Portrait of an LBX

Jour 40 (01/11/09)

Nankin(南京)-Liyang(溧阳)

Province du Jiangsu(江苏省)

-114km-

Nous nous levons sans trop nous presser ce matin: 9h. Nous avons tous les trois super bien dormis. Evan et Andy se sont même couchés plut tôt que moi, car la fameuse soirée halloween s’est avérée être un échec: ils n’ont parlé à presque personne.

Nous retournons à la boulangerie d’hier pour prendre un petit déjeuner spécial: sandwich-café. Lorsque nous en sortons, nous croisons un Ricain mormon avec son gosse sur les épaules, qui nous pose des questions sur notre voyage et essaie de nous traîner jusqu’à son église. D’après Evan, les mormons sont super balaises dans les langues étrangères, mais un peu fous et emmerdants dans leurs conversations, surtout lorsqu’ils ne cesse de répéter que la réincarnation de Jésus habite actuellement aux États-Unis. C’est dingue de voir comme des gens intelligents peuvent avoir des absences, des trous noirs, des moments de connerie intense, au point de pouvoir gober ça. D’un côté, ça m’énerve de voir des gens se pourrir la vie à cause de ça; mais de l’autre, je suis vraiment très admiratif envers ces magiciens de l’arnaque qui arrivent à convaincre leur assistance des conneries les plus ridicules. Là encore, Chirac a raison: « Plus c’est gros, et mieux ça passe! ».

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By Evan

Sorry for the massive delay in posting to all. We’ve been enjoying life / waiting out the rain in Shanghai for well past our anticipated rest time, but now we should be getting back on track. Back to the story, as of the last post, we had left the Nanjing Hopkins Center and the Halloween party for Liyang (溧阳) in the middle of Southern Jiangsu, where we found yet another cafe with wireless to update pictures and posts. At lunch on the day we got to Liyang, several of our friends sent us emails with pictures of the huge snowstorm in Beijing triggered by government weather rockets. That would never affect Southern China, right? When we woke up the following morning, the cold weather had indeed found its way south of the Yangtze, giving us a near-freezing ride through biting wind for the 40+ km to Yixing (宜兴). When we finally arrived in the city a little after noon, we stopped to ask directions in the first business that appealed to our sensibilities: a fireworks stand. The kindly patrons informed us that the clay pots for which the city is famous do not actually come from urban Yixing itself but from a little village 10+ km to the south called Dingshan (丁山). After buying 20 yuan of fireworks off of them (all work and no play makes PLBX a dull blog), we rolled south through the city and toward our destination. Yixing is actually geographically extremely well endowed, ringed by small mountains and with a smattering of little rivers cutting through the city. The architecture was refreshing compared to what we passed through in the North China Plain, especially the remains of older buildings. Of course, everything is relative, and it’s still a herculean stone’s throw from beautiful, but as Andy put it, at least we can imagine how it could evolve into something worthwhile. (more…)