from the hard sleeper

More great stuff from Sam and his travels over on his blog, so here's the now customary update link - this is Sam on Jinan and beyond.

And so is this:

"Three hours after I set off, I was dropped in the outskirts of the sleepy village. The whole place seemed deserted, and I drifted along the path between dry-stone walled gardens, and solid stone and mud houses. The ramshackle village wound its way through a steep- sided valley. The occasional duck or goat wandered across the path, and middled aged women with lined faces, bent over carrying huge bundles of firewood passed with mildly suspicious grins. I had somehow traveled back in China's feudal past - the crashing modernism of the cities a distant dream. The calm was disconcerting. I climbed to the peak of a small hill overlooking the village, and surveyed the mist shrouded vista from the balcony of a narrow temple, as giant dragonflies drifted lazily around me."