Cuandixia

On Saturday we visited the mountain village of Cuandixia (爨底下).  As Julie and my time is wrapping up our school has been more eager to show off a few of the cultural treasure in our part of China and on Monday informed us they would send us out to this village on the weekend if we were interested.  Julie and I jump at any opportunity to travel without the use of a bus and made plans to visit on Saturday along with a couple of our fellow teachers. 

This a symbolic character for the village of Cuandixia

Here is a pictoral breakdown of the character

This is what a dog house looked like in China, 500 years ago.  Other than the plant it doesn't seem that bad.

However, the cat got to live inside.  We talk about doggie doors but this was the cats door and went straight through the wall into the living room.

Can you guess what animals the two mountain tops are said to resemble?

There is one additional animal mountain top (on the right), what do you think?

For lunch the restauranteur let us eat in one of the hotel rooms.  This was the bed.  Yes it was huge but you may be sharing it with five of your new best friends.  It does only cost 20RMB (a little over $3/spot) so that's something.

Mmmhh, lunch time.  I thought there was plenty of good food but Julie just didn't seem to enjoy it as much as I did.  We have found that the Chinese just don't have the same need for their food to be aesthetically pleasing to the eyes or sometimes the nose either.  Julie was asked why we didn't eat the fish and said it was because we didn't like too because picking out all the bones was too difficult.  This confused our friend who quickly informed us that we could just eat the bones because the fish had been cooked long enough that the bones were now so soft they were edible.  We decided to agree to disagree.

Nap time.

Julie's favorite part of the day was after we finished touring the village we were take to see some mountains just up the road from the village.  This turned out to be the mountains.  We have no idea how this was formed all we are told is that it's Chinese name is a saying that is translated into "one line sky."