Still Ping'An

Just a few more pics tonight, but no long stories.

This is the view down the "lane" that led to the hotel I stayed in. You can see the man at the end of the building carrying a bamboo pole over his shoulder- those baskets are empty but a few moments later he showed up again with them full of rocks. This was an all day sight with many men traversing down this lane to pick up rocks from another location, then bring them back down and dump them somehwere else. The baskets were not very large, but the rocks were. It certainly was no easy job.
Believe it or not there were actually 3 girls here. I'm quite sorry that the only part of the third girl you can see is the tiny top of her head over the little girls head. It was actually quite sweet- 3 little girls on their way back to school after lunch, and they all stopped and two of them were fixing the 3rd girls hair at the same time. I'm not sure how my skill is so great that I managed to hide the 3rd girl entirely, but I swear, there were 3!
I saw this woman every morning selling vegetables. She was very sweet and always had a smile for me. I appreciate that especially in China since it's not really as common to smile at people as it is in the US. When I smile to someone in China and I get a smile back, it's usually a very warm and real smile. It's nearly always a smile from their heart. In the US...well...sometimes it is, but sometimes they are just being polite! Of course the smile well have been because she thought she could get some money out of me. On the 3rd day when I finally asked if I could take her photo, she did hold out her hand for cash after...ah well...guess there is little that is free. I gave her a Yuan and went for breakfast.
I swear these are the chickens who woke me up at 5 am every morning I was in Ping'An. Maybe it was their cousins. At any rate, they were loud, and they were regular. Who needs alarm clocks when you have a hotel with thin walls and a bunch of loose chickens and roosters outside?
One of the many stone stairways in this village.It's a bit deceiving, but this man's bundle on either end of his bamboo pole is nearly the size of a haybale. The green blends a bit with the green in the background, but I certainly don't imagine these were light loads.
This is what I was whining about yesterday. The guys waiting at the bottom of the hill where the bus lets you off with sedan chairs. You'd think that lots of people took them, based on the sheer number of chairs there are, but in 3 days I didn't see a single chair with anyone actually in it. All empty. I suppose it only takes one chinese tour group of about 20 people to fill most of the chairs though...so maybe it's not such a stretch having so many there. I wonder how many days these porters go between carrying people? As in...I wonder how dependable their salaries are?