Because we are all keen on roughing it rather than stopping at posh hotels, Green sorted out a lovely homestay place where we could camp in the yard and use their toilet, shower, wifi and cooking facilities for £8 a night. It was a “Happy House” where bureaucrats were sent to the countryside during the Mao Zedong years to learn how tough it is to be a peasant. I could have done that quite happily in our “Happy House” with its huge mural of Chairman Mao. Beautiful environment, surrounded by gardens with medicinal herbs, comparatively clean toilet, nice sitting-out area, available food (we had lovely bowls of noodles with vegetables), free wifi, and we were able to sleep in our vans.all for £8 a night.
We drove all day, initially through some heavily-cultivated hilly countryside of the Hua moslem people where a great many villages merged into each other. Each village had its own mosque, some of which were comparatively recent with tall slender Arab-type minarets while others were Chinese-style, generally much older. They had hollow minarets with five or six wide balconies with turned-up ends. Very attractive. The following landscape had terraces all the way up to the tops of the hills.
