Shijiazhuang Day Two

Remember that insane Christmas Display in our hotel lobby?  There is totally more where that came from:

That work of art is a giant automatic revolving door with two rotating Christmas trees inside.

Before I continue a gratuitous picture of Andy being cute:

Awwwwwww.

We all piled into the car and drove out into the country.  We had absolutely no idea where we were going.  Every time we asked Louis he just said "Place of History, I tell you later."  So we drove for over an hour past abandoned factories with sheep farmers living in them, sheep farmer villages, sheep, corn huts to feed the sheep, and some mountains with sheep on them. There were a lot of sheep.

We then pulled into a parking lot, where lots of people selling trinkets swarmed the van because large van=tourists.  We escaped the mosh pit and went into an office where Louis bought tickets.  Then we piled into the van again, went uphill again and got out.  We walked through a gate and were greeted by lots of little huts like this:

Lois decided to tell us where the hell we were now.  This place was apparently the commune where Chairman Mao and his Communist buddies hung out while they were plotting to take over.  I was told that the graffiti in the picture above reads "Chairman Mao Lives!"  We were then shuffled into a room in a hut like this one where there was an actor playing Chairman Mao, and you could get your picture taken with him.  Oh, China.

We walked a bit farther and outside a hut there was a rack of clothing.  The purpose of this was so people could dress up as Communist rebels and get there pictures taken.  Oh, China.   Louis and Angela were excited about it and Andy was dressed up.

Yep, they even gave him a fake period accurate gun.   Which he liked way too much.  I took a picture of the final printed picture Angela received:

Apparently Chairman Mao liked tigerskin table cloths.

After the photo extravaganza, Louis took us to this tunnel. Which was apparently the bunker/escape path if the old government discovered Chairman Mao's hiding spot.  It was well appreciated by all as it was very cold up on that mountain and the tunnel blocked all the wind.

And an artsy shot of Liv in the tunnel:

After this we went to an indoor museum about Mao's takeover.  Which was pretty awkward and uncomfortable, not only because of the subject matter but also because there was no English translation for anything.  Also at one point there was a scale model of the compound that Andy tried to climb into, which was no good.

A lot of people in Shijiazhuang tend to stare at us due to our whiteness.  We did not see another single Westerner during our entire stay so we must be a pretty rare sight.

These dudes are staring and laughing.  They are probably thinking "Haha, stupid Americans visiting the Communism museum."

Then the adventure was over and we drove back to the city.  Louis promised that he would take me out to eat street food so that was exactly what we did.   Above is a normal side street in Shijiazhuang.

There are tons of vendors like this guy on almost every street.  We ate salty bread, sweet bread, eggplant on a stick, tofu, a chicken sandwich type thing, and these sweet fried dough goo balls.  It was all very tasty and I totally didn't get food poisoning.  Go me.

I enjoyed our time in Shijiazhuang and am actually a little sad to leave it.  It is a lot less hectic and busy than Beijing and had a really comfortable not huge city feeling to it.