South Through China - A Beast of a Blog - Part II

  Guilin, Guangxi Zhuang, China
Wednesday, October 15, 2008

OK... with that beast of a blog done and dusted, here comes his little brother :)

We arrived in Xi'An pretty early in the morning, feeling slightly tired... sleeping on a train that's stopping and starting isn't the best way to catch forty winks, but it definitely beats buses!!  We decided to grab something to eat and then head out to explore the town a little, did a bit of bargaining in the Muslim Quarter (which is supposed to be the cheapest part of town to go shopping) and then spent at least 2 hours looking for and failing to find an internet cafe... Giving directions is not a strong skill set amongst Chinese hostel workers... we asked three different employees, got three very different answers, all of which were incorrect... le sigh...

The first hangar of the Terracotta Warriors

The next day we went and did what Xi'An is famous for... we visited the Teracotta Warriors... This is a display of thousands of life-size teracotta warriers that were made 3000 years ago to guard the tomb of an emperor... They were lost and forgotten until the 1970's when farmers trying to dig a well found them...  there are so many of them and so many possibilities that they still haven't finished excavating the site... they have, however, tarmaced over a lot of it in order to build a carpark... here's hoping they checked first!  

Slightly newer warriors

The first stop on the bus was a factory that now makes hundreds of reproductions, from the very cheap to the not so cheap, as well as some really high-end laquered furniture... all really beautiful, and hence really expensive... After that we headed to the warriors... it was absolutely amazing... not quite what I had pictured though...  There are basically 4 gigantic hangars housing warriors with differing levels of in-tactness... (No, I know that's not a word... but it makes sense...)  The first is the best, with a walk way around the edge... you can't get very close to them, but you can have a pretty good look... It's amazing - not one single warrior has the same face... and originally they were all painted with really bright, elaborate colours, but that's worn off in pretty much every case...

We then visited the other hangars which housed more statues, and had some of the more unusual ones fenced off, as well as a very random museum of Chinese sport..!

Me and the beatboxer... hilarious...

Soon after that we were back at the hostel, and Tom and I decided to treat ourselves to a few drinks in the hostel bar... We met up with a newly wed couple, Stefano and Lauren, that we had met the night before and let the drinks start flowing... There was an offer in the bar too - sing a song with the local guitarist, get a free drink... I thought I'd just do one song for the hell of it... but that turned into two, which turned into me singing with no other accompaniment than a Chinese beat boxer... he stood up and did his thing, then looked at me and said, in possibly the most faux-hiphop tone I have EVER heard, "come 'ere, girl"... at which point I had to go up and sing to his (very out of time) beat...  Ah well... got the free beer!!  And there's a youtube vid out there somewhere for anyone that wants to see!!


The next day, funnily enough, Tom and I weren't feeling all too chipper... so, having got new directions to an Internet cafe WITH use of USB, we slowly made our way there to get some blogging done...  Even with our new amazing directions it took time to find, and actually I think we ended up in a completely different internet cafe, but still... Unfortunately for us, bot Flickr and Travelpod were blocked from this cafe... we thought it was the whole of China, as we found websites claiming that was the case... but when we got back to the hostel we found we could access them from there... gutted... The only thing is, you can't hog a hostel computer for two hours while your photos upload!  So that plan was also foiled...

The fountain show at Xi'An

However, in the evening we got a taxi with Stefano and Lauren to go and see the biggest fountain show in Asia... which doesn't sound like much, but they do love their fountains round here... and it was a great thing to watch...  lots of water flying in all directions, lit up in lots of different colours, to the sound of local opera... 

Me and Tom on the tandem

The next day we decided to get a bit more active, and along with Rich, (the guy we went out with in Beijing, who somehow ended up in our dorm room again... stalker boy!) Michael and his girlfriend (whose name I have forgotten... sorry!!) we got a some bikes and cycled the 30km around the perimeter of the city wall... which is in amazing condition, considering it's about 700 years old...   We didn't get a tandem bike, but we did have a go on one, which was obviously loads of fun... haha...
 
We finished up there and headed to the train station to go to Chengdu, which hit the news earlier in the year as it's very close to where the earthquake hit in May...  This train wasn't quite as good as the first... I was in a bit of a mardy when we got on and when I found my bed (which was not in the same section as Tom's) it looked like it had already been slept in... Being in the mood I was, I was absolutely furious, but that soon subsided when I took a deep breath and reminded myself that I'm in China, I'm very lucky, and actually compared to many modes of transport this train was very, very clean... After I got a hold of myself, all was well...!!

A giant panda at the sanctury in Chengdu

We didn't do much at all on our first day in Chengdu... In fact I think we just napped, got up in the late afternoon, ate and then went back to bed after some Chinese checkers...  But the next day we got on a bus and headed over to the world famous Panda Sanctury... Anyone who's been keeping up with these will know that generally me and zoos don't mix, but this place was fantastic... I only saw one panda who looked distressed... the others were happily lying around, eating bamboo and pretty much posing for the camera...!

A red panda at the sanctury in Chengdu

We got to see loads of giant pandas, a fair few babies in the nursery (who were too beautiful for words) and a load of red pandas too... most people don't know much about them - they kind of look like big, red raccoons... they are so beautiful and looked really playful :)
 
Unfortunately that marked the end of our trip to Chengdu... we went back to the hostel, picked up our bags and headed back to the train station... It's a shame because there are other things to see in Chengdu, like the giant standing Buddha - the tallest in the world, I'm told... but we had plans further south and decided to get going straight away...

The train was another long sleeper... I started seriously enjoying those train rides because I get so much reading and writing done... but that was the last long one in China and ended in Guilin...  Again, we didn't do much there - it was just a transit town - we were aiming for Yangshuo, and the next morning we got up and got a bus there...

As much as I love living in a city at home, for my travelling tastes, I am not really into big cities so much... there are exceptions - I loved Japan and have found some great stuff in China's cities too, but pulling up in Yangshuo felt like a breath of fresh air... it wasn't actually fresh... it was smoggy, much like the rest of China - although be warned - if you try and suggest to a Chinese person that the haize preventing you from seeing a mountain 200m away is smog, you will be bitterly corrected... because there is no smog in China... wink wink...  Anyway, the point is, dispite it being very touristy, I felt like I'd arrived in a town that I could really spend some time in... which is just as well because we had a few nights there...

The cormorants and fisherman

The first night we decided to watch some hawk fishing, also known as lantern fishing, as the fish are attracted to the bright light hanging from the front of the boat... it's a traditional method of fishing done on the Yulong river, where cormorants catch fish, but cannot swallow them because of a ring around their necks...  The fishermen then remove the fish and put the birds back in the water to fish some more.  At the end of their run for the evening, the birds get rewarded with a few fish, and the fishermen take home their catch... it sounds like it's not much fun for the cormorants, but the relationship defintely seems like a reciprocal one and both parties go away happy...  It was really amazing to watch - we sat in the dark on an old boat, riding alongside the fishing boat... and when they stopped on a bank you could hold the cormorant on your arm - which Tom did :)

My dumplings and my fried green beans... yum!

The next day we got up early and went to Cloud 9 restaurant on the main tourist street in Yanghsuo for a cookery lesson... it was me and Tom, an Israeli mother and son, Ross and Laura, a Scottish couple we met in our room, and a Canadian girl called Corrine.  We split into two groups - veggies and meat eaters, picked three dishes each that we wanted to cook, and then went to the local farmers' market... Its true what they say about Chinese people eating dog... we saw several skinned and hanging up... which was a shock to the system for me - I don't even like seeing chickens hanging up, so lassie strung up by her hind legs was not a welcome sight!

The chefs :)

Anyway... we got all our ingredients and headed back to the restaurant to start cooking... it was a really brilliant lesson - we learned how to chop like a pro with a meat cleaver, and I made braised egg plant (yummy), fried green beans (also yummy) and chive dumplings (SO yummy!)... and then we got to eat everything, so all in all, it was a pretty good morning!!

Me and Tom IN the mud caves - FAKE mud caves!

In the afternoon we got a bus out to check out the mud caves... we stripped down to our swimmers, were given non-slip flip-flops and a hard hat, and got on a small boat which took is into the cave... from there we walked through the cave checking out all the rock formations on the way - it was absolutely beautiful... then we got to the mud cave part, where we jumped in and covered each other with thick clumps of mud from the bottom of the pool - natural mud pools - very good for the skin... or so we thought... very unlike Tom and me, we didn't look into the mud caves much before we left... we just got directions, got a ticket and got a bus... Later that evening we found out that actually, the famous natural mud caves are down the road, and what we visited was just a cave... with imported mud... which isn't quite the same, is it??!?  Bloody ridiculous - I know China's famous for its fakes, but seriously... fake mud caves?!?  Ah well, you live and learn and we still had a fantastic day...

That evening we joined forces with an Aussie couple and Kiwi guy for a few drinks at the hostel, which inevitably turned into us hitting Yangshuo's bars... Unfortunately, the Aussie and Kiwi guy, having obviously reached their beer limit, started acting like complete morons... The Kiwi guy stole a bottle of some Chinese spirit from a shop, took one swig while sitting at a restaurant he wasn't going to order from, was promtly sick next to the table, and then got up and urinated in a planter feet away from his and other tables... (it was outside, but still...)  If that wasn't bad enough, when he decided he didn't want to drink any more of the spirit he'd stolen, he threw the bottle across a courtyard, so that it smashed across the path...  Me and Tom retreated to our room shortly after that, completely embarassed that the people working there might think we were with that lot... 

Anyway... the next day we did absolutely nothing... we had a nice rest, read trashy magazines and did the crossword together... it was all very middle aged and lovely... apart from the hangover... 
 

A hot air balloon getting ready for the off

The next day though, we got up super early and hopped on a hot air balloon to get a better view of the area... When we got to the starting point it was still pitch black, and we watched as they got the equipment out and inflated the balloons - it was really cool to watch... It got light pretty quickly, but unfortunately it wasn't the clearest day... that Chinese haize was certainly hanging around at 7am!  It was a fantastic thing to do though and a great way to see the Li and Yulong rivers... 

Tom taking our bamboo raft for a spin ;)

Later that day we got bikes and cycled up through some Yansghuo countryside to a point on the Yulong river where you can take a leisurely two-hour bamboo raft back towards the town.  It was so relaxing and so beautiful.  The countryside in the area is really unique - full of enormous dome shaped rocks - like lots of individual, very steep mountains... surrounding these are rice fields and crops with local people tending them with animals... It really was stunning and we're incredibly glad we decided to do it, because lots of other travellers had told us not to bother with the boat... but these were travellers that hadn't done it... ;)

The next day we returned to Guilin and got an overnight sleeper bus to Shenzhen -  that's right, sleeper BUS... that has got to be one of the worst night's sleep I've EVER had... I was rolling from side to side constantly - my bed was a top bunk in the middle of the bus... I woke up at one point to find that we seemed to be going through a field... or perhaps we took a shortcut through the woods... whatever it was, it was so bumpy I nearly rolled off my little bed...!  It was hilarious.. but I was pretty cranky byt the end... not least because I finished my book before I went to sleep... and then the 12 hour bus turned into an 18 hour bus... so I was pretty bored... haha...

Anyway... Shenzhen was just another stop on route - we then hopped on a train and soon found our way to Hong Kong...  but that's a story for another day and another blog :)

But first... a few observations about China in general that, if you're going to visit some time, you will want to hear... probably... possibly...

Be prepared, and watch out - MOST babies here don't wear nappies... they have open crotch outfits that, when they need to go, their mothers open up, wherever they happen to be... I have seen several innocent bystanders getting peed on... in fairness they didn't look too bothered, but still... this might be common practice around Asia, but I just wasn't expecting it in China and was honestly a bit shocked!!

Sticking with the toilet theme - most toilets are squat - not a problem... and I didn't even mind too much when I found a line of squat toilets with no wall between them, just all girls together, squatting together... but seriously, if there is a door, and there is a lock - why not use it??  I can't count the number of times I saw a green lock on a toilet door only to find a woman in there squatting and looking very angry that I was there... OK, I did learn eventually and start looking under the door, but that seems so wrong!  I was also on the other side of this - when I did actually lock the door, if I was more than 20 seconds, someone would be banging on the door trying to get in... you try balancing on a squat, holding your trouser legs up, clutching your toilet paper and grabbing for the door all at the same time... not easy!!

At first all this behavious struck me as very impatient and really got me riled... People don't queue, they just run in - every man for himself... I'm British, I queue... I can't help it!!  But as I have spent more and more time in China, it bothers me less and less... people bump me on the street and I don't give it a second thought... they jump the queue, I push a bit further ahead... I don't even flinch any more when someone on the street summons all the phlegm they can, from as deep down as they can, and spits it at my feet... Our first day in Beijing an old lady did this and I did flinch... Maybe I was too soft to start with, but at least I'm getting used to it... otherwide the rest of Asia may not be the amazing experience I'm hoping for :)

I hope you've got through that one OK chaps!!  That's me and that's China, and I'm spent :D  As always, more photos can be found here:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/discozo/sets