DuJiangYen

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As a birthday present for me, Matt and Laura took me and the other three children for an outing to DuJiangYan, a famous ancient engineering irrigation system that has been in use since prior to the fall of Rome. – we are talking pretty ancient now.  And not just me – actually the birthday gift was a little early as there are now only six shopping days left.

 We rode one subway, and two bullet trains, two hired cars, one taxi, one meinbao chu, (a hired car that is tiny, uncomfortable and named the bread loaf car because that it what it looks like) and one city bus.

 The bullet train interior seen below, went as fast as 196 km/hr, and was quite nice.

 The park like heritage site was being visited by many of our friends and neighbors – surprised with that I bet, and was very nice.  Julianna took the photo below

 And we randomly asked this Chinese guy to take our photo and in English “no-accent-American-sounding-English” he accepted our request and gave photo taking type instructions.  (never can tell who is around you in places like this—this being China)

The park was very harmonious (Chinese word of the day being explained to Julianna – if she remembers half the words she hears defined in a given conversation ….

 The park had two of these cable swinging bridges - note Laura's footwork -- that foot placement was because the bridge would swing quite a bit with sharp movements.  Note the hands on the sides of many of those on the bridge.  Lydia was with me and she just wanted off the bridge.  Together we walked fast with long steps -- she kept encouraging me to keep moving.

 It was a great time of being together.

 Julianna and I flexed our muscles after watching some Chinese guy do some pull-ups from a tree limb.  I tried some too.

 This little boy did some serious walking, and being carried by each of the “dults” on the “venture”  -apparently the initial “a” is now a challenge, but oh so precious.

 There were these two actors, below, posing as statutes and getting quite a reaction from Chinese who were standing a bit off and so me-- being sophisticated and knowing how these statute guys act, decide to show them how to play along.  Well the one who the joke was on was me as after the photo, I had to come up with 20 yuan.

The train station, like many public buildings is huge and has a vast courtyard approach.  You had best bring your walking legs with you should you come here.  This station is brand new as was much in the town as this was one of the many damaged in the 2008 earthquake.