Day 5: Tianshan to Jingpeng Zhen, Inner Mongolia

Distance: 260 km
Expenses: gas 25rmb, hotel 40rmb
Events:

• Arrived in Jingpeng via tunnel.
• D and T hiked in the surrounding mountains.
• D and T met a young boy and girl who hiked with them and, afterwards, invited them on a tour of the walled compound that was their home. D and T helped the children and their family load a truck with dynamite.
• While inside the TNT family's home, the young boy showed D and T his collection of VCDs, pointing to Terminator and indicating that it is his favorite film.
  

Day 4: (Unnamed City) to Tianshan, Inner Mongolia

Distance: 190 km (118 mi.)
Expenses: gas 45rmb, hotel 47rmb
Events:

• Found that our Pinyin (a system for transliterating Chinese) map was wrong and bought a new, laminated map of Inner Mongolia.
  
• Followed three teenage girls to an Internet bar.
• Took a late afternoon hike up Tianshan, the mountain for which the town was named.
• Met and ate dinner with an English student recently graduated from a university in Hohhot (Huhehaote). She told us that Tianshan was famous for having the oldest tree in the world nearby, but the tree had been moved somewhere else.