Guoliangcun, up in the mountains!

So, since Pingyao, we have travelled quite some kilometers, but we are still quite close to Beijing, at least according to the map, but I feel we are so far away and so inside China in every way, hehe!

We took a bus from Pingyao to Taiyuan, last Thursday, I think, then we had to spend the night there, because there were no tickets to Xinxiang, next stop. But we got up early, and took the morning train, which of course took the whole day, and more than that, think we spend ten hours or more on that train. So we spend the night in Xinxiang. Then, on saturday 17 of may, the nationalday of Norway, we took taxi-bus-bus-taxi to get to Guoliangcun, a small village with threehoundred inhabitants, and it happened to be maybe the most beautiful place we have ever seen! The mountains are incredible, it is so green everywhere, and so many scenic spots to visit, lovely!The village is about 16thousands meter above sealevel, but we climbed a really high peak, and then we climbed even higher, so we have been quite high up again, and seen quite a view! And waterfalls and caves and small rivers, it is jst perfect. And very popular scenery for filmmaking, a lot of Chinese films have been made there, and eighty % of the villagepeople are in several of these films, very funny! So the place was quite famous in China, but the Chinese tourists were very surprised to see foreign people there, like how could we know about this place?? Lonely Planet, of course..
An artschool were there at the same time as we, and we got several new friends, which is always great! We spoke chinese and english and got along very well! We were also maybe the most popular tourist attraction there, everyone wanted a picture of us.. I actually got pain in my smilingmuscles.. Heheh!
We stayed for 4 days instead of 2, and really enjoyed all of it!

Yesterday we left the mountains and drove taxi-bus-bus-bus-bus to get to Zhengzhou, not Chengdu, earthquakesarea, and we planned to leave for Xian today already, but there were no traintickets, so we have to stay one more night here, planning to buy badminton-set and find a park! Hihihi!

That was one week very briefly! Enjoy yourself wherever you are!
gunhild