I have finally begun the real undertaking of my Second Big Adventure: China! Of course, as it turns out, I have to pay 20 yuan an hour to use the Internet at my hotel here in Guilin so currently I’m just writing out my blog entries in Microsoft Word and saving my future self a lot of trouble. I’m going to be busy enough moving into a new residence hall (Adam Schall Residence at United College), meeting a new roommate (or roommates?), and starting classes. When I get back from China, I can say without a doubt that writing “make-up blogs” will NOT be at the top of my priority list. Still, thoughts are best when they’re fresh; here are some of mine:
You may ask, “How exactly did you get from Hong Kong all the way into Guangxi Province?” Well, my friends, this trip is all about the typical planes, trains, and automobiles…and buses…and boats…etc. etc. We took the MTR East Rail Line all the way from CUHK to Lo Wu, which is at the Hong Kong/Mainland China border. Because we’re super-special-awesome foreign exchange students who have Hong Kong Identity Cards, we’re actually allowed to enter the “Permanent Hong Kong Resident” line at Customs. True, that only makes things go marginally faster, but every little bit helps. We made it through without a hitch and in no time found ourselves in Shenzhen—a city just on the other side of the border which, I believe, is actually even bigger than Hong Kong…and it has a Wal-Mart.
Of course, we made it there around 3:00pm and our train wasn’t scheduled to leave until 5:51pm. I wasn’t hungry but it seems my classmates were practically starving. Stuck in Shenzhen with all that time on our hands, what’s a group of poor hungry American college students to do?
Easy solution: Go to McDonald’s. My first time in an American fast-food restaurant in a foreign country and I ordered nothing. I’m proud of myself though, looking at my fellows ravenously dunking tasteless fries into mostly milk with a little shake, I wasn’t tempted in the least. Here’s the evidence:
There was still a major problem, however, and that’s that nobody seemed to know whether or not food would be served on the train. Keeping my blood sugar in mind, I knew this could be potentially be a big problem. Thankfully, it was one that was easy to solve. We entered the Train Station and sat in Waiting Area 1, which was the area for our train. Here’s the sign:
I some friends to watch my bags and walked around the station. There were a lot of small stores where people could buy food—a bakery, a fruit & juice bar, and a small convenience store. Not knowing whether or not hot water would be available to me, I didn’t want to invest in anything that said “Just add boiling water!” Therefore, I ended up with lemongrass dried pork, dried sweet potato strips, and a fuji apple.
Finally the time came to get on the train. Like with any other form of public transportation in Asia, getting on the train was essentially a blood bath. Still, I made it on in one piece with my luggage. I quickly found my living space for the next 13 hours (Room 3—17 Bottom Bunk), and got settled in. Have a sneak peek at our luxurious living conditions:
Still, there are some things that pictures don’t get across. Example (1): our rooms were actually 2 rooms put together, meaning 6 people in a space smaller than your average American bathroom (2) there were no doors on said room(s), (3) the toilet was a literal hole in the floor which, if it got backed up, you flushed by dumping a bucket of water into it, (4) horrendous Chinese Opera music was blasting from speakers all over the train until well after most normal people would have gone to bed. Even though I spent practically the whole time reading, listening to music, or sleeping, it was an experience I’m glad to have. Check out the view:
Still, I did wake up at 5:30am this morning, wait in line at the public sink for half an hour to brush my teeth and wash my face, and then wait another hour to use the bathroom and change…which felt really gross after having gone too long without a shower. Even worse, it turns out 13 hour cross-country train rides in itty bitty bunks with mattresses that feel like ironing boards aren’t really sympathetic to nerve damage in the lower back. In fact, it took me a grand total of 15 minutes to get myself out of the bed and down to the public sink. My back was still stove up by the time we got off the train at around 7:30am. As we walked through the station, I took some pictures:
Finally we found our tour-guide, Emily…though she said we should just call her Lao Cai. She’s just 5-6 years older than us and very friendly. Her English is extremely good, but with us she first speaks Mandarin, translating if we look confused. We asked for it, though, quite literally, so all is well. She took us to our hotel, which is actually very nice—certainly much nicer than I expected. Here’s the view from the hotel room Nicole and I are sharing:
And here’s the room:
It was already 8:30am when we finished checking in and everyone was ridiculously hungry. Lao Cai walked us to a local place I don’t remember the name of, and we had the traditional Guilin breakfast specialty: Rice Noodles. I was so hungry and focused on devouring my delicious vittles that I forgot to take a picture. Sorry guys. If it’s any condolence, they looked pretty much like all the other noodles I’ve eaten. They were so good though! The breakfast noodles at CUHK don’t even come close. I got rice noodles in spicy soup with chili sauce, pickled green onions, peanuts, and beef (even though I ordered pork). Maybe this sounds strange for breakfast, but if rice noodles at 8:30am are wrong, I don’t want to be right. I ordered the “girl’s portion,” which was about 2/3 of the “boy’s portion” and proportionately priced. I also got the favorite drink around here: Soybean Milk. Different from Soy Milk as it is known in the States, Soybean Milk actually tastes more like mildly sweet liquid tofu—scrumptious! I really mean that, by the way.
