Shilinxia

I went on an outing with some people in the department today.  At 7AM, we all boarded a coach and rode about 2.5 hours West of the city to a scenic area in the Stone Forest (shilin).  We hiked up a gorge and across a cliff face on a path that was full of Chinese people on weekend.  There was a post-doc who knew some English and we spoke both languages along the way.  

After the hike, the entire group went to eat lunch at a nearby restaurant.  It's strange to see people doing things that are practical here but would be incredibly rude at home: eye-balling their glasses and rinsing them if not clean, wiping their plates with sanitary wipes, spitting their bones all over the table.  In actuality, the Chinese people did not take move food from the communal plates to their own; they ate directly from the plates on the lazy susan.  And of course, there was far too much food for us to eat.  

On the way home, we stopped at an apple orchard to pick apples.  The orchard was rather haphazardly arranged, and there were all kinds of apples (no Honeycrisp though).  I didn't understand most of what the farmer was saying, but it was very fun.  I guess Chinese people don't go to pick apple very often.

I think I was the only foreigner we saw the entire day.