Wow. So this new blogtown upgrade looks pretty cool. It’s going to take me a while to get used to all the new stuff, or maybe just the new placement of old stuff, but still, it looks good so far. There is an issue with logging in, but hopefully that’ll be sorted pretty quickly. Problem seems to be solved.
So I’m back in the village in Yanqing. I finish my week’s classes at 9:35 on a Friday morning, so as soon as I got out of class we packed up, jumped on the bus, and got out here as quickly as we could. It feels good. Clean air, clean water, peace, quiet, my dog, Ma’s home cooking, and broadband that is actually broad and is reliable. Speaking of broadband….. Might as well have a listen to KiwiFM while I can. I mean, this connection is fast enough to stream stuff without constant interruptions, and this broadband deal is unilimited, meaning it doesn’t cost me a fortune to listen to music or watch video…
It was a beautiful day yesterday. Not the best I’ve seen, but pretty good. And finally Bafangda Bus Company has figured out there’s no real need to get off the highway at the Badaling turn off, and we cruised straight down the highway into Yanqing. There was a bit of haze in the air, but once we’d crossed Badaling and were on our way down into the basin the mountains over on the northern side were looming in the distance. The only hassle about getting out to the village was the crowd on the 920.
I’ve noticed that as time has gone on more and more people have been riding the 920 further and further out. It used to be that the crowd would have thinned out to almost nothing by the time we got to our stop, but yesterday we had to fight our way through masses of people. It’s strange, because there really isn’t all that much out past our village. Is the population of Xiaying really that huge? Or have they all given up farming to work in the county town? Or are we getting traffic from Huailai as well? But there seems to be fewer and fewer miandi on the road, too, so maybe that explains something…..
Well, the weather doesn’t bode well for the gazing at the moon we’re supposed to do tomorrow. Last night a stream of broken-up cloud streamed over us from the northwest towards Beijing in the souteast. It looked pretty freaky, like something out of a sci-fi film, with the thicker patches of cloud showing up pitch black as the raced across the moon, the thinner patches pale, glowing, and the moon popping in and out of view. Today it’s a solid overcast.
And nothing much has changed. My dog, Zaizai woke me up bright and early this morning begging for a chest rub. Occasionally a train rumbles past in the distance- well, they sound more distant than they actually are. There’s been a lot less noise from the trucks since they got that new, dedicated highway between the railway line and the old highway. The corn is standing tall and just about ready for harvest in the fields. Ba’s busy in the fields tending to corn, veges, apples and grapes from the crack of dawn through to lunchtime, then takes his ever-growing flock of sheep out to graze in the afternoons. I’m just sitting around drinking tea, killing time, and getting a much-needed break from city life.
