The rest of the trip in a nutshell

So I haven't written anything for a long time, ever since I got back to Harbin. Sorry for the sudden stoppage. I just now finished up what I'd been writing before, so you can read about what happened at the yurt.

Time is short, new stuff happens every day, but I need to finish up the travel story just for the sake of finishing. Here's the short version.

After going to the yurt, I left for the next town over called Dongqi, east flag. I stayed for four days in order to see the pretty famous horse race that happens there once a year. The days leading up to the race were super relaxed. I ate something that didn't sit well once, and ended up staying in my room all the next day. I checked out a buddhist temple and hung out with the owner of my ludian, this one much better than the last crazy one. He was a national level wrestler for 8 years before going to school and becoming a vet, coming back to Dongqi, getting married and having a daughter. I spent quite a bit of time with him and I got along better with him than a lot of the other people I'd met.

We checked out a traveling performing group one night, the "Shao lin" something or other, they did little acrobatic stunts, contortionism, and other stuff that looked like it really hurt. One guy, the worst, took metal pins and pierced the skin on each of his forearms. Then he hung buckets of water from each of the pins, picked them up, and swung them around in circles.

I missed seeing the horse race because my ride never showed up - understandably, since it started at 4:00am. I showed up right afterward, and got to see the horses all lathered up. They were tiny horses, but awesome for endurance. The fastest one finished 100 kilometers in 3 hours 40 minutes. I'm no expert but that seems pretty fast to me. The mongolians had kids riding the horses to make them faster, and I have to say I was as impressed with that as with the horses themselves. The winning horse had a kid riding who looked about 1o years old, he was so small. I guess he was actually 14, but those are some tough kids.

After Dongqi I pretty much headed back to Harbin. I took a bus, stayed the night in Aershan, then from there a train to Daqing. Daqing is famous as the main oilfield in China, at one time providing 2/3 of China's oil. I guess a lot of it's gone now, but there are still a ton of those giant machines that look like teeter totters pumping oil all over the city, right in among the buildings sometimes. Most are bright yellow and definitely give the city its own unique feel.