Dapeng

This weekend Vi and I went to Dapeng. It's a town in Shenzhen but you would never guess on the way there or once you arrived. It's an ancient town where they built a military fortress to fight against the Japanese Navy in 1394. It was also the site of the first battle of the Opium War. There, the Chinese Army defeated a British Navy fleet only using canons from land and only fishing boats because they did not have a navy yet. The old village area is still the same with the outlying areas being factories everywhere, typical China. The ancient village does have electricity and people still live there. It was really cool to walk around and see people in their everyday life (well, it was Saturday) and just being part of it for a short time. We saw all of the normal stuff: people doing laundry in the streams, people washing clothes in the streams, kids trying to catch animals, most people playing mahjong and older women making things with her hands sitting outside; it was all really interesting to see. Vi was disappointed because she was hoping for something more like Lijiang or Dali, like our trip from last year, but it was nowhere near as touristy.

We ended up staying the night across the street from the village which just happened to be a beach. We didn't know there was a beach there so we didn't bring our bathing suits. Plus, it's been crappy weather all week and it did slow up this weekend enough for us to have a good time in just a little rain. We hadn't gone anywhere for awhile and were really happy we decided to go dispite the weather.

I've already posted pictures and there's a video of the shipping yard that we saw on the way there but we've never had this view of the shipping yard before so I had to take a video. I don't know if it's big compared to others but it is HUGE.

We're planning another trip soon to Chengdu, Sichuan. They still have the quake zone that you can see. Chengdu is where the majority of the destruction from last year's earthquake happened and it's also the home of the panda reservation. It won't be next weekend since that's the 4th of July but the weekend after that we should be going up there, very exciting.