Guilin
Trip Start
Oct 19, 2007
1
4
70
Trip End
Ongoing
Guilin,
Guangxi Zhuang,
China
Sunday, January 13, 2008
When our guide for a boat ride down the Li River made this claim, it was met with stunned silence by the Canadians (polite people from Winnipeg), ignored by the Russians (they were far too high on life to be much bothered by bizarre assertions by delusional tour guides wearing rose-coloured glasses), giggled at by Mum and I and snorted at in disgust by the Israelis, who muttered "This is clean?!" And fair enough. The air and water in Guilin were almost as bad as what we'd left behind in Wuhan (which, trust me, was quite the opposite of clean). But, as one woman commented later, the Chinese believe the karst hills of Guilin appear to greatest advantage when shrouded in mist, so I guess one could quite fairly say we saw the Li River in ideal conditions (if one were feeling extremely charitable). It was beautiful, but the "mist" made my nose itch.
The area is littered with caves. I was quite taken with one which had a sign warning not to "leap" off down a drop of about 12 meters. I guess some people had been too impatient in their rush to see the splendors of the cave to walk down the nearby ramp?! The Reed Flute cave actually looked quite cool (in a Las Vegas style technicolour neon sign meets gloopy stalagtite/mite whatsits kind of thing that it had happening), but I got a bit irritated by one Chinese girl who kept smirking and correcting the guide's English while rolling her eyes at her white boyfriend. Yes the guide made some mistakes, no her English wasn't perfect, but it was good enough to do her job. Sadly (and annoyingly for those who couldn't understand Chinese, like my Mum) but unsurprisingly the guide dropped the English commentary shortly after. I was ballistic. I can vouch that learning a foreign language so different from one's own is damn hard. English, with it's mire of messy rules and even messier, albeit chaotically endearing (or at least I like to think so anyway), exceptions would have to be one of the hardest, without having to speak it everyday in front of an apparently hostile audience. If I was her boyfriend I would have soundly thumped little miss "I think my English is frigging fantastic and feel an approval-seeking need to show off and let everybody see what a stinky stuck-up cow I am by picking on other people". No,actually I probably wouldn't have, but I would have had the decency to look extremely embarrassed for having such as snooty try-hard girlfriend. As it was, and this probably isn't to my credit, I had to bite my tongue hard to stop from yelling at her that unlike her, the guide probably hadn't had the benefit of sleeping with a foreigner to improve her English. Tracy is right, I was a much nicer person when I lived in Taiwan.
In fact, I don't know if it was the hawkers and the tourist prices I'd encountered traveling with Mum, 2 months of spitting and being knocked about on the street or the vile air quality that I had not expected to encounter in "clean Guilin" but the culture shock I'd been dreading hit shortly after our arrival. This might sound strange to some, but when I am in Wuhan I like China a lot. The people I work with and deal with in everyday life (you know like workmates, my students, food stall owners, the DVD guy...etc) are all really nice to me. The woman at the baozi place ignores people who try to cut in front of me. The women at one noodle place wave to me from across the road if they see me walk by. A dumpling guy ran out of his shop to dab at my hand with a tissue when he saw that the noodles I'd bought elsewhere were dripping oil all over me. People are nice. But as soon as I travel I feel a bit like I become fair game. People who have no relation to me think it is alright to treat me like shit, rip me off, say dodgy stuff about me assuming I don't understand and then point a camera in my face like I am a zoo animal.
Mum and I sat down over a couple of beers and had a good bitch about China and she was fairly caustic with her criticism too, but we both came to the same conclusion. This line of thinking was unproductive. She was going home and I was staying, so I'd better either get over it, or more on. I would still defend the place in the face of criticism by other travelers and teachers I met, but my mindset towards China at the time could at best be classified as a love-hate relationship. I think, more than a month later, it still is. Just less weighted towards the negative side of the scales than before. And, while culture shock was definitely present, even then I had a sneaking suspicion that China might well have been bearing the brunt of a shitty mood which was caused less by scams and dodgy dunnies than by the realization that within the space of a week my Mum, Leah and Petra were all going to leave China and that I would miss them an awful lot.
There are some things that stick in my mind about Guilin. The first is a nutty woman who came up while I was trying to buy a Xian style snack from a vendor and started yelling hello and various other things at me. I got sick of the spectacle she was creating (I am used to being stared at 24-7 but my face is enough of an attention grabber, without her very noisy and conspicuous contribution) while murdering my mother tongue by shouting nonsensical questions at me, so I cut her short and asked her very bluntly in Chinese what she wanted. Apparently this unnerved her and she went away. Peeved, I asked the girl at the stall if she knew the woman who had been yelling at me. She said no but that she comes about a lot to shout at foreigners and all the street vendors are of the opinion that she is plain batty. Looking back on it, I should be thankful because it led to a nice chat about loopiness. But I am still considering getting a t-shirt made up with a message on it like "Warning: feral foreigner, approach at own risk, bites when provoked. Said provocation includes but is not limited to cell phone cameras being shoved in her face (unless you would like it shoved up your nose in return), "laowai" being yelled repetitively in her vicinity, the sentence "I would like to practice my English with you." (good for you... cash or credit?), spitting within a 6 foot radius of her, any comments about said feral foreigner's butt.
When we were about to get on a boat to go down the Li River we were descended upon by what can only be described as a locust plague of hawkers. I thought it was hysterical, but I don't think the other travelers in our group were quite as taken with them. Oranges, postcards, books, hats, CDs and erhu players were all just about shoved up our noses simultaneously in the frenzy to be noticed and showered in RMB by the foreigners. I tried the trick we'd learnt in Cairo (ie, no matter what is offered just reply "I already have one") but Chinese hawkers are far more cluey and enterprising than their Egyptian counterparts and they suggested buying more for relatives and friends. One of the Canadians caved in and bought a book which made his friends snigger and ask how many copies of "Beautiful Guilin" he had now. Another Canadian ended up hiding behind me while I glided my way through the crowd with a great big grin on my face, pettily trying to mess with the minds of the hawkers, enjoying myself immensely. Sometimes I replied in Taiwanese and pretended not to understand English. When that got boring, I switched to Mandarin and told them I was allergic to whatever they were selling and would sue for damages if they took another step closer. When one lady told me her oranges were the best in the world and I would be a fool not to buy them all, I told her if that was true she should eat them herself instead of wasting them on a bunch of stinky foreigners, to take care and then jumped on the boat feeling extremely cheerful. I do believe those hawkers made my morning.
In a cafe one day I heard something that made me turn my head so fast I almost gave myself whiplash. Taiwanese accents. Unsure of how to check what my ears were telling me, I asked them if they were locals, the boss was evasive and said he was from the US and had lived there for 12 years. When I pressed him, he confessed he was from Taiwan. I was super happy to have stumbled across them. To tell the truth he seemed less than happy to have been spotted. I guess he had his reasons. It's funny. I miss my friends in Taiwan and I love the place, as the pang I felt when I heard that accent would attest. But I haven't really thought about it much and don't miss it much, in the same way that I don't pine for Australia. Maybe some things are always with me. Just like I carry my home around in my heart, I guess now I also carry my second home about with me too. I don't get homesick because they are too much a part of who I am to ever be left behind at passport control.
