2015 China

13 April, Beijing to Datong
Hanting Express Hotel 138CNY

The countryside through which our bus passed today was dry and stark, the road sometimes paralleled by low ragged mountains. Sheep nibbled listlessly at dry grasses, each small flock tended by a lone shepherd. Wind turbines dotted hills to the left; solar panels hills to the right. Fields were bare, awaiting sowing and rain. In deeply-eroded gulleys, naked trees stood with branches turned inwards against the wind. Occasionally a church, unexpectedly imposing, towered over a small brown village populated with small brown houses. We are in coal-mining country with long, long trains carrying coal toward Beijing. On the expressway, several yellow signboards advised: “Don’t try fatigue driving”.

This evening we felt the need for pizza. We asked our hotel receptionist if there was a pizza place in town and were told, via a Google-translate clone, that there was a “pizza buffet, walk 400m and turn left”. After a long fruitless search, we began to wonder if the young woman had misunderstood us or we her. We were hovering on a street corner when a passing man greeted us. We asked him about the pizza place, he asked his friend, the friend pointed us another 200m on, and there we were.

At one of our Beijing restaurants we had been bemused by the lengthy and varied menu, which included: Flavour donkey; Chicken mouth water; Sichuan spicy hairtail; Water burst belly; Wood shall be meat; Fried enema; The door burst three; Acid food fish; The old godmother twice-cooked pork. 

[Photos taken from bus.]