Afterwards, we walked around a bit and, even though I still felt like a discarded crash-test dummy, I didn’t raise a complaint. Seriously, what good would it do? I would just end up sitting around in the hotel all day while other people did all the fun stuff I paid for and wanted to do too. No sir, I just kept my mouth shut and took a little pain-killer. On our walk we visited a local grocery store so anyone who wanted to could stock up on snacks, drinks, etc. I didn’t buy anything since I still had most of my snacks from the train. Here’s our mid-morning impression of Guilin (just for reference, it’s a town about the size of Florence, or maybe of Brunswick):
We visited a famous local attraction called the Sun and Moon Pagodas. Lao Cai explained a little about how Feng Shui played into the architecture. Here’s a little Feng Shui 101: male and female are represented by 2 opposite forces: Yin and Yang. If you can think of opposites, chances are one is “male” and one is “female.” It’s not ridiculous like it is in French where you have to distinguish everyday objects as male or female with no semblance of reasoning. Here’s some examples of the Feng Shui concept: light is male and darkness is female, earth is male and water is female, the sun is male and the moon is female. In order to maintain Feng Shui, male and female forces must balance. This creates order, harmony, and peace in the world. For this reason, the Sun Pagoda was built on the water (male with female) and the Moon Pagoda was built on land beside it (female with male). Here’s what they look like:
And also, some vendors were selling the local traditional costume so I took a picture for your viewing pleasure (Guangxi Province is famous for its large population of multiple minority groups—even our tour guide is ethnically Zhuang instead of Han like 95% of Chinese):
OK, back to the pagodas:
In this picture, the Moon Pagoda is on the left and the Sun Pagoda is on the right:
Once we finished viewing the pagodas, we headed back to the hotel. It was only 10:30am and we weren’t meeting for lunch until 12:30pm. With 2 hours of free time I decided to take my long-awaited and (I believe) well-earned shower. It felt so great—better than the showers at CUHK for sure. I’m getting really spoiled on this trip. The hot water felt wonderful on my back and eased the pinched nerve up a bit. When 12:30pm came around, we met in the lobby and ate at the hotel’s Chinese-style restaurant, Peach Blossom Restaurant. We had so much delicious food that the picture below shows only what my table couldn’t eat once we were horrendously overstuffed. My favorite was the Sweet & Sour Pork. I’ve had this dish a few times and I always love it, although the one for lunch today was by far the best. I really need to learn how to cook this one because it’s chock full of stuff I love: pork, pineapple, onions, bell peppers, and sweet & sour sauce…what’s not to love?
After lunch we began the real sightseeing. Along the way, Lao Cai even taught us some Guilin slang: it’s common to jokingly call your good friend gou rou, or “dog meat.” Imagine calling after someone yelling “Hey, you good-for-nothing piece of dog meat, wait up!” Yet another reason why I love China. First up on our sightseeing list was Elephant Trunk Hill:
You can probably guess from all the changes in scenery (and perhaps from the name “Elephant Trunk Hill”) that we were not-so-slowly ascending a humongous mountain via treacherous stair-case. Minas-Morgul much, folks? Aiya. About halfway up, we found this cool structure, which Lao Cai said dated back to the Ming Dynasty—about 700 years ago:
Finally we made it to the top, and there was definitely some kind of a view! Just look beyond the tacky tourist in the first picture and take a look at the scenery that made a small secluded city like Guilin famous:
Of course we also descended the giant mountain and found our way to a lovely view of where the hill got its name:
There’s 2 takes of the Elephant Trunk shot because, well, it was windy:
Some random guy was…fishing?...in the middle of the river…
What was very amusing was that the local Chinese kept wanting to pose in pictures with us. We’ve all been warned about this, but it was just flat-out funny…especially when Lao Cai suggested we charge 10 yuan per person. She expects we could probably make a pretty good profit in the small village we’re going to tomorrow. I still think it’s a strange but funny way to make 10 yuan.
Anyway, second on our list of places to see was Fubo Hill, which was historically a hideout for (you guessed it) General Fubo. We climbed another mountain in the grueling summer heat and humidity, sweating bullets and guzzling bottle after bottle of water. My back started taking its revenge on me. Like the rest of me, it doesn’t like being up at 5:30am after a bad night’s sleep and it certainly doesn’t like following that up with mountain climbing. I even “pulled a govie” and literally tripped up the last flight of stairs. Once again, though, the scenery was breath-taking:
There was, naturally, a little humor found along the way:
And then there’s this rock. It has a little bit of legend to it. Supposedly, General Fubo was testing a sword on it and cut clean through the bottom part where it connected with the ground. Supposedly it’s good luck for students to touch it since it should make them do well in their studies and succeed in the future. I think Clarke might’ve wanted to take it home with him:
I surprised her with this one, but I think this is actually a good picture of our tour-guide, Lao Cai:
More humor:
Finally, the view:
Last but not least on our itinerary was the Reed Flute Cave, which is a huge natural cave system rich in stalagmite and stalactite. It was opened to the public in 1962, made famous by a visit from former president Bill Clinton, and gets its name from the unique sound made from playing Chinese reed flutes within the caves.
After the day’s activities we were all starving once again to we went to a local restaurant for a dinner of rice noodles, winter melon soup, mapo tofu, tomato scrