Madness In The Middle Kingdom

In lieu of the hot sunny beaches of Thailand we have decided to make this winter vacation due to the Chinese New Year a family affair. Today we are heading up to Alice’s hometown of Jixi whose two characters when read separately are Chicken West. If you look at China on a map it does look like a chicken but unfortunately for Jixi it is misnamed because it is in the east (dong) rather than the west (xi). For those unaware (or unawares as they say in the Cariboo there) Jixi is a coal mining town but not a lot of mining has been taking place recently and I am not sure what sustains the economic development.

Leg #1 of the journey has us on the train from Dalian to Changchun (as mentioned in the Asian Winter Games posts) and then onto MuDanJiang. We get on the train at noon and arrive in MuDanJiang the next morning at 7 AM. Leg #2 is the train from MuDanJiang to Jixi which is about 3 hours in length. We are bringing a stroller, baby backpack carrier, skates, books and even a small washing machine .. yup .. you read it correctly .. a small washing machine. It should be quite an adventure.

If you like .. you can right click on the map below to save it and when really really bored you can see where Jixi is and where we will be for the next few weeks.

Cheers