October Vacations

Vacations in China are always a bit confusing. A notice which says,"...you have a holiday on Monday and the class scheduled for normal Monday will be moved to Sunday. On Monday you will follow a normal Sunday schedule. If you have class on a normal Sunday, you will have class on Monday..." isn't always very clarifying. But somehow - I'm sure after much deliberation - they managed to give us 7 straight days of vacation this October for the National day here in China. [Even if some holidays were in fact working days]

Hmm, anyway, these holidays passed without much incident. It rained a couple of days which kept us in, but we did manage a trip to Jingzhou.
We [Anoop, Nizar and I] were all set to inaugurate our Yichang tourist cards, when we learned that apparently, the cards cannot be used during the holiday season. The card lets you visit 16 places of interest around Yichang for 100 yuan, much less than the entry fee each place requires. But as it was holiday season and we couldn't use them, we checked around to see where else we could go on a day trip and decided on Jingzhou.
Jingzhou is an ancient walled city, less than two hours from Yichang. They also have a museum there, the main attraction being the almost intact remains [intact remains? umm... a well preserved 2000 year old male corpse actually] of one Mr.Sui, purported to be the best preserved soft corpse in the world according to one tourism website. The jadeware, porcelain and silk collection from the Warring States period was also quite interesting.
It was a fun, photo-and-rain-filled trip and we once again got to see wonder in the eyes of the locals when they see foreigners. Something that doesn't happen in Yichang anymore. At least not to us.