I am in rural Chongqing, just a few kilometers from Guizhou, in one of the poorer areas of China. My day today went like this: A quick hike up a boardwalk into a deep valley with a stream running down the bottom (we are doing a national park plan), then sloshed back and forth in a bumpy bus on a bumpy mountain road for hours, occasionally stopping to look at stunningly lovely scenery, and to jack the bus out of a hole the front wheel had fallen into, then a banquet with government officials, a party secretary on one side and a vice district mayor on the other, with many toasts, then over to the local tourism office (at 8:00pm) to collect materials for our planning study. Back to the hotel at 11:00, very tired and missing home.

Well, it’s a brief snapshot of a rather atypical day, but there it is.