Hi all!
Well, our trip is coming to an end. We're in Shanghai for the next couple of days after which we head to Hong Kong and then home.

Since I last corresponded, we've made a three day river cruise down the Yangtze, through the three gorges; actually, through 2 1/2 gorges since constructon and maintenance on ship locks at the Three Gorges dam project prohibited river travel downstream through the lower part of the third gorge to Wuhan.

One of the highlights of the river cruise was a tour on traditional sampan-like wooden boats that a group of men called "trackers" pulled upstream, by hand, through rapids. The water in the Yangtze is muddy brown like the Mississippi but the water in these feeder streams where the trackers work is crystal clear and the canyon walls showed absolutely no sign of habitation. It was there where I experienced what I like to think of as the enigma that is China: we were in the middle of nowhere and men wearing little more than traditional hand-tied sandals were pulling our ancient wood boat with a hand woven, bamboo rope in a manner that hasn't changed since well before westerners arrived here...when we reached the upper most part of the tour and began to retrace our path, our captain pulled out a cell phone and called to make sure that no other boats were heading upstream. To me, that is China.

As far as Mercedes go, there aren't many MBZ diesels here and NO 123s. You do however see a lot of 126s and later model S600s. Yesterday, I spotted a stretch 140 called a Dynasty 1000...the M100 minivan is big here too.

Since we're traveling as individuals, we spend a lot of time touring in Chinese-built Hundai minivans called JAC. They're all diesels with 5-speed manual trannies. The one we had in Xi'an was turbocharged and intercooled but the driver insisted on shifting to the highest gear as soon a s possible. I don't think the poor thing ever saw the high side of 1800 RPM.

That's all for now,
RL

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Never a dull moment at Berry Hill Farm.