23-Mar-2005 -- 37 N – 118 E Shandong, China

Visit Date: March 22, 2005

This is the first of two points we visited in one afternoon. Three first time line hunters, our host for the Shandong visit joined us – Mr. Fu Yihua, Ms Lu Chixia, and Mr. Kong Fanzhen.

After a morning workshop and a big lunch in capital city- Jinan, we headed to our next destination – Dong Yin city in northern Shandong about 200 km away. This particular confluence point is located about 10 km off the expressway, nearly half way point of our journey to Dong Yin.

This central part of Shandong is very flat farmland, and densely populated with many roads. As a result, once we left the expressway, we were able to use the GPS to navigate to the CP. The approach was about 10 km, and we did make any wrong turn.

This particular CP located 220 meters from the edge of a large village named Neu Won, which is part of the Tian Zhong Township within Hen Ti County.

Given it is the end of winter before the spring, there were only some early winter wheat in the field. We were assured that in less than a month this place will look very different.

For this hunt, we drove 20 km extra. We left this CP at 3.40 pm and felt it was a bit too easy a hunt. Since we were not expected until 6 pm at Dong Yin city, we decided to do a longer detour to hunt for 37N 119E. We just might have enough time to do it.

Rating of this hunt:

Degree of Challenge: 1 – easy drive to the point (Scale: 1= very easy - drive to the point; to 5= a death march – glad it is over)

Scenery: 1– Winter scene of northern China farmland landscape (Scale: 1= not interesting at all; 5= take your breath away)

Culture-social factors: 2– typical farming community of northern China (Scale: 1=dull; 5= most stimulating)