national day golden week

this week is one of china's 'golden weeks'- a time when you get 7 consecutive days off of work. although traveling during this time is supposed to be nuts, i did not really want to sit in dalian for a week and decided to see what was up. so far, it really hasn't been that bad, although i still have not made it to huang shan (yellow mountain) yet, the prime destination here. i will be going there bright and early tomorrow morning. the chinese have a saying for too many people- 'ren shan, ren hai' which translates to 'people mountain, people sea'. i hope huang shan will not be like that tomorrow, but in general i think it's a pretty good description, haha.

here is the difference between early morning and afternoon in tunxi, the city where i am staying. afternoon = claustrophobia, early morning = old man on his bike



you can see the sign for my hostel in the background of this picture. i have to say, i think this might be the best hostel i have ever stayed at. the staff are extremely helpful, it's clean, there are well organized tours for anything you would want to do here, and it's like 5 steps away from the city center. since i booked pretty randomly, i was really surprised..