China 6 weeks behind us

So almost 6 weeks of traveling in China.  Mainly trains, but also alot with buses.  Our travel style got a bit monotonous, always getting to and from bus/train station, to finding some cheep hotel, than finding parks, getting food and repeating the process...

Shanghai was a good surprise: a cosmopolitan and breathing city after that gray center of China. e stayed three days hosted by a French Qi Gong teacher, Marceau. Supermama would get up early to practice her favorite sport in the parks at 7, when they are crowded with old or younger Chinese. On the evening, she would test Marceau's invention, Qi Dance, a form of improvisation dance. We also met the son of our village's doctor for lunch in the commercial area and a former guest of our Strasburg's couch for dinner in the small streets of the French concession.

Fujian province
We chose a city randomly on the map towards South, took a train, watching lats years Walt Disney/Pixar studio movies and once we just got out, we heard: "Welcome to Ningde!" There stood Tony, a Cuban teaching Spanish in the University and Freddy, a Chinese-American teaching English. We sat in their pick-up and they showed us the English school where Elios could put the library upside down and forget it was late ad he was hungry. The following dinner was quite something:" we said we'd like fish, we're shown one fish, pretty big, around 80cm long, alive, just out of the aquarium, and a few minutes later it is cut in pieces and boiled in a bouillon on our table, we receive in our bowls the head, the tail and some delicious pieces. Next day we escaped to the mountain: we feel finally in the South, with green luxurious trees, the sounds of the jungle instead of that of the city. Then we passed through Xiamen, stayed one night in Longyan, famous for its Peanuts and got to Yongding, small city that abrina had recommended to us in Beijing. There, we visited some ancient houses called the "earth buildings", built in XVIII-XIXth cent., in clay and wood, all round. The small local buses we take to cross the countryside are getting more and more picturesque and in a poor condition.


Guangdong province: Canton and Zhaoqing
That night train was a nightmare: we misunderstood the lady at ticket office and received sitting tickets instead of sleeping places, and that in a full train, with the light on till 1 am, we couldn't close an eye. On top of that, the controller wouldn't let us out of the train station without our tickets, so that Filip had to go back all the way to our wagon and by chance found them. In Canton, we treat ourselves with a coffee for 4 euros in Starbucks, with great comfort. There we met a Polish guy, wearing a costume, leaving in Shanghai, and stared at the White people coming in and Chinese life going on outside. Canton seems less modern than Peking and Shanghai, bridges are covered with plants and buildings go back to the seventies-eighties. Zhaoqing is a charming city, some kilometers more west, its lakes and mountains attract many people from Canton and Hong Kong over the week-ends. We spent some time with an ex QiGong teacher, quite a unique person.
Guangxi province
We made some decisions for the months to come: we'll go to Indonesia soon, buy a new VWbus and visit some meetings there. We start to be tired of China. In Wuzhou, we got a room with computer to make some research and booked a flight Saigon-Jakarta for November 15.  No time for Yunnan and Sichuan provinces but just some days in Guangxi, which is also magnificent.
The bus runs along a river, and mountains with incredible pointing shapes come out of the earth. We cannot believe to have reached these sites that we saw few months before on pictures at our neighbor's house in Montfort. We stay a few days in the breathtaking landscapes, in Yangshuo, and rent a tandem to cycle around the countryside. On that occasion, some woman who works in a travel agency tells us we will need to make our visas before entering Vietnam. It's a pretty bad news, we rush to Nanning after teaching one evening in an English school.
The province capital city is not so interesting, we choose a backpacker hostel to share some experiences with other travelers, then while the consulate is preparing our visas, we relax on the seaside, in Fanchengang. Elios loves it on the beach, to draw in the sand with sharp shells, and he finds a 12 year-old girl friend Hojahuj who takes care of him like a second mother. Filip sees the pacific ocean for the first time, and I just Relax, whaww!