Cigarette Smoke and Attitude and Beauty

Wow..we found a little hotel that we can post from! We are in Pingyao - a really cool old town - the most typical old Chinese town in China. It is surrounded by a huge wall and is remaining from the Qing/Ming dynasty. I can't begin to tell you how impressive this place is - our favourite so far. The train ride was worth commenting on for sure. We could not get 2 soft sleepers so once we were on the train, we went to my soft sleeper and tried to communicate that we needed 2. Luckily for us the dude in the bunk below us "Jack" had been to Windsor and spoke some cursory English and helped us to get another bunk. Train travel is kind of iffy here, the small stations won't sell you soft sleepers even if they are empty and we get on the train and find out that there are some and then have to negotiate for them. It's not a free market economy by any stretch. Once on the train, we went to the dining car to play cards and one very enthusiastic buddy wanted to learn poker so we played with him for a while. Then the car filled with people and we wanted to get some food but they booted us out of the car - we still don't know why??? The train officials have some wicked attitude here - one of the guys with the smart hats on actually slammed the door in my face - haven't figured that one out yet. As the night wore on - it was an 8 hour trip, the car filled up with cigarette smoke and it was really gross. We were happy to exit the train needless to say. We got picked up by 2 guys in a tiny car and had to cram ourselves in with guitar and packs and all. The room was kind of grotty but when we walked about yesterday we found this funky place called Harmony House where I am emailing from now. We will stay here 2 more days cause it's tranquil and we need to stop moving for a couple of days and chill out. The food here is quite good - the beef rocks. Ivan played guitar for a guy in Datong and he gave us a gift of a nice box from Mongolia with chopsticks, Chinese CDs and some horn thingys - probably from Yaks or something. The first paying Busk! I am going to try and post some pix today as it seems that the connection here is not quite as restricted. Yay.