I tried to express my gratitude to the Zhao family as best I could, also telling the English speakers to please convey the same message.   I’m always so impressed when a group of people treat strangers so nicely.   Very generous folks.

Because of the night before (the smoke, noise, and lack of sleep – again), I had an excruciating headache by lunchtime.   We hit a restaurant that had western food where I got some french fries; that helped a lot.   Michael and I then tried to get back to Yangsuo where we were to catch an overnight bus back to Shenzhen.   “Maybe I’ll finally get some reasonable sleep”, I thought.   The bus station was insanely packed though, the most crowded I’ve seen yet.   I took one look and said “Forget it”.   The 180 yuan deal we got for a taxi all the way to Yangsuo more than paid for itself.   I napped the whole way but woke up with a pain in the neck thanks to my head sagging for so long.

After strolling around the town some more, we caught our bus around 9pm and headed out around 10pm.   I did fall asleep in the tiny cramped quarters but work up around 4 feeling ill and nauseus.   What was worse was that this bus had no bathroom and there were no bathroom breaks.   Eep.   I started to get worried.   The auspices were not good for the remainder of my trip.   At least there was a small vent that I could put on my face.   I lay on my back, listened to my iPod, and simply tried to relax.   I made it fine.   But, I felt awful as we pulled into Shenzhen around 7am, ahead of schedule.   I did not care about cost at this point, I wasn’t about to take the subway or a bus or anything like that back to my apartment.   Of course, cost is not really an issue in China.   We found the first taxi and piled in.

Back at the apartment, I had a shower and finally felt clean.   I went to bed around 8am.   I slept until noon, ordered a pizza from Sandro (see “Caffe” below, ate, wrote my first blog post (“Ying zuo”), emailed a little, and took another nap around 4.   I slept until 9.   Got up and made a phone call to the US (Stantz), a few more emails, and went to bed around 11:30 and slept until 7:30.   17 hours.