Greatly great, with spices and everything. So today I took the train from Xi’an to Tianshui; a 6hours ride on the hard seats packed with people. But this may not sound as tiring as it really was. In front of me were 3 kids of about 4 years old with their indulgent father, and they did not stop one second fighting each other and jumping everywhere and yelling… and bring attention on me, to my great sadness. Indeed one of them suddenly observed that I had hairs on my legs and this was the excuse for the whole wagon to wonder about me, so here is what the discussion looked like:
- “where is he from?” (as they usually discuss my case between in front of me, but then they all turn to me at once to know the answer)
- France!
- Aaaaah!
“travelling alone???”
- yep!
- Aaaaaaah!
“strange hairs!”
- indeed
“aaaaah”

And then more aaaaaah and ooooooh and blabla for half an hour, and the above dialogue is about all I understood. Great.

But then a girl who wanted to improve her English came to me so we talked for some time a bit in English and a bit in Chinese, so that helped to pass the time.

And then I finally arrived at Tianshui, which is not a beautiful town as I expected. But it’s so nice! I can’t believe how nice everyone is! In the shops, restaurants, everywhere! So it was a pleasure to wander alone in the streets to find a place to eat still open. People still smile and laugh at me but it’s different, because as soon as you (me, in fact) talk to them they are really nice and helpful and joyful and etc… So I tried a sort of soup with noodles, tofu, seaweed and a sort of green salad/cabbage, the whole thing in a red super hot oily mix and served in a clay pot with the stuff still boiling (or frying, I don’t know which term applies best). Very nice!

And then I had an ice cream, and I bought a Chinese CD with very-Chinese music. And now I am tired of all these emotions (and still haven’t had time to recover from the train ride to Xi’an in which I slept little).

Ciao, 再见。Tomorrow I’ll go and see the Buddha stuff.