Yesterday Pingyao, today Yangyuen, and tomorrow Beijing!

I didn’t post yesterday because we were just having too much fun. We stayed in the ancient village of Yingpao, which I’ll bet you’ve never heard of before. I saw a sign or two indicating it was a World Heritage site, and I’ll do a bit more research to confirm what that means.

It’s been said there aren’t too many ancient things left in China as a consequence of the Cultural Revolution, but you couldn’t prove that by me. As an aside, I’ve also heard it said that there is no religion in China, and folks, I’m here to tell you that’s just not true. We’ve seen countless Buddhist temples, numerous mosques in China’s Muslim sections, and even a few Christian churches.

Anyway, back to Yingpao…it was a hoot. Before I get to the photos of it, let me tell you about the ride there. It was a bit on the challenging side, especially since the toll booth people wouldn’t let us on the freeway in Jiao Zuo. That mandated a trip through the mountains, which was both a blessing and a curse. The blessing side of the equation is that it got us some altitude and that provided a bit of relief from the stifling heat and humidity. The bad news was that our route took us by a gigantic quarry, and we got caught in the convoy of literally a thousand or more gigantic trucks carrying gravel, sand, and other construction materials on that road. Passing the trucks on those winding mountain roads was like being in Colombia’s Andes mountains all over again. Hey, everywhere you look in China, the skyline is peppered with construction cranes. China had been building massive projects for at least the 25 years I’ve been coming here, and folks, something has to feed that construction monster. The trucks we mixed it up with yesterday were doing just that….

I have a few photos from Yingpao, but the Internet is not cooperating. Maybe next time.

This morning we left Yingpao enroute to tonight’s destination, which puts us under 300 clicks from Beijing. We’re staying in Yangyuen this evening. It’s cooler and it’s much drier, and I got some good shots on the road coming here and at dinner this evening. First, two or three photos of Lu playing with the RX1…