Wilkens Wanderings: A Sunday Adventure

On Sunday we went on a tour with a local tour company. The tour included a family hike up a mountain outside of the special economic zone of Shenzhen. We hiked up this overgrown rock path to a deserted village. The village was deserted in the 70's when Shenzhen opened up many factories and people went to live in the city to work. This entire village just up and left! They left in a hurry, too. There were baskets and pottery, dishes, even shoes left everywhere. We saw their school, temple, several homes. It was very interesting. Unfortunately, we had a torrential downpour while we were there! We were caught out hiking when it started raining really hard. As you can see from the pictures, Nicholas loved it! It was a warm rain, so we were ok. Just soaked.
Ironically, after we were done sliding back down the mountain path, which had become virtually a little river, the rain stopped and the sun came out. We changed out of our wet clothing into our swimming suits and went to a beach! The beach we went to is called "White Horse Beach" because brides come there to take their picture with a white horse and then also several other posed shots on the beach. While we were there we saw many couples getting their pictures taken. At one point I counted 8 brides lined up in the various photo spots. There are a lot of people in China, hence a lot of weddings! It is common to see couples getting their pictures taken whenever we go sight-seeing.
The boys had fun playing in the water, but it was actually quite a dirty beach. There was lots of trash strewn around. Don't come to China for the beaches. You will be disappointed. We did find some nice shells, though.