Smogless Fenghuang (3/5/09 - 3/6/09)

After 22 hours of two train rides and a bus ride I arrived in freezing cold Fenghuang. Yet, the cold does not seem to deter the chinese from visiting this Miao and Tujia minority based riverside village. Relative to what of China I have seen so far, they make quite an attempt to keep Fenghuang pretty clean - primed for the tourists. I have spent 50% of my attention checking out the quaint river scenes, small shops, street vendor food, towers, pagodas, foot bridges, ancient city walls, etc.; and I have spent the other 50% watching all the Chinese tourists watching the above list of things which makes the touristy side of Fenghuang quite interesting, because to me, it's all foreign.

I posted some pics of his place and it really is quite a neat place to visit. The riverside area is really picturesque with boat rides up and down the river, people washing clothes and at night they light paper lanterns to set afloat down the river. The food here in Hunan province is in stark contrast to what I observed/tasted in the Cantonese region. Many of the restaurants put out the vegetables and animals (pheasants, chicken, turtles, fish, clams, etc.) for you to see before you decide to go in. Not exactly sanitary I guess, but they fry/boil/steam the hell out of everything so I guess I'm not too worried. I have been having problems ordering because there is no pictures on the menu, but last night was aided by a group of chinese tourists (who spoke no english) insisting I sit with them and eat from the 10+ dishes they had already ordered. "Eddy" acted out the animal specific to each dish - duck, cow, clam and pork. After, we grabbed a couple beers at a local hangout blaring chinese karaoke and then took a slew of pictures down by the riverside. I tried to pay for stuff, but they wouldn't have it and just yelled at me in Chinese - so 'yeah!', free dinner and beer! Along the food line, they make this great sweet ginger treat which starts out as a large sticky wad hanging from a hook on the street. They tease out strings of it, dry it, cut it up and bag it. I'm on my fourth bag. There are also shishkabob (sp?) vendors who fry up various veggies/meats - I particularily enjoyed the octupus and mushrooms, but a little too salty at times. And most memorable would be the flattened and dried pig faces - I didn't taste this one though - a picture sufficed.

Fenghuang is a great place to wander around - mostly windy, stone cobbled streets and lots of vendors. The chinese tourists seem to really want to take pictures with me in their pictures. Not sure, if I am the town freak or not, but it's entertaining. However, this can be painful after awhile as whithin every group, every individual has a camera and seems to be very worried about 'digital storage security' and hence each individual takes 2 or 3 pics of the same thing.

Ok, I could blabber on about Fenghuang a little more, but you get the idea. But, getting back into the country side has been rewarding. There is no smog, rooms have dropped from the $15-20 range to the $3-5 range and the pace is a little bit slower.