Nov. 29-30 Beijing bound

At a later date I hope to update this and the following posts with more detailed route info for our trip from Xian to Beijing for you cyclists out there but since the blog is so behind right now I will stick to brief accounts of what we saw and experienced.

We met two Chinese touring cyclists along the way, which was very cool. Most of the area we passed through was very agricultural yet quite populated with one village following the other. One evening we got on a little side road and ended up in a tiny, quiet village where some of the residents curiously crowded around us. We showed them our translated message asking for permission to put our tent somewhere. Oddly enough we got several offers to put our bikes inside for the night while we were shown to several doorways to sleep in.
Usually getting the bikes inside is the big issue but here the bikes could go inside and we were to sleep in the door way. Since we did not want to be separated from our bikes we insisted that that wont work. They then indicated we can just put our tent beside the road in front of the house on the corner. We opted for that and everyone stood there in amazement as we set up our tent, inflated our thermarest mats and rolled out our down sleeping bags. They must have never seen anything like it. Then one of the ladies brought us hot water for our noodle packet and everyone stood around us in a semi circle watching us eat our noodles. They were clearly intrigued by the fact that we used forks to eat our noodles (because we had no chopsticks at the time).
A sweet neighbour lady brought us some soup, a bun and some salad to eat and again everyone watched every move we made while we consumed the delicious items. When we did not touch the salad right away people kept pointing to it and indicated to us that it was food and that we should eat it. Perhaps they thought we did not know what salad was. We must have seemed very odd to them but they were very kind and amused at us and did their best to communicate with us. It is really amazing how much can be said without actual verbal interaction because nobody spoke a word of English and we knew how to say "hot water", "hello", "thank you" and a few more random words.
Shortly after we had set up the tent, the man of the house we sat next to came home and immediately invited us in his house. So we took down the tent and followed him and his wife inside to our room along with all the neighbours. We were brought a bowl of hot water to wash our hands, face and feet and were shown which bed to sleep in. Every body came and hung out in the room with us while we washed up and relaxed a bit. They kept pointing to the bed and indicating that it was for us to sleep on as though they expected us to crawl under the blankets right then and there with half of the neighbourhood in the room. If they had not been so genuinely sweet, curious and obviously puzzled by us the situation could have been a big annoying but it was simply comical.