Portrait of an LBX

A teenager on a scooter passes in front of the Zhibi Tulou (植碧楼), the older and smaller of the two remaining tulou in Fujian's Luxi Town (芦溪镇). On our way out of town today we finally passed through one of the UNESCO World Heritage Tulou areas. While the concentration of the unique buildings was impressive, the Disneyland-like atmosphere of the area left us feeling extremely grateful for being able to see the tulou in their unrestored form in Luxi.

I'm not vigilant enough to be able to tell if this teen is Kazakh or Kyrgyz -- both seem to be prominent in the Lake Karakul region of Xinjiang in China's far northwest on the road to Pakistan. Regardless of their ethnic makeup, the locals at Lake Karakul are all extremely aggressive in trying to get money out of tourists, demanding money to look at the lake, camp in the area, stay in a yurt, and pretty much anything else you could possibly do. This particular young man was about to try to push a camel ride on us. The vibrant blue of Lake Karakul is in the background.

The universal language of flirting -- Kashgar Old Town, Xinjiang