Day 3 (Nov 7 Tuesday): Huang Shan, Tunxi, & Wuzhen:

From Huang Shan to Tunxi its about an hour drive. Peter and I at the back of the coach talked about everything, and it turned out that we're both ardent fans of Louis Cha and know almost all his novels by heart. And Ben utilised the sleeping couch arrangement so ingeniously set up by Peter. And three of us took turn to snore!

Before we started our hour long tour of famed old street of Tunxi, some of us (mainly the wives) busily sampled various delicacies of the street hawkers including baked yam etc. Most of us did buy quite a few boxes (average five each in order to get the best discount) from a confectionery shop, "Emperor's Choice". Reportedly it was patronized by Qianlong emperor (1711 - 1799) during one of his several visits to the south. Most of us purchased the black or whte sesame candy. Both Justin and I patronized a street artist who turned our names into doggerel verses and inscribed them by Chinese brush onto Chinese paper fan. Justin got two, one for himself and one for his son. He has only to pay RMB30 each since for his name the artist has to come up with three letter version only. In my case its RMB50 for the longer or 'four letter' (nothing profane) version.