China Part 17: To the Village! (Don't skip leg day)

For breakfast, I had dim sum but, I was extremely hungry this day. I was literally starving because we were all late meeting up with "friends" again. The food was ok, but they turned off the AC because there was so little people at the huge establishment we were at. It didn't really matter, we were leaving soon anyways.

Apparently we were going to enter the village where grandma and her friends came from. We were going there to eat ... again. Seriously? It's really just old people talking and me just sitting there bored as hell. The way to get there was really far. Even the cab driver had no idea where the village was because it was too remote. When we reached the village, it was the beginning of a long trek. We had to trek up a mountain. Of course I could have waited for the host's car to pick us up, but I didn't want to get to their house so early when I have nothing to do. Since I have sturdy legs, why not trek up an entire mountain? Don't skip leg day.

 

 

It was a long walk just my mom, my grandma, and a Grandma Zhen. Grandma Zhen knew the way up even better than my grandma despite the fact that they practically grew up here. All the roads were simply dirt roads with rocks in them. Sometimes it was wet and muddy. Sometimes it was dry and sandy. We past a reservoir set up for breeding fish and Chinese soft shell turtle for consumption. There was also a huge area netted off for breeding ducks and geese. You can very easily see chickens on the road. They like to hide in the bushes under the trees to lay their eggs. When we reached the house we were suppose to gather at, I saw that this family owned 3 dogs. When we went to explore around the house, it was confirmed that they had 4 dogs. Two ran freely while the other two were on leashes as guard dogs. All of them were pretty friendly. They don't bark at strangers, but they like to sniff you. I stuck out my hand to let them approach me, but it backed away instead. I guess every dog has their own quirks. Watching the dogs were also my own source of entertainment.

The hosts of the house was some guy's nephew. He owned a lot of land in the village and he uses that land to farm. It's pretty impressive as he grows a variety of fruits and vegetables. His wife was an impressive cook. She prepared the entire meal for us by herself. Everything was homegrown and locally sourced. It was amazing. The food tasted like restaurant quality. There was just so much food that we had barely enough space for ourselves. Our menu that day was bitter melon stuffed with sticky rice, stir fried bok choy, stir fried asparagus in light sauce, stuffed tofu, sweet and sour pork (oh my god it tasted so good), chicken, braised pig feet, and pig offal soup. I left the place extremely full and walked down the mountain to ease the digestion. Believe it was such a great lunch. My pedometer for the day read over 10,000 steps.