1. Pizza Hut is a fairly high-end restaurant in China, with a very nicely decorated interior and proud declarations that their pizzas are “interesting and exotica”.

2. Having a street name is sometimes not enough to get to your intended destination. After taking two different cabs, our group got separated, confused, and lost. It turns out there were two streets with the same exact name.

3. “Western-style” toilets [see above] are getting more and more common, although travelers to China should still be prepared to use the occasional stoop toilet in public facilities. Pictured above was our bathroom at the lovely Piao Home Inn, where the bathroom floor flooded every time someone took a shower because there was only an one-inch high division between the shower and the rest of the bathroom. After two weeks we decided to move to the XiJiao Hotel, which was not only more conveniently-located but also featured actual shower doors.