I’m so elated that people can finally comment on this blog once again that now I want to backtrack a couple weeks to a weekend trip I made to the small city of Chenxi. Chenxi is home to two of my fellow American teachers in Hunan and the closest Americans to me that I know of. So naturally I had to take the hour long train ride and visit them. No doubt this will be one of many trips to Chenxi, so I will try and keep this post short.
Chenxi (晨溪) is a small city, which until this year had never hosted American teachers before. My friends are on the cutting edge of China exploration! Like Huaihua (really much more so) Chenxi is off the beaten path for foreigners in China. Unlike Huaihua getting there is a little tough since the train station is a good 30 minute drive from the city and the Chinese government has yet to build a solid expressway to the city (though as with all roads in China construction is underway).
It is a small polluted city in the middle of beautiful hills, valleys of rice and picturesque cliffs of white stone. An absolutely perfect place for wandering, which my two friends have become quite adept at. No sooner had I arrived before we were hiking down a country road through rice fields ripe for picking. My weekend in Chenxi was the first time this summer that I realized autumn was right around the corner. There was a certain musty death in the fields of Chenxi, as if I had arrived just past the peak of summer. There are really just two other things I want to mention:
