It was a weird touring day. We were suppose to do an overnight trip to Chengde, the Summer Palace of the old emperors. Started out rainy from Beijing. After 210K and about 3 hours on a newly opened highway, we arrived. Along the way, the sky began to open up - pouring. Rain pools were forming on the highway. We said 3 accidents. Fender benders but the last one was the worst! It appeared to just happened not long ago. Parts littered on the road. The main cabin was intact but I couldn't see there were any injured people inside. The car instantly became very quiet. Iron-wife and two other friends wanted to call the police. The driver pressed on. The reasons: 1) dangerous to stop by the road side as it was raining heavy and we could have been rammed by oncoming traffic. This was very true. First thing of safety, ensure the rescuers are safe first. And 2) all our mobile phones are from Beijing and Shanghai. When we called 120 (equivalent of 911), the local police will refuse to pick-up. Go figure. So we kept going.
As we arrived at Chengde, the rain seemed to subsided a bit. Since the hotel was very busy with 5 big buses load of mainland tourists, we decided to eat lunch first. Found a very nice local restaurant. It's slogan was: "Our food is affordable and tasty". Judging from the parking lot (Full), either the food was really good or the Chinese just went for the cheap stuff. In China, a long queue in front of a restaurant does not = good food. It would be just dirt cheap. Oily? Who cares. Anyway, the pictures showed some of the dishes we ordered. Let's just say, we ordered too many dishes. Northern China = large portion.
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