This weekend.

I have confirmed it. I have this Thursday and Friday off, so it's time for a little traveling. Max and I have decided to go to the north of our province (Jiangxi 江西）to see Mt. Lushan (庐山) and the city of Jingdezhen (景德镇).

Mt. Lushan offers "mountain views and European villas." Nearly every student and staff member that I have met has told me to go see Mt. Lushan. It is definitely the pride of Jiangxi province. Max and I plan to take a short two hour train ride from Nanchang to Jiujiang (九江), which is the closest train stop to Mt. Lushan. We should arrive in Jiujiang around 9:15 AM on Thursday. From the train station in Jiujiang it is only 30 minutes by cab or bus to the entrance of Lushan national park. The rest of the day will be devoted to enjoying the views of Lushan and finding a place to stay at Lushan or in Jiujiang.

On Friday morning we will head over to Jingdezhen, which is famous for its porcelain pottery. If anyone has ever talked about their "china" in reference to dish ware, then they were referring to the work of Jingdezhen. At least that's where it should have come from it was legitimate. Jingdezhen is about 3 hours away from Lushan on bus. After talking to Janice, my older Australian downstairs neighbor, Jingdezhen sounds like quite an exciting spot. However all of the tourist information says that pottery is about all that there is to see in the coal burning city. We will find out this weekend.

If we do manage to find anything of interest, we will spend Friday night in Jingdezhen and then take the bus back to Nanchang. If Jingdezhen is a complete bust then we will probably return to Nanchang on Friday evening or just have a leisurely evening in Jingdezhen regardless.

By the way, the AC remote has been found--deep in the cavernous region of the couch cushions. Despite my two previous searches in this region the remote had eluded me.