Getting out of Qinhuangdao

Time is such a bizarre thing; sometimes it flies, sometimes it crawls, and it is continually punctuated with memories and experiences. The older I get, the more it tends to fly, so I desire to find ways to live life to its fullest, to seek out and soak up the joy as much as possible. Sometimes I catch myself wishing time away, but I try to push those kinds of thoughts out immediately. Because we've been here for10 months now, we know just how precious it is to get out of Qinhuangdao every once and a while. These pictures were taken sometime shortly after our arrival here. Since our time here is coming to a close I feel pressured to post some of the highlights.


Our little city here has the facade of modernity and indeed some parts of it live up to that expectation, but in general, behind the tall hotels, apartment buildings and restaurants there is often rubble. I still haven't been able to figure out if it is like that because something is being built up, torn down or if it's simply going to remain that way for the foreseeable future. There is definitely a continuum of building that goes on here. Heading out of Qinhuangdao and into the countryside there is an even more abrupt change in the environment and way of life. Here you can see the mountains. It's such a refreshing site for the two of us since the mountains tend to be masked by buildings, cloudy days or even pollution.


When Kemin aka "John," and as well like to refer to him "the friendliest man in China," learned that we like to climb, he self-imposed the mission to find us some rocks to climb on. After a little off-roading in his mini-van we arrived here. Like 70% of our surroundings in QHD, this place too is under construction.


It was difficult to find rocks that were good enough to climb on, but once we did we quickly attracted the attention of several passers-by.




Here's a cute donkey eating his fill. The contrast of old and new here crops up often. When we look out of our window at the insane traffic it isn't uncommon to see donkeys hauling huge loads of construction equipment. We've even seen them on major highways.





Self portrait. We hiked off into the hills for the first time in a long time.
We were pretty content.