Escape from Zuitou (¼LÀY§ø)
We woke up early the next morning to the sound of goats bleating at the wooden yaodong door. Walking beyond that annoyance, we could hear the sounds of shovels slapping against terrace walls echo through the gullies. Then we saw them: a number of farmers were already out repairing collapsed terraces, and that was just a short drizzle in the off season...
Then we heard that even though the attempt was made shortly after the rain began, Liu still wasn't able to get the car all the way down and had parked half way. Doh.
Sure enough, the road was very slick along its steepest section, and they had seen too many accidents happen on that stretch to even try slowly edging the car down. Liu's father headed down first to try to shovel off the slick surface.
Once everyone had come out to help, the final solution was to pry clumps of dry loess from cliff sides and spread it across the road. It did make a dry path, but I'm not sure about fixing the road at the cost of accelerating erosion.
We left not too long after the sun rose above the mountaintops to the east.
