Silk and Pagodas

Today we visited Hunan University. It is 1000 years old, we toured some of the campus. Olivia is getting more used to us all the time. She sleeps through the night. Great for now but will put her upside down on Colorado time, that should be fun.















.
The symbol in this picture is the Chinese symbol for good luck, As the story goes if you put your back to the symbol, close your eyes, take three steps, turn around three times and reach for the spot where our hands are and you hit it you will have good luck. Either that or the tour guide was just screwing with us to see what he could get some silly foreigners to do.













.
We visited a state run silk factory, notice the banner.(dbl click to enlarge) These women are working near windows without any lights on and are producing woven silk pictures so fine that it looks like a photograph.




We had lunch at a famous restaurant on the river. I would post a picture of the river but you can barely see it through the awful smog. Visibility is not reported in miles here, it's reported in blocks. Today's visibility is 2-3 blocks.

Olivia and I are in front of a statue of Confucius. Confucius say "Man who have Hunan baby daughter and American daughter need to sell lots of insurance to afford them."



We did a little shopping. I thought I'd let Dawn try her hand at some haggling since we will be in Italy next year. I advised her to offer $100 Yuan for the items she chose (they were asking $325). She skillfully and aggressively haggled with them. It was a bitter back and forth. I think I saw a flying elbow and heard some cursing in both Chinese and English from Dawn (we have a Mandarin phrase book, Dawn studies only the swear words). At one point with the manager in a headlock and the cashier in tears she was able to get them to relent to accepting a low low........$300 Yuan. That's right! She saved us a whopping $3.11 US. It turned out to be an expensive lesson on my part. We'll practice later on some less expensive items.

.
Tonight we will go to dinner at the largest restaurant in all of Asia.











.
Baby Molly