Day 361- Rock Solid Fun

Holy Crap! Time exists before 6am?!! After having finally decided (it's much harder to get 4 people to agree to a plan than 2) to catch the early train to start our journey to a stone village, we were all up and at the train station before 6.30am this morning. The train rolled along providing us with a taster of things to come, and finally dropped us off at Jingxing, an hour and half away. Here were dined on good old Chinese street snack food, before getting on a local bus and bumping our way along the road towards Yujiacun - a stone village were most of the people share Yu as a surname.

This clan village has been around for hundreds of years, and really is full of stone: stone paths, stone buildings, stone beds .. you get the idea!! We somehow received a free personal guide for the first half hour, who had a pocket full of keys to let us into some of the most famous and interesting structures of the village. After showing us a good place to return to for lunch, we set off and began adlibing our own way around town!

The next few hours were rock solid enjoyment (!), and we zig-zagged our way through tight alleyways of polished stone, chatting with the locals on the way (including a 67 year old rock mason who was still chipping away), climbing hills to get views over the village, and observing a laid back way of life in this peaceful village.
After a lunch of local veges and meat at a villager's home, we stood on the side of the road to catch our bus back to Jingxing - it's always good fun waving down buses, especially when they stop for you and are going to where you want to go! Eventually we hopped from bus to bus to bus with the 3rd one dropping us a minute's walk from our hostel.

Back in town we checked our emails to find out that the Brad the Legendary Mountain Man of Jinan had managed to pull a miracle for the adlibing crew and get us 4 tickets for tomorrow night to Huangshan City, the next destination on the tour with Mumbles and Pops. Last night was a bit stressful, after going to the train station and finding that the next few days were completely booked out from here - this has never happened to us in our year of travelling in China. So thank goodness for Brad for saving us from several days of slowly making our way south by bus.

We're about to chill out, knock back a few local beers, and eventually drag our tired bodies out for a meal to match last night's - hopefully!

Adlibing a friendly stone village.

Traveller's Note: We found it really hard to find info about staying overnight in Yujiacun, even though it is recommended by the Lonely Planet. As it turns out it would have been so easy, and really lovely, as there are plenty of local homes offered as accommodation - they provide beds with bedding - and good priced food is easy to come by. The ticket office people will also be able to help you find somewhere to stay if need be. Even though we didn't stay overnight ourselves, we'd recommend it to others, as the village was great and the villagers wonderful.