Howie has a pal (named You Biao) who has a guitar store. He joined us for dinner, but he had to “eat and run” because he had two students coming for lessons.

Later Howie and I stopped over to hang out with You Biao for a bit. Nice guy

Besides music, we also talked about motorcycles. You Biao talked about a cross-Russia motorcycle trip he went on with a couple friends. The friends dropped off after a bit and You Biao was “last man standing”. Ultimately bad weather and roads made him also abandon the trip. But it was clearly amazing. I told him he needed to write a book of the adventure.

On that topic we discussed Che Guevara’s famous “Motorcycle Diaries” book and the movie that had been made from it.

You Biao had a couple motorcycles in his guitar shop, including his Moto Guzzi! (see photo!)

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(posting from the restaurant’s WeChat page)

Variations of this concept have been in about half the hotels. Very nice!

Buckwheat noodles. Howie had introduced these to me a couple years ago! Yummy!

This was a new restaurant that had just opened. The owner was excited to have a foreign guest!

In Sanmenxia

By the way, in spite of the cute green color, I think this high speed train is not electric. (the overwhelming majority of HS trains in China ARE electric)

Almost every hotel I stayed at in China on this trip was equipped with robots that are used to deliver things to rooms. The robots are frequently used by restaurant delivery couriers so that the hotel can avoid giving random people access to the guest area of the hotel. In this case it was a hotel employee who sent me some gifts. (Out of a combination of kindness, and to coax me to give a favorable review for the hotel online)