(what else did you expect to start my day?)
I think tomorrow I’m going to try and make it to one of the Yang’s Dumpling restaurants (they are all over China). We just saw this one during a moment when we sat down to relax for a few minutes. I’m stoked!
Today we got to ride on the fastest train in the WORLD!
It’s called a Maglev train, and it literally levitates and speeds through time via magnetic force (to put it simply). Because of there being no friction, it can reach very high speeds. You can read more about it here.
And that’s what 430km/h – 267mph – looks like, folks. What an absolute thrill it was! 🙂
We headed back with the intention of me attending a dumpling-making workshop through our hostel… it turned out they had cancelled it. 😦 But honestly I enjoyed the rest of the day all the same (down time is important for me and I needed it) and I know that sooner or later I’m gonna make some doggone dumplings.
We headed back to our hostel before it got dark and relaxed for the rest of the evening.
I am going to miss this SO MUCH. Delicious teas and juices for the equivalent of around a dollar (my favorite is the peach jasmine green tea in the carton). Nothing like anything you can find in the States. There’s a reason I love Asian markets back home… and there’s a reason I’m probably going to start spending too much money at them when I get home!
Naturally, this is what I had for dinner:
Soup dumplings. Handmade and incredible as always. Truly, deeply, honestly, I could eat dumplings every day for the rest of my life.
Sometimes I feel bad or guilty because I don’t spend much time going to major attractions or tourist must-sees; when someone asks me what I did with my free time alone, all I can really say is “oh I wandered around the city” and not necessarily name any specific thing I did or saw. But I’ve come to accept that it’s okay. Because travel isn’t something that belongs in a box. It fits everyone differently and everyone approaches it in their own way.
Today there was an older man on the subway with a sleeping young boy in his arms. The man eventually dozed off as well, and there they were, two humans out of the billions of others on the planet, in just a tiny moment in time, sharing a moment of simple peace. Me, simply standing there, in a crowded smelly subway, my hair tickling my face from the draft that enters the subway as it moves, soaking in the beauty of the human race and the little things that connect us all… those are the treasures that I get to keep as my own; the souvenirs that cannot be hung or worn or eaten. Those are the things you cannot find in any book or website. They are the things most intangible yet deeply valuable for me personally as a traveler. So if it ever seems like my photos only are covering a small portion of the day, it’s because they are; it’s because there are a lot of things I experienced that I simply cannot articulate or capture. But I am happy with that. And I encourage you to approach life in the same way in certain moments wherever you are. 🙂
barefoot mangoes 
That last paragraph is just perfect.
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