Now China

I've made it to China and I am so glad to be here. I wasn't 5 miles from the border before I stopped to buy a cantaloupe and a watermelon. It's been so long since I've had fresh fruit. I've been eating in restaurants a lot more too. To order I wave both my arms in a gesture that says "Bring me everything". It has worked well so far.

I made my way to Hohhot, the capital of Inner Mongolia, with plans of taking a much needed day of rest. As I descended through the mountains to the edge of town a man on a mountain bike stopped me to ask what I was doing. He is an English teacher at the local school so we were actually able to have a conversation. This began 3 days of pampering. He and his biking friends took me to breakfast right then. After eating he biked with me to a good hotel. Then his wife came to meet us and they took me on a tour around town. I took a few hours to clean up and then they came back to take me out for live music and drinks. The first song sang when I got to the bar was County Roads by John Denver. The next evening I was taken out for a large dinner with a group of friends. It was a huge hotpot meal which I would not have been able to figure out without their help. The best part is that he biked with me for a day and a half as I left town. Taking me out for dinner and breakfast along the way. I stopped to get a new shirt and he refused to let me pay for it. My shirt had recently passed being useful in any way except to trigger people to tell me to get a new shirt. Just unending kindness. It was so very wonderful.

From Hohhot I made my way east to the Yungang Grottoes. Here there are 40000 carvings of the Buddha in over 40 caves along a cliff face. The largest Buddha sculpture in the world is there. I stood at the base of it and looked up it's nose. Some of the sculptures date back over 1500 years. Many are deteriorated but many are still in very good condition, due in part to restoration and maintenance. Also on the grounds in the middle of a lake was a beautiful Buddhist temple. The whole scene was really incredible.

In the next big city of Shenmu I was again abducted by kindness. Having just biked out of town a car stopped and a guy my age invited me to eat. He drove just down the road and ordered me two servings of noodles and chicken. He didn't eat but only talked to me through a translator on his phone. I was invited back to town where I met his friends and a very kind bike shop owner. They bought me a hotel room next to the bike shop and upgraded my brakes, refusing to take money for either. That night at the bike shop about a dozen people came to drink and grill. The next morning two joined me to ride a few miles out of town.

I shaved my beard. It was not convenient for slurping up noodles, and I plan on slurping a lot of noodles while in China.