We arrived in Qingtian after a 24 hour train ride last night to be met by Mr Qiu at the station. As we were leaving all the motor bike taxi's started jabbering away to us, asking us if we wanted to go to school. We were surprised - the whole time we lived in Qingtian everytime we came back by train after being away just over night they would play a game and pretend they didn't know us. 2 months away and they know our names and where we used to want to go - too bad we weren't heading to school!!

Anyway we caught up with Mr Qiu and his wife Hu You Fen, Trev's little favourite Qiu Ling and the Wang's for lunch. Mr Wang aka Mr Full turned bright red from skulling beer and had to go home for a sleep but the rest of us headed up Shi Men Hill for a walk. We had never been up this hill and it was really interesting.

We passed some temples and many peasants picking chestnuts (Ban Li). Mr Qiu had just returned from his mother's farm and both he and Qiu Ling were experts at getting the nut out of the spikey outer layer. I recommend if we are to do it again we wear indoor cricket gloves, the splinters OUCH.

We just ambled up the hill and didn't realise how far we'd gone until suddenly we were over the hill and into a little stone village. It was beautiful. No noise, no motorbikes, just peasants doing their day to day activities.

One old woman was sorting rice. She had a wooden machine where you fed the rice in from the top, you then turned a handle to make the barrel spin and let the rice fall through. Any husk just flew out the side. I can only liken it to an oily water separator but different.

She was more amused that we wanted to help her with her work. I imagine if that's what she does day in day out she wouldn't have seen the fun in it that Trev and I had.

We continued to walk through the village and came to a natural spring called Dragon's mouth. The water was soooooo fresh and cool. As we'd been walking up the hill we'd seen people carrying bamboo poles with water bottles hanging off each end. Mr Qiu explained that they make the journey everyday to collect clean water for their families. It's about a 2 hour round trip. How I take for granted running water in our home, I will never complain I have to boil it before drinking again.

The afternoon was terrific catching up with friends and seeing a new part of Qingtian.