A few weeks ago, we had Golden Week and National Day. Now, in a previous post I had told you that we were going to have a stay-cation. Well, staycations get a little boring if you live in Huaqiao. So we packed up our backpacks (I got a new one!! Yippee!) and set out for a little ancient village called Xitang.

If you are not familiar with Xitang, PRC, let me assure you, I wasn’t either. Nicholas found this water city on the internet… Well, you should know, that this village is over 1000 years old. There are a hundred or so bridges in Xitang and lots of old buildings. Its very picturesque. Residents of Xitang grew so tired of the rain, that they built covered walkways from house to house (so the legend says). Honestly, I think its better for tourism if the tourists arent wet all the time. Because it rained, and rained, and rained. In fact, I brought one pair of shoes. And I had to throw them away because they were ruined from walking in inches of rain for 3 days.

The biggest thing that draws tourists to Xitang is not the natural beauty of the river, or even the traditional ancient architecture. Xitang is where Mission Impossible 3 was filmed. Tom Cruise, himself, walked along the streets of this city.

Other than that, the theme of our three day jaunt in the rain was: “Selfie On a Bridge”. Its true, Chinese tourists are much like their Japanese counterparts. Everyone has a selfie stick. And most everyone is more concerned with having the same picture taken of themselves on 100 different bridges than seeing the bridges at all. Its really quite comical. More than a few times Nicholas or I were asked to be in their photos. We do look just like Tom Cruise after all…. It was nice to be famous for a weekend.

A photoblog to follow. Too many photos for one post. Anyway, here is our selfie on a bridge.