YangShuo

In his great book "China Road," Rob Gifford discusses an inevitable part of expat life in China. It is how one day, you absolutely love every single thing about living here, are in awe of the age and beauty of Chinese culture, and can't imagine ever wanting to leave. And the next day, you encounter some ugly truth about China and discover that you suddenly feel an overwhelming urge to get out. Then, the next day, you . . .


Anyway, our trip to YangShuo, in southern China was a great little microcosm of this experience. Bamboo rafting, water buffalo, underground caves, tandem biking, cliffside tombs, karst hills, mountains and rivers and "what China really looks like" (to Westerners, anyway) . . .

. . . and 24 hour flight delays, days in airports with no batteries for videogames and no books and no decent food and no diapers left and getting herded onto buses and into hotels with no information because Chinese people are so used to following authority they don't even expect to get information, and rock hard Chinese mattresses and neighboring rooms having midnight parties and tofu and weird fish for lunch and . . .

. . . and so on.

But, fear not, we eventually made it home and can now commence to remember only the good bits. Like these: