Couchsurfing with Xiao Liu

22.04.2015

We had a four day weekend because of my school's sports day on Thursday and Friday. So, I asked my couchsurfers Madelleine and Laura if I could follow them for a while. They were headed to Zhengding, a small suburb of Shijiazhuang, which has a larger number of pagodas and temples than most places do.

I took the bus on Thursday morning and headed to Shijiazhuang. It was completely empty, that's why I love the bus. About two hours into the bus ride though, we stopped at the entrance of the highway and had to get off. I thought it had broken down (again), so I took pictures thinking it was funny. It was not funny when we had to change buses. The new but had a lot of people already on it and it also smelled like farts. I sat next to a dirty old man who was quite possibly the source of the smell, however, it was all encompassing, so there was no way to detect the exact location of the fart epicentre.

Anyways, mostly I just dozed all the way to Shijiazhuang after I drank a beer on the frontier of Henan and Hebei provinces. Suddenly, I was awoken by the bus driver. He was about to throw me off. Where was the bus station? Oh, about 5 km south of this random place we're dropping you off at. Greeeaaaaat.

So, I called Xiao Liu, he was our host for the night. Earlier he had confirmed his friend wasn't going to stay with him anymore, so his extra bed was free and so was his floor. He only had one extra single bed. I had originally assumed he had a giant place like I do. Welcome to China, Louise, again. Not every has every luxury like you, OKAY?! Gawd. Later, Madelleine and Laura let me have the bed, since they already had sleeping bags. Thanks guyssssssss.

Liu told the taxi driver where to go, but it would be $20. I asked him to take me to any city bus stop, but that would be $3.50. Fine. He drove me about 1 km in the direction I was already going to walk by myself. I was mad so I gave him $1.50, slammed the door and caught the bus to town. Did I mention I hate taxis? Something like this happens every time I try to take one by myself.

I had the Chinese characters for the bus stop I needed, so it was no problem to get there. The only problem was that I was about two hours early for meeting Liu and my French friends were probably still eating lunch somewhere. I had my peanut butter sandwich in my bag, but that was it. After wandering around the intersection for an hour, Madelleine and Laura showed up. We bought Liu some sweets and I had a yogurtsicle.

At around 6:30, Liu met us and took us to his government built apartment via a series of twists and turns that I immediately forgot. So we all got to stay in communist housing! Amazing! After a minute, I thought about it, and realized my housing is probably also communist housing, on campus at a university established in the early 20th century. Right? Liu was new in town so he didn't know really where we should eat. We stopped at the first dumpling shop, ordered 40 vegetarian ones and talked about life and stuff, as you do... We went back, took showers and went to bed. I was grateful for my bed but I think Madelleine and Laura were alright on the floor, I hope.

We stopped for some reason