The Ohrvalls | The Life and Times of

When we left Xian we went to Shanghai to check in at our hostel and stay for one night.  I will talk more about what we did in Shanghai when I do a post just about that city.  Right now I want to tell you about the time that we spent in the Yellow Mountain/Hongcun area. We took another long bus ride into the Yellow Mountain area to our hotel for the next two days.  The first room that we checked into had a few minor setbacks to it:  Matthew couldn't fit through the door without ducking and could not stand under the shower head without squatting!  Here is a funny picture of just how tall he is in this country. We were lucky the place had "Western" toilets instead of squatter toilets but the ceiling of the whole room was only about 3 inches higher than Matthew's head.  We politely requested a different room even though the owner "Mr. Hu (who)" was just trying to make it easier on me so I would only have to climb one set of stairs instead of 3.  They g

Xian is a big area composed of many other smaller cities and towns.  We went into the larger city section on our trip too.  This is where we encountered our first Walmart in China!  It was the only one that we saw but there are many other Walmart's throughout China.  We also enjoyed a lot of people watching in the main shopping district.  Here are some pictures. The photo above and below are of two towers.  The Bell Tower and the Drum Tower.  These two towers were used in ancient times to signify the beginning of a work day and the end.  They would ring the bell to signify the beginning and then bang the drums to signify the end.  They don't use them anymore though. This was the only way to find milk in China.  Out in the open sitting in the sun all day.  Needless to say we didn't drink milk while we were there. But they sure do know how to make some pretty cool bread!  We saw a few of these in different areas of China too.  

We spent a few days in the city of Xian where we were able to see the touristy city as well as an ancient village still living within the boundaries of the Great Wall.  It was interesting to walk around the city and notice the old mixing in with the more modern stuff in both architecture and culture. The first thing that we did when we got into Xian was take a tour of the city wall.  Xian is basically what China considers a small city bordered by 4 walls that they conveniently call the North, East, South and West walls.  The walls were built around the city to protect against unwanted armies with outpost every few meters for soldiers to protect the city.  The big touristy thing to do on the wall is rent a bike and ride all the way around it.  However, with my pregnant belly and all the bumping of the wall's stones we decided against doing that part of the tour and instead we just walked along the East wall while the rest of the group rode around the wall.  I am glad that we chose