Nov 9 Excursion to San He-an (3 rivers)

San He town is an old village 40 km from Hefei. It has a history of more than 2500 years. Perhaps some of the buildings are original (some of the people looked old enough, too.)

The group hired a van, driver and guide. There were 5 of us and it cost (including lunch, tolls, food for driver and guide, entrance to two museums) $25.

From the left we are: Lois, Lucille, Maria, Deena & Shu Lin.

This town had old bridges:


Narrow lanes with the doors open so that we could look into people’s houses:


Great doorways:



And adorable baby boys. The preponderance of boys was about 8 to 1. It was very noticeable in the babies. Among school age children it looked more equal.

We saw a “modern” dentist’s office. Both the husband and wife are dentists and invited us in to take pictures.



Looks hygienic right!!

This was an unelectrified drill. She said that they didn’t use it now – but it was still sitting there in the same room.

Along the way there were shops selling sweets:

Fireworks:

And liquor.

We were just as interesting to the people of this town as they were to us. Although this was a tourist town, I don't think that they got many westerners. We seemed to be surrounded whenever we paused. The pedicab drivers were almost aggressive. A herd of them surrounded us at one point.

This was sort of a Potemkin village. Behind the really old buildings were newer apartments. It was hard to tell where the people really lived.

The museum on the oldest street had been owned by 2 brothers. One had a cloth shop, the other sold rice and grains. They conducted their businesses on the first floor and lived on the second.


The Japanese do plastic food – the Chinese do plastic people really well.

This was the study.

Do you recognize a ring toss “booth”?

Our guide ordered lunch at a local restaurant. She recommended it as being “very clean”. We had our own room (which seems to be typical). The best dishes were a shredded pumpkin stir-fry and a soup with balls that were made of leeks and meat.


As usual we had way too much food.

After lunch we visited the home of the grandparents of Yang, a Chinese Nobel laureate in physics. He had stayed with his grandparents in this village as a child and was sent here for safety during WW II. The house had many pictures of him and his family and a lot of writing in Chinese.



Our husbands knew who he was – and were very surprised to find out that he was from this area.

We passed on the boat ride. The streams were low, very smelly, and had some strange floating stuff.

On the way back out of town, we saw people making a quilt. The first preparing the batting, the second compressing it inside the cover.



Tonight Chuck and some of the other husbands have the council meeting, so several of us just ate in the hotel dining room.

I went to sleep before he got home. It was a very long day for him.