I will be staying overnight in Hongcun before heading up Huangshan (Yellow Mountain) tomorrow!

Besides being a World Heritage site, some very recognizable spots in Honcun were shown in the movie “Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon.”

In fact, the exterior of my hotel here can be seen about 2/3 the way into the movie.

The town is really cute, although many of it’s alleys are now filled with gift shops, and Hocun is filled (at least during the day) with hordes of tourists (I guess I am one of them!)

Yet it’s beauty is such that when I walked around South Lake, I encountered easily 100 young art students with easels painting scenes of the lake, the arched bridge, and/or aquatic plants with huge leaves that grow near one shore.

An online “Tourist Map” showed a mere handful of streets/alleys.

Well, I have only been here a few hours and have gotten lost a bunch of times!

A more complete map was posted in town.

Just a few quick snapshots for now:

Most Americans know nothing of China. Living in a fog of misconceptions they imagine an Asian “Gulag” peopled by mindless robots, living in poverty. They see images of North Korea, and visualize China as it’s twin.

I was quite surprised by the reality of China, from my first visit in 2015. Surprised by its people, and surprised by its prosperity. There are some aspects of China that are far more modern than America.

Although in some ways China is at a stage of industrialization characterized by “growth at any cost”, there is a clear sense of concern about pollution.

This is not the place to go into great detail about life in China. But since it is night time here I want to mention the garish light displays that awaken after the sun goes down. Modern high-rise building become colorful canvases for messaging or just artistic light shows. Businesses lure customers with bright lights.

All of this comes at a cost. Light-pollution is itself a disruption to the tranquility of the night. And all those lights require electricity. Generating electricity almost always involved pollution of one sort or another.

Some subway systems here project bright messaging or advertisements on the walls of the underground tunnels so they can be seen by passengers.

Jinan is the “Spring City”- Here “spring” is not the name of a season… but rather rather the meaning of “spring” referring to water coming up from the ground. (This recognizes Jinan as a town with an abundance of water that springs up from beneath the ground.)

My hotel is a short walk from a number of popular springs, which tend to be wrapped in extended gardens and park areas.

I visited the “Five Dragon Pond” site, and “Baotu Spring”.

Enclosing the old part of Jinan is a somewhat rectangular, spring-fed canal. One tourist brochure uses the word “moat” to describe it.

Next, I visited a neighborhood that includes a large Confucian temple complex and a series of old residential alleys that have been mostly converted to shops. To get there, I rode in a tiny three wheeled contraption (In America we call these “tuk-tuks”, using their Thai name). This bone-jarring ride involved careening from street to street in a vehicle that seemed to ignore all traffic flow rules.