Every now and then something interesting goes on outside my window. Today the sludge cleaners have arrived. Not sewage, just collected runoff water and mud, but still fairly stinky. The cleaners work in a 5 man team. One guy uses a pick axe to lift out the lid. Another brings over a sludge bucket. A third uses a long bamboo pole with with a sack on the end to scoop out the sludge. The sack has a ring on the bottom, and one guy uses a metal rod to lift the sack up and dump out the contents. Once a bucket is filled, two other guys mount it onto a truck. A fairly clean operation, unless the truck tipped over.

The best place to hangout outside when it's rainy and cold is a hot spring; that or a heated rock slab. A bunch of us did both this weekend in a little city called Wuyi, about 3 hrs drive south of Hangzhou. Like so many places in China, we worked our way through worn out looking streets and found a little oasis amongst all the mess. The hot spring resort had 20+ piping hot pools, each infused with different substances including chinese medicine, coffee, and wine. Afterwards we got massages, wrapped in towels laying on rock slabs that must have been heated with water pipes below. After a month of rain, today the warm sun finally returned. Our timing was perfect.