Sunday, Oct 14, in which we travel to Fujian

For breakfast, we got some dofu hua that I liked more than the one we had the other day, these weird little fried sticky rice things that are kind of like a hash brown patty, and also this pastry with sesame seeds on top and sugar inside. Then we checked out of the hotel, and headed to the train station for our trip to Wuyishan.

We got to the train station ahead of schedule. The Shanghai south train station is absolutely huge. The train ride is about 11 hours (12:45 PM to about 11:30 PM). We rode hard sleeper.


I didn't get a ton of pictures, but did get to check out the Chinese countryside, which was very interesting. Such a crazy mix of industrial and rural - large housing complexes and buildings rising up out of rural villages in some places; in other areas, everything still felt pretty rural, with older, usually somewhat run down buildings scattered among small farm plots.

I saw some stuff I didn't think still happened - a guy carrying a huge sack of something on his back, a woman carrying buckets of water or something, people wearing wide brimmed hats and working on their farm plots.

The train ride itself was a really interesting experience. Very loude lots of yelling, eating and drinking. People were pretty friendly, and we got offered some interesting snacks (small, sweet sun dried tomatoes, some sort of local orange / tangerine type fruit with green skin). No one really engaged us in conversation, though I did hear some people talking about the "foreigner" in Chinese.


Got into Wuyishan on time, and found our cab driver easily. I can already feel how touristy the city is, but I'm excited for tomorrow.