Leaving taiyuan!

I had been in taiyuan for long enough and wanted to get out and see some scenery, I told the people from the bar that I was thinking about going to Beijing and they suggested an alternative, one of them was going home to a place in henan I had never heard of and said the scenery was beautiful and they would help me get there, so I accepted. We met at the bus station and got the bus to a town called linzhou in henan, but we would get off at a random place along the way! 

This bus ride was not bad, 5 hours, and we the scenery got more and more remote, and beautiful! We passed at a few power stations and I was reminded of what shanxi is famous for, coal! It gets A lot of its money from huge coal deposits and big coal mines.

We passed beautiful old villages and more and remote beautiful mountain passes and suddenly the bus stopped, this was our stop! We got off the bus and we were in the middle of nowhere! Not a car in sight but in this beautiful valley with a rickety bridge over a river and up the valley to a mountain. The scenery was beautiful, the river had a frozen waterfall tumbling into it, and the valley was bathed in afternoon sunlight, I stopped and took lots of pictures before heating over the bridge and up to the small cluster of hotels where I was to stay. The only problem was, when I arrived, they were all closed!

Luckily my new friend was still with me and she was surprised all the hotels were shut, but of course it was winter! There was nobody here so we walked back out to the road and waited for a car which my friend flagged down, I'm not sure if being with a foreigner helped but the first car we saw stopped and offered us a free lift to linzhou city, an hour away by car! 

Wen we got the he dropped us by the bus station and I went into the hotel my friend recommended to check in, as i walked in alas no foreigners allowed. They recommended a place in another city! My friend was so embarrassed at recommending a place that didn't accept foreigners I felt a bit guilty. We called around the local hotels but all said the same, but the driver of the car we had flagged down also lived in linzhou, and said if we had any problems to call him, so we did! 

He said no problem, drove back over and picked me up and took me to another hotel nearby where he had connections and booked me in using his ID card! Thank you kind man! 

I got settled and my friend headed home as her family lived in linzhou so we said parted ways, but it for long! She told her friend she was in town with a foreigner and he immediately offered to take us out for dinner, and then the man who gave me a lift also called asking me out for dinner! I had already accepted the first offer so went for dinner in a hot pot restaurant nearby. Afterwards I wanted nothing more than a shower and an early bed but the guy who gave me a ride called again asking me to go with him for a beer and since he gave me a ride, and then asked me for dinner but I refused, i felt it best to go, but I asked along my friend as a translator. 

The guy picked us both up and went to a nearby carpark and into a nightclub. This nightclub was just a medium sized warehouse, everything was dusty, with low lighting, a raised dance floor, and a stage with a basic dj set on. As we walked in all the guys were frisked for... Weapons I guess, but the girls left well alone, and inside the nightclub there was no heating, I soon saw why. The guy ordered a crate of beers for us and we had a few beers and every started dancing, I got on the dance floor and everyone was looking, and not because of my undoubtably amazing dancing skills, I think linzhou had no foreigners, and definitely none in this night club before. I knew my place a bit here and so got up and danced with guys who had invited me, being a token white face for them and being introduced to their friends, the translation was something along the lines of this was a traffic policemans party! Random! 

After some drinking and dancing the dance floor emptied and a few singers got up on stage, first a portly woman got up and starts singing and guys would get up on stage and cheers her and drink with her, so I did the polite thing and went too, much to everyone (including the singers) surprise. After her there was a guy and I drank with him on stage too at my hosts insistence. The host was pretty drunk by this point, and his friends were very drunk, but the beer was weak so I was ok! When the host tried to drag me n stage again to sing I decided to call it a night and made my long and painful excuses to leave, leaving the drunk and calling for me to come back, crazy Chinese! 

I walked the five minutes back to the hotel with another of the guys friends and all the way he insisted that if I ever went to his town I would call, and gave me his phone number several times every minutes for the whole walk home, demanding I write it down and in my phone, in case I lost it!

I made it back from my welcome to linzhou tired and very ready for bed!