We went back around 11pm from our Qinghai Tour. The next day, Sunday, I had decided to go on the Bingling temple tour with an early start at 7am again. On the way to the temple, we first stopped in a rural area to visit a farmer's house. The guide explained that the houses have high walls around the central court because people don't like stranger to go inside which kind of made us feel uncomfortable as we actually went inside. Even though the guide said it was alright, I'm not too sure about the feeling of the local population who were still looking at us as if we were intruders.
We visited one house's garden and the guide explained that the woman had build something to help with pregnancy. At first we thought it was some sort of clinic but apparently it was to help herself give birth alone. This was a very strange story. People were asking the guide a lot of question but he mostly laugh as if the answers were obvious which they weren't. The woman arrived later with a little boy. In this area of China, if your first child is a girl, you can have a second one. Sons are very important to work in the farm as more and more young people leave the country side to go to the city. One thing that stroke me when I was there was that all babies' head, boys and girls, are shaved. I asked a friend later why and she said that it's because the hair you are born with are not beautiful, that if you shave your hair will grow thicker and darker and also because it is difficult to give shampoo to babies. It's very different that in the west. The second thing is that Chinese babies don't wear dippers, they just have a hole in their trousers, which didn't seem so hygienic to me.
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