We were woken early by our first thunderstorm of the trip this morning and the heavy rain made us nervous to be spending the day out on the road. Out by 8h30 and nothing was open in the village so we skipped breakfast and flagged down the first mini-bus heading in the direction of Sanjiang. He dropped us on a main street in this awful town and with a vague hand gesture pointed us towards the bus station. We walked around for 20minutes – no bus station ! The few shopkeepers we polled could not understand what we were asking so V drew a bus and found the name of our destination in the LP – the ladies at a cell phone shop understood and pointed us in the right direction.

Shortly after arriving at the bus station Raffaele and Simonetta walked into the dingy terminal – good to have some travel companions again. Turns out that Simonetta teaches Nutrition in Florence and Raffaele is a Physics Professor in Bologna – a truly fascinating and entertaining couple. I could not resist getting Raffaele to tell me all about what he is working on. I did a lot of head nodding but it sounds amazing. OLED screens that are dirt cheap, super thin and flexible but his passion is material modeling. I guess that is coming up with new materials for electronics and other applications using complicated maths.

The road conditions were the worst we have seen yet. The bus bumped and ground its way along a large river and through mountain passes for a hour or so before we were ushered off the bus. The road ahead was impassable so we needed to walk 500m on muddy paths and across a rickety bridge to a bus waiting on the other side. Our new bus and driver had even less respect for Newton’s laws. A buttock tightening ride led us up, over and down treacherous mountain passes finally grinding to a halt at Zhaoxing terminal (an arb spot on the ‘main’ and only road through the village). We were happy to be once again in control of our direction and speed ! On the way we had seen new tunnels and massive bridges under construction – the rivers of concrete flowing as fast as water once again.

Zhaoxing is a bit of a dive. Not very charming and in a state of flux between new concrete, rebuilt drum towers (from the 80’s) and traditional cloth production. We watched a performance (singing and dancing) at the drum tower next to our hotel that had been prepared for a bunch of bussed-in domestic tourists. We were chased away by their guide who was asking for £5 to watch it – a bit cheeky in a public area we thought. We took a slow stroll around the village and up to the school/viewpoint.

The villagers seem to be almost completely involved in the production of dyed cloth. They extract a solution from plants which turns deep indigo after it oxidizes. Fabric is then dyed, dried and pounded with a mallet until it is shiny (ends up looking a bit like silk but not quite). No matter where you are in the village you can hear mallets endlessly drumming cloth on top of stone tablets – there has got to be an easier way. The ladies dresses are all pleated in a similar way. The fabric is carefully folded in ~10mm pleats, bound to a board and hammered. It’s a noisy place and not much escapes the dye – the hands of most are stained and even the dogs have the odd patch.

With not much else to do we had an early drink and a terrible dinner at one of the only restaurants offering WiFi before heading to our hotel. The included fan was not working so I repaired it with a piece of string and a bit of force but at least the beds were comfortable – the softest we have had in weeks. We’ll definitely be leaving in the morning – if only we can find out when the buses leave, and we won’t be alone, the Italians will be with us for at least another day.

[Pictures: V’s brilliant pictograms, One of Zhaoxing’s rebuilt drum towers, The view of the village from the school]

– Posted from my iPhone via Wifi