China Reflections

This time last year I was traveling around China with my best friend Annie. Over 6,000 miles of amazing beauty, facinating people and interesting food. One thing about China is that there are people EVERYWHERE! There is an amazing difference between 15 million people (Kazakhstan) and 1.4 billion (China).

One of our greatest challenges without any language was to make food selections. Our first train was great in that the menu was in Chinese and English. That was one of the few times we had the benefit of an English menu. One particular time we went to a restaurant – drew pictures, made noises and hoped that we were going to get something with chicken. What arrived was a flaming wok with every part of the chicken that wasn’t edible – beaks, feet, chopped up bone, etc. That evening, we picked through what we could, ate the rice and tofu and settled later on for ice cream and cookies.

The terrain was absolutely beautiful! The best way to describe Southern China is “uniquely stunning”. The mountains are shaped like the humps of a camel and lush green plants and trees were everywhere. We took a bamboo raft ride down one of the rivers for an up close look at some of nature’s picturesque scenes. It was certainly an amazing trip!