Changsha with Nate

So a couple of days after getting back from Hangzhou, on the 16th I headed out to Changsha in Hunan province with another FT, we will call him Fordy. The weather finally turned for the better, unlike Hangzhou, so it was a nice trip. We got sleeper train tickets for the short 5 hour train ride so it was nice and confortable, and quickly found a reasonably priced hotel (120 kuai/night) by the train station which was really clean. A student of mine whose family lives in Changsha met us on the second day and showed us some sights of Changsha. We couldn't climb the Ye Lu mountain since my ankle was still swollen from the twist in Hangzhou, but we went to the walking-shopping street, a cool snack food restaurant, the Lie Shi Gong Yuan-an awesome park with cool traditional buildings (many of these pictures are taken there), and the Yan Jiang Feng Guang Dai-the area along the river which has been recently renovated with various traditional style architecture around the walkways and chill out areas. One of the cool things about Changsha is that many older people hang out outside doing things like water calligraphy, playing various musical instruments and singing Changsha opera (not as famous as Beijing Opera but a bit easier on the ears for some). Check out the 3 videos of all three of these things. Other than that we went to a cool bar appropriately called Cool 9. After getting a bottle, a group of somewhat older people invited us to join their table and we partied with them for the rest of the night (and on their nickel). On the last night we finally found some foreigners by locating Houligans Pub, and within 10 minutes they had our laptop computer card problems fixed.