Fenghua

This last week while Tina was enjoying the heat and humidity of Xiamen I traveled up to Fenghua for work. Exciting stuff I tell you....

But there were a few nice things about this trip, in addition to all of the work stuffs, one being that Fenghua is just south of Ningbo which itself is only about a two hour drive from Shanghai. That means that when I was there on Wednesday morning we were in the path of the total solar eclipse that all of China has been talking about for the last month or so.

Wednesday morning this was the view from my hotel at 07:00, kind of hazy but not too bad.
According to news reports lot of people had traveled to Shanghai in order to see the eclipse and were disappointed with heavy rains that totally blotted out the sun. All those people got to see was about 6 minutes of total darkness. Meanwhile down in Fenghua there was a little bit of blue sky and around quarter after nine the sky started to darken as if a big storm was coming in. I did what everyone warns you not to do and looked at the sun - it is blinding - but when you look away the burnt in image shows the crescent of the moon. Once the moon fully got in front of the sun it was a pretty cool sight, and not the total darkness that Shanghai was plunged into.
Can you see that little black spot in the sun? It's the moon. Yippee, a lot of workers and everyone stood outside for the time that the eclipse was full and firecrackers were going off in the distance. Once the sun started to peek back out everyone went back inside and off to work. Later that afternoon the skies got dark again, and then we were blessed with the huge rainstorms that had earlier hit Shanghai.

Fenghua is a small town, only about 500,000 people. You can wander around a little but there isn't really that much to see, there is a nice bridge over the river that winds through the town.
What Fenghua is known for, or what I'm told it is known for, is it's peaches. There was even a card in the hotel talking about the fact that they were in season, to be careful not to spill the juice on the carpet, and that drinking anything hot after eating a juicy peach can cause you tummy.
I brought home some peaches so that Tina and I could enjoy them. They are incredibly juicy and delicious, however most of them were bruised by the time that they made it all the way back to Xiamen. It was sad, albeit still a juicy sadness.....