran back down.
Then we drove some more. We had reached the outskirts of the city and saw many fields on fire. They were burning stuble since harvest is finished in most places. They can't burn the fields during the day so all of the fields were lit up. As we entered the city the temperature rose about 10 degrees. The smog and everything else combined made it a very hot van.
it was a great trip and i think that my pictures will better tell the story when i get home.