Day 9: Good weather at last, Near-fatal collision, Final shopping binge, What light through yonder window breaks, and Who woke up the guards?

Mission: Second Honeymoon

Day 9:  Good weather at last, Near-fatal collision, Final shopping binge, What light through yonder window breaks, and Who woke up the guards? (it was a long day )

 

Finally, the rains ended and the sun came out.  It was cool in the morning, but not unpleasantly so.

After a tasty breakfast of baozi from a local shop, there was some morning . . . exercise () to get to.  Things were going quite nicely when there was an unfortunate collision during a positional adjustment.  This incident involved her head and the bridge of my nose, and was accompanied by a loud cracking sound.   

The bridge of my nose is now a bit flatter than it used to be.  I guess that makes me look a little more Chinese.  We decided to take a break from . . . marital bliss and do some shopping while I recovered.  I’m definitely going to have to add a warning about the possibility of this sort of accident in the annotated version of the Kama Sutra I’m working on. 

Mixed with last minute shopping, now that we knew where to get lower prices on many items, was getting photos that just didn’t work with all the rain.

 

 

First up – a walk to that Baijiu shop to buy a gourd and to pick up some other oddly shaped containers of baijiu on the way back.  Friday evening (forgot to mention this in the previous day’s post), we found those ancient traditional baijiu cups.  The asking price started at 25, but quickly fell to 10, so I bought a pair of them.

 

 

For lunch, we headed back to that tiny place next to the school.  This time we had one table to ourselves, but a group of 5 middle school girls squeezed around the other table wanted to practice English with me.  This really wasn’t much of a problem, since there was a backup in the food orders and it took some time to get mine cooked.

We headed over towards the wholesale shop.  With the rain gone, a lot more shops, stalls, and tables full of junk tacky souvenirs precious cultural artifacts were open for business.  Suddenly, those hard-to-find baijiu cups were everywhere, along with all sorts of other little decorations.

Since I permanently moved to China, there’s one thing I’ve wanted and haven’t gotten so far.  A decent sized Christmas tree (not a tiny table-top one).  Sure, I could pick one up at WalMart and buy all the usual decorations, but I have something special in mind.  Every time I head off to some far distant tourist area, I look for little Chinese decorations in the 1-5 kuai range.  From that point of view, Feng Huang was a treasure trove.  The far side of the river had places with more and different ones than I’d seen elsewhere, some at excellent prices.  On a sunny day, the area near that wholesale shop on the near side was also overflowing with just the right stuff.  I think I now have enough decorations to finally buy the tree this year.   (UPDATE:  And I did.  Check out My Chinese Christmas Tree.)

Alas, I almost made it through a trip without buying another item for my wife’s purse collection, but she found one that she just HAD to have.   At least it was only one.

There was a nice old woman selling red pepper powder in oil.  She handed me a small spoon to try a sample.  I scooped out a tiny bit.  She seemed to think I needed a much bigger spoonful, so I scooped deeper.  Much to my amusement and her consternation, I declared the contents to be only “a little spicy”.  I still bought a bottle to bring home.

One other good thing about a sunny day.  Dogs and cats were out in abundance.  Since I’ve lived in China, I have a serious deficit in time spent petting dogs and cats.  Feng Huang helped make up for that a little.  Being proficient in the languages of both dogs and cats, I told each one of them how cute and fuzzy they were, and warned them to watch out for hungry-looking Chinese people. 

 

 

Since we were slowly overloading ourselves with items for our home or as gifts, we needed to run back to the hotel.  The battery in the camera was nearly flatlined, and there wasn’t time for me to take a walk to the other side of the river.  This was going to be my one chance at some very . . . special photos.   So, my lovely wife went up to our room while I lingered on the sidewalk below pretending to take pictures while waiting for a hand to emerge with a quick wave to let me know when to point the camera at the balcony.

Juliet on the balcony doesn’t come close to comparing to the view of my lovely wife in all her exposed glory. 

Sadly, she lingered for only a couple of seconds, so I only got 2 shots.  Also sadly, she’s a bit short, and the wooden railing was a bit tall, so the one where she’s directly facing me has the railing eclipsing the view of her ni… chest, restoring at least a tiny trace of her modesty.

(What?  You thought I’d post those pics here?  Too bad, you’ll just have to use your imagination. )

I quickly ran upstairs to finish the honeymoon activities the damage to my nose had interrupted earlier in the day.   Happily, there were no further injuries despite trying a few of the more advanced positions.

After quite a bit more . . . wedded bliss, we headed out again.  The bridge over the spillway next to the hotel was mostly crossable (if you didn’t mind getting your feet wet).  One worrisome thing.  On both sides were brand new ticket booths, not yet installed.  It looks like they may be expanding the area where tourists are supposed to have tickets. 

 

 

The boat rides had finally begun again.  One boat had a lovely Miao girl singing to tourists in other boats as they passed.

 

 

We finally got a good look at Bar street and some other items farther down the other side of the river than we’d ever gone.

 

 

Then we came back across Fenghuang’s main hopping bridge.  It was impassable eariler in the week due to flooding.  This one was 2 rows of stones about 30 cm square.  I was told that boys were supposed to walk on the taller stones.  Due to the average height difference, it seemed more logical to me to let the girls use the taller ones.  With heavy 2-way traffic (and people taking pictures of each other, buildings, boats, etc.) it required a large amount of lane changing to get to the other side.

 

 

We kept heading upriver past the ticket gates.  These looked suspiciously narrower than the ticket enforcement areas we’d been ignoring all week/  Then we crossed a small s-curved wooden bridge just above water level back to the bar street side of the river.

 

 

I was admiring a pair of tall, thin, elegant looking girls in matching suits when they stepped into our path and blocked us.  The girls were gate guards.  They wouldn’t let us pass without tickets.

We were quite some distance from our hotel and now we couldn’t get back in. 

Taking a quick left away from the river, we walked to the end of the nearest building (about 10-12 meters).  Then we turned right for another 10 meters.  Finally, we turned right again and emerged inside the gated area behind the guard girls.  I was deeply tempted to go up to them and ask them why the next street wasn’t guarded, but decided not to risk having them to throw me into the river – at least not while I was carrying my camera. 

 

 

 

Dinner consisted of snacks purchased here and there around town.  Hunan style french fries (the only REALLY spicy food I had the whole time), tofu, etc., etc.

 

 

We spend an hour or so getting most of our stuff wedged into suitcases (no arguments about needing an extra bag like we had on our first honeymoon).

It was getting late and things were quiet.  It was the last night of our second honeymoon and we were leaving early the next morning.  What to do?  How to spend the time?   After some extended contemplation, an idea formed.  Minus clothing, we both stepped out onto the balcony for a final round of mandatory honeymoon enjoyment.   It was great fun, until some guy stopped just below us to use his cell phone to take a few night shots of the bridges and then get into another long phone conversation.  Our whispered conversation on what his reaction would be if he glanced up and saw what we were doing had us both desperately trying not to burst out laughing.   Leaving the sliding door and curtains wide open, we retreated to the bed to finish what had begun on the balcony. 

Now all we had to do was get back home and see what the typhoon had done in our absence. 

 

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