Day 28

Once again today it was raining. It rained all morning so we stayed inside for the morning. This gave me more opportunity to talk to Geoff and Lee. It is fun to spend time with them. Geoff has so many interesting stories. Lee explains a lot of Chinese history also about the common life in China. It was cooler this afternoon and I was actually able to see the sky. It was blue for the first time since I have been in Beijing. The air quality is still very bad. Many people who have lived there for their whole life have a lot of respiratory problems. Tonight I am flying to Lanzhou. It is in the “west” part of China. They call it the west when in reality, it is in the middle geographically but since the far west is all dessert, they don’t consider it worth much. In addition, there was an accident on the high-speed train. One of them was struck by lightning and lost power; another one hit it from the back. There are not very many reports about it as the government actually buried the train and evidence. Lee said once it is buried it is illegal to dig it up. It continues to blow my mind how the government takes care of things here yet. I have also been told stories of them just moving entire towns and cities because they want to build a power plant in the location. In addition, to deal with high iron level in the top soil that they can’t grow crops. They wanted to move all of the people out of the area and level off an entire mountain “renew” the top soil.  

My flight was once again delayed so I flew out at 11 pm. I had a window seat for the first time so I was able to look out the window. It was interesting how there were not lights consistently like in the states but a lot of pitch dark instead. After I landed at 1 am, I had an hour taxi ride to the hotel. I have never seen anyone get so upset about something. As soon as I walked out of the airport, I was mobbed by drivers. I honestly thought they were going to get in a fistfight over it! However, I was just happy to make it to my hotel on time. I am going to admit it is the lowest quality one yet.