On Thursday, we slept in a little bit and split up for kayaking and rafting. Anita and I took a rickety old van with no shocks for a half-hour ride over bumpy dirt roads in the countryside until we got to the river. Anita and I each got our own kayak and started paddling down the Li river. The current was so strong that we hardly had to propel our boats. It was so peaceful and relaxing to be out on the water. The river was quiet and secluded - there were only two other kayakers and one Chinese man carrying our backpacks on his motor-raft. We could only hear the sounds of the birds and the breeze through the trees. I kept seeing interesting things on both banks of the river, so I would quickly zigzag across and stop to take pictures of ducks, fishing boats and water buffalo. After the two-and-a-half hour ride, we ended up in a tiny village and decided to explore. We wandered into a small courtyard where we stumbled upon a Chinese retirement community. It was like we had stepped into a completely different era - pictures of Mao hung in many buildings and the people seemed cut off from the outside world. One elderly lady invited us into her small one-room home for oranges and conversation. She lived in the small room with her two grandsons and shared bathroom, shower, and kitchen facilities with the rest of the community. Talking with her was interesting and thankfully Anita was there to translate. When I was talking with Anita in English, the elderly lady commented that my accent was interesting - that she could understand Anita when she spoke, but that she couldn't understand my dialect. Surprisingly she had never heard of God or the United States. Her son and daughter-in-law worked in the rice fields in the mountains far outside the city, so she rarely saw them. She provided us with such wonderful hospitality, even though she had so little herself.
In the evening, we met up with SuiKi and Anjali again for one last night of shopping on the busting tourist streets before retiring early in preparation for our crack-of-dawn flight back to Dalian. It was a completely relaxing and invigorating vacation!