Today we get up very early (6:20 AM) and made the 1.5 hour drive to the Shanghai Hongqiao airport after having some sweet buns at a roadside stand. At the airport, Li’s liquids were inspected but mine passed through just fine without comment. There are beautiful girls everywhere! The plane flight was uneventful although I had to stick my bag in the back of the plane as it was one of those old MD-80 planes. We got to Changsha, took a taxi to the hotel near 51 street (wu yi, May Day). We had lunch and dinner, the first ones that were neither banquets nor fast food. There was rice and eggplant and corn and beef and chicken and it was good! After checking in to the hotel, we went to a Chinese national park and paid 10 RMB to be driven to the top of the mountain. Best value for the money decision made so far on this trip! We saw the outsides of a temple and a bird preserve with many peacocks, pheasants, and emus. An emu stole our cup of bird food out of Jia Ming’s hand. We walked around central Changsha at night and I was the only white guy so little kids either were scared of me or wanted to speak English. We are now planning whether to go to Guilin (where we hear there are floods) or somewhere else after Zhangjiajie and Fenghuang/Donghuong. A man selling drinks exclaimed at us his only words of English: “I love you!” That cracked us all up.