Yesterday we had an amazing day, from morning until the evening. We set of at 7:30 from Baoding, in a car I managed to rent from Jade's dad's friend who is a taxi driver. Naturally the man came with the car, so we had a driver for the whole day, too. And besides us three, Wang Zhi Yong (or Alan) came along.

We drove through various counties in the Baoding area, and after about 2 1/2 hours arrived at our destination, which was the area of the Western Imperial tombs from the Qing dynasty (Qing Xi Ling). I'd already been there briefly with Olli in December (you can see some photos in the album from that trip), but at that time we only visited the largest tomb. This time the plan was to go around the different tombs and explore the area around them a little.

And so we did, visiting different tomb complexes built for emperors, empresses and their children, which all consist of various buildings. There is only one place where you can actually enter the tomb itself, in the others you can just see the hill on top of it. But the main attraction are the magnificent buildings around the tomb.

And just like the time before, what I enjoyed the best was just being out there, away from the noise and the hustle and bustle of the city. And as this place really isn't near any major cities or isn't probably very well known by tourists, we mostly had all these amazing places all to ourselves. And the open spaces, green hills, fresh air - silence. I really miss all that, and being there yesterday made me realise once again that though there are many good sides to living in a city, I would much more prefer living in the countryside.

We had lunch in a little restaurant, where we had to wake up the hosts on our arrival to get up and fix lunch for us. And the ingredients were definitely fresh, as they had a little garden behind the building, where they went to get the vegetables just for our meal.

As the last stop in Xi Ling we went to the buddhist temple of the area, where we met with three Tibetan monks who had just arrived there a couple of weeks before and were now staying there, studying the scriptures and praying. Two of them spoke some English, and it was truly interesting to talk to them, especially to this 25-year-old monk - it's strange to compare the lives of us two who are the same age but living such different lives.

From Xi Ling we headed to the home village of Alan, the name of which i forget... Dong something...humm... A little village in the middle of huge fields, where they now were harvesting wheat and planting corn for the next harvest in the autumn. The village has narrow little dirt streets and alleys between brick and concrete buildings.

In Alan's home, we were received by his mum and aunt, who once again showed us the meaning of Chinese hospitality. In the building they have a small classroom, where the mother is teaching pre-school kids, who were in the middle of the lesson when we arrived a little before 6 p.m. While the mum was fixing us dinner from the ingredients Alan brought along from the restaurant where we had lunch and from a market in Yi County where we stopped on the way, Alan took us for a walk around the village. We went to visit the primary school (where children were first scared stiff on seeing us and then screaming like crazy) and a little later his grandmother house. The grandmother is a sweet old lady, who was trying to convince us to stay overnight, offering tea and telling how much she misses her children and grandchildren, almost breaking into tears. And she was also the first woman who I have met with tiny little bound feet...

Being in the village with the people felt so good, they are so sincerely friendly and welcoming - it's amazing. I wish we had had more time, but we really had to go in the end, despite heartfelt wishes from the people for us to spend the night. But maybe I will have a chance to go visit them again after my time in Shandong... I hope, anyway.

Today we spent the day at Dr Li's hospital, looking around the place and also being examined. For lunch, we went to his home, where we all prepared some dumplings together, trying to learn how to make them look less like something the cat dragged in... And afterwards back to the hospital for some wicked treatments of foot baths and foot massage. Somehow they managed to find all the spots, which are connected to different parts of the body, some of it even hurt as they were pressing and pinching the nerves, but I suppose it was good for us. At least afterwards it did feel real good. And back tomorrow to pick up some herbs for more footbaths for my parents when they get back to Finland.

There are too many things to write about now, we have seen and done so much in the past couple of days so this entry has just turned into a list of our activities - there would be too much for a better description and analysis. But pictures maybe tell more than my words, so take a look!