Now A Geezer: 6/9/1996

It rained all night. Michael says the rainy season has finally begun. YUCK. I love my new rain or shine jacket. It's worth more than the the little bit I paid for it.
No exercises for Michael and Xiao Jing today. Xiao Jing's friend from primary school and her orthopedic doctor husband is taking us to an archaeological dig. As we start up the mountainside in their Buick we take the highway. Traffic is heavy. Huge trucks and those funny vehicles that are jerry-rigged primitive engines becoming trucks behind. I can't figure out how the driver brakes these rigs. There are horses pulling carts, bicycles along the far right and some pedestrians.
I ask Michael, "What's up with these funny sheer sox men and women wear in China?" He says, "The Chinese believe they keep their bodies cool by exposing their calves. Did you also notice the men rolling their t-shirts and pant legs up? Same concept."
The road goes from smooth and well maintained to gravel and back again to smooth. We have a couple close calls with a bus and huge truck that leave me wondering about the guy's ability to drive. I make the mistake of glancing at the speedometer: 90k/hr. I pulled out my date book: 1 km=0.621mile=90x.621=55mph, right? Even if it isn't I feel better.
We turn off and drive through a village. He's forced to stop because of a funeral procession.. By the time Michael gives me my camera it's too late for a good pic. I'm aware of fire crackers going off (to keep the spirits away). The procession moves on. It all happened so fast that details were missed.
In the next village we stop at our hosts' relative's place and wait for the English teacher who is helping a researcher at the dig. This man is grandparent of the child who lives here. Xiao Jing tells me he married a peasant girl during his time working near the Cambodian border. They bring the child along to the dig.
We arrive there and are escorted into an exhibit hall of very neatly displayed stones that have imprints of fossils within. We examine them through fitted magnifying glasses. There is also a time-line. These fossils are from when the whole area was under water long before the first creatures began to live on land during the Sagacious Period 530 million years ago. Michael says this is even old for the Chinese to appreciate. We take pictures of a garden here.
As we head back for our lunch our cars are surrounded by a herd of goats. They are all around us! We try to take pics but they are really too close and the safety windows in the back of this car won't go down completely. We take a few anyway.
Lunch is at a restaurant fronted by the Lake of the Immortals, a huge lake that the Chinese government has declared pristine and forbids any development. The Chinese who live nearby fish these waters. Our fish dinner will be from here.
A woman approaches us selling corn from a shoulder pole. She carries it in a pan at the end of a shoulder pole and at the other end is a big metal tea pot. Xiao Jing buys corn and we pick the kernels off till we are called to eat. I break away from the others and dip my fingers into the warm water.
Previously the cook had led us to the fish tank to choose our fish. Then she scooped it from the shallow water. It escaped and she scooped again and tipped the net toward the floor, grabbed a hammer and as Xiao Jing cried, "Mother! She's going to hammer it!" I turned my head to see that it was dead. The fish was sliced into large chunks and made into a soup with leeks and lots of common mint. So good I had two bowls. Also rice cooked with crisped chunks of white potatoes. I enjoy a dish of early pumpkin chunks. "Like butter", says Michael. There was also whole fish crisp fried with salt.
As we left I noted in an ante room a group of men playing mahjong and smoking from a water pipe, an ancient thing from which they inhaled through a kind of stove pipe.

The garden at the dig.

A friend of our hosts, Michael, Fan Xing, Rui Yun & Xiao Jing at the Archaeological Exhibit Garden.

Note the hammer in the chef's hand.

A friend of Fan Xing, his son & wife. This friend had been sent to the south during the Cultural Revolution. He met his wife (a peasant ) during that time and brought her back to Xian with him after the Revolution. Many women were abandoned during that time.