Spiders and Trust Issues

I am approximately halfway done with my 800 character essay about China's unprecedented and unthinkable change over ther past 30 years in the areas of clothing, food, housing, and transportation, and I feel like now is a good time to switch my brain back to English for a few minutes and update. It is Sunday night here, and unfortunately the Sunday night dread and the impending doom of Monday morning also exists in China...however, I am really in no position to complain because our Chinese roommates had to go to classes on Saturday and Sunday because in China when you have a holiday that gets you out of school you must make that time up on the weekend. I am appalled by this, but all of our roommates seem pretty resigned to it, that's just the way it is here.
This past week was unbearably hot until about Friday. I spent way too much time inside air conditioned classrooms and in my air conditioned dorm room beacuse it felt like walking into an oven every time I walked outside. Knowing the word for air conditioning in Chinese has become fundamental for survival. But this weekend the weather has finally reached that lovely cool autumn feel, when you are still able to wear shorts but the sun feels nice shining on your face.
On Saturday I went with a few American friends to a mountain called Moganshan that is about an hour outside of the city. It was beautiful, and a great adventure of a day, but it was also a pretty weird place. Everything felt like it had been built in the past 5 years, the architecture resembled a European village, and it had the feel of being pretty abandoned, or atleast underused. It was beautiful, but in a very landscaped way.
One of my most memorable moments was at lunch when the waitress offered to go outside and slaughter a chicken for us. Another was when the man who drove us up the mountain magically appeared in the "woods" near us (leading us to wonder if he had been stalking us all day) and was very concerned because there was no way that we could make it back to the place that he had dropped us off (leading us to wonder what the problem was if he was right here and we were also right here). After a confusing conversation in Chinese it was established that his car was at the top of the hill (a 5 minute walk away) and that we would meet him there in half an hour. Overall it was lovely to be out of the city and the view from the top of the mountain was breathtaking. There were also a lot of huge spiders. (see below)

The one thing that I struggled with during the day was trust. When traveling it is all about maintaining a good balance between being suspicious of every person that might rip you off because you are a foreigner and don't tend to know any better, and figuring out who seems like a trustworthy person whose intentions don't go beyond earning a decent living. My friends were all making fun of me because the vehicle that we agreed to get into to take us to the top of the mountain was somewhat questionable, to which I responded, "I trust this guy with my life." But I really felt like that this guy was trustworthy, and as we were climbing into the back of his little box like three wheeled taxi I was trying to justify to myself why it was that I literally just trusted this guy with my life. Was it that he was nicely dressed? that he was smoking a cigarette which I have seen exchanged between men as a symbol of guanxi (interpersonal relations)? or was it that his explanation for how we were going to get to our destination was just whiny enough to sound genuine? I really think for me it comes down to feeling like I am not being lied to or taking advantage of. Speaking a moderate level of Chinese helps. Feeling like I am a relatively good judge of character also helps. But really when it comes down to, it is very hard to explain why my gut instincts tell me to trust some and run away from others.