Day 18: Aliens in Heyuan
Trip Start
Apr 16, 2009
1
11
24
Trip End
May 31, 2009
Heyuan,
Guangdong,
China
Sunday, May 3, 2009
Eduardo, my host in Guangzhou, proposed to go to HeYuan due to the nice scenery around this city. Likewise, our expectation was to find a rather small town in the countryside. Not really ... Heyuan turned out to be a middle-sized city, like GZ with heavy traffic, this time also with maniac motorbike drivers. In GZ, motorbikes are not allowed for some years, due to pick-pocketing accidents that occurred. Been in HeYuan, we felt a bit like aliens in another world. People were actually gazing at us in a way they have never seen foreigners before, and in fact we believe this was the truth. The city itself did not reveal any sights during the day, thus we decided after a rather tough conversation in Chinese at our hotel there to take a taxi to a 26km distanced location called SuJiaWei, which is scenic spot, very touristic amongst Chinese people, and in fact quite nice and interesting to visit. As all the material we got was in Chinese characters, though simplified, I guess I need to do more research to know what was really going on there.
In the evening then, back in HeYuan, we then discovered the actual beauty of the city which claims to have the highest water fountain in Asia (yeah, true). At around 8pm, indeed, a nice spectacle started at the riverside with a fountain inside, having a nice choreography to some music. At the fountain indeed was a high one. Apart from that, the riverside was nicely enlightened, and at the main square and park, people did entertain themselves by dancing around. We had a couple of beers in that park, before we called it a day.
On our way back to Guangzhou on Sunday, we could not buy seat tickets as they were already sold on Friday. Instead, we had to stand, and this in fact is an experience in itself, considering how many other Chinese people do that, and how crowded the train was in total. Back home, I prepared for leaving GZ and taking the night train to Guilin, in Guangxi.
