We left Peter Hall this morning at 8:00 to take the hour long trip to Zheng-Zhou in order to hop the bullet train to Xi-an, home of the Terra cotta warriors, and a bunch of other stuff as well, as I understand. We got there early, enjoyed a leisurely breakfast at McDonald's and then strolled through an attached building that manifested itself to be a 3-story underwear mall, with lots of tiny shops and hallways in it. So we bought Herself a nice pair of really heavy duty long underwear. They had men's underwear, as well, and I couldn't help notice that the men have some pretty flashy options available to them, more so than your average Walmart or Target in the States, I think. It has been a while since I've had to buy my own skivies, though; maybe times have changed. I declined to purchase. It is really interesting what is readily available and what isn't. One would think that any type of electronic device would be easy to find, but not so. Certain things such as s-d memory cards are cheap and easy to find, but not so cameras, nor mp-3 players; iphones and other smart phones are still a really big deal here; they looked amazed when you pull one out. They all know what it is, though, they must just be really expensive here still. My friend Tim, who is a total Harley geek asked me to look for Harley jackets, and look as I may, I've never seen anything that remotely smacks of Harley. Guess the Chinese are smarter than Americans in some ways at least!
The bullet train was really nice! Very clean; it looks brand new. You have never had a smoother ride. As I understand it, it is because it doesn't actually ride on tracks. It is pulled along right above the tracks with electromagnetic field. There is more leg space than in airplanes, (wasted on me) but everything is obviously built for the Chinese, the seats are smaller and lower to the ground. I sometimes think myself like Jonathan Swift's Gulliver; either giant or midget, depending on what land I go to.
The train goes around 240 kph, or about 150 mph! It's still a little weird to be on something that goes that fast when its built by, well, never mind, maybe that's unkind. But the lights do go out in the train occasionally, and it sounds like the motor stops at about the same time, so I don't know what's up with that. I am loving getting to see all the "country-side" and the agriculture. I'm amazed all over again at the amount of work it had to have taken to have terresed the whole of the country. The terrain is really quite hilly, even mountainous, but still is farmed. In the states, nobody would bother farming it, at least what I've seen is so poor looking, it seems like you couldn't make it worth it to farm it, much less, work it by hand, and terress it, and irritate it by moving hoses, around by hand, too. I've decided that most of what I've seem on this train ride was farmed by hand, there hasn't been any way a tractor could even get to most of it, and a good deal of it a little tractor wouldn't even be able to turn around in. I also see little caves that I can only imagine people live in. I don't know why else they would carve out those caves in the face of the cliff...
The bullet train was really nice! Very clean; it looks brand new. You have never had a smoother ride. As I understand it, it is because it doesn't actually ride on tracks. It is pulled along right above the tracks with electromagnetic field. There is more leg space than in airplanes, (wasted on me) but everything is obviously built for the Chinese, the seats are smaller and lower to the ground. I sometimes think myself like Jonathan Swift's Gulliver; either giant or midget, depending on what land I go to.
The train goes around 240 kph, or about 150 mph! It's still a little weird to be on something that goes that fast when its built by, well, never mind, maybe that's unkind. But the lights do go out in the train occasionally, and it sounds like the motor stops at about the same time, so I don't know what's up with that. I am loving getting to see all the "country-side" and the agriculture. I'm amazed all over again at the amount of work it had to have taken to have terresed the whole of the country. The terrain is really quite hilly, even mountainous, but still is farmed. In the states, nobody would bother farming it, at least what I've seen is so poor looking, it seems like you couldn't make it worth it to farm it, much less, work it by hand, and terress it, and irritate it by moving hoses, around by hand, too. I've decided that most of what I've seem on this train ride was farmed by hand, there hasn't been any way a tractor could even get to most of it, and a good deal of it a little tractor wouldn't even be able to turn around in. I also see little caves that I can only imagine people live in. I don't know why else they would carve out those caves in the face of the cliff...
At the underwear mall.
The Bullet train.
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