china-p10

This was a temple-like structure right in the center of town. Old men squatted in circles at the center of which there was a pack of cards or a pair of dice. They played card games and placed bets with much vigor and excitement...
Other people just hung around, watching the crowds and the traffic.

Here are some pictures from a big city we spent one night in. We stayed in a fancy looking hotel, but rented the cheapest room, which turned out to be small and musty smelling. The loby, which looked fancy and pretentious, was filled with chinese business men who had had too much to drink and were obnoxiously loud.
This is also the town in which we saw a copy of KFC. Normally, Ed and I would not be caught dead in a fast food place, but this was China, and Ed had been sick with dysintery for weeks, so the idea of food which even vaguely reminded him of home made us cave in and eat there.

This is an old man who was just hanging around the temple above. When I took the previous picture, he looked at me and seemed curious. Ed and I really liked his face, so I asked (in sign language) if I could take his picture. He was shy, but seemed to say yes.
Ed was very impressed by the old man's hat. He said that this was the hat he had wanted all his life (something to do with Indiana Jones), so after I took the picture, we tried to find a way to ask the man to sell us his hat. In the end, we thought that he's probably had his hat for years and years, and that it really should stay with him, so we gave up trying to buy it.

This and the following pictures are taken at a famous cave in Yunnan province. It is called swallow cave because of the numerous swallows that make their nests in its dark corners.
You can see signs of different colors hanging on the ceiling of the cave. These signs are placed there by the men who climb the steep walls to collect swallow nests. These are much sought after as they are used to make 'swallow nest soup', a specialty of this region. The climbers have no protection at all, no ropes, no harnesses, as they climb the 100 ft walls to the ceiling...

These boats are used to take people in and out of the swallow cave. We actually walked into the cave with a chinese guide (which was mandatory although we couldn't understand anything she was saying). We took the boats to come out of the cave.
The river you see flowed in the cave and eventually rushed into a waterfall which we could hear but not see in the darkness. I liked to think (although it was scarry) what it would be like if there were no lights and no people in the cave, in complete darkness with only the sound of swallows and the waterfall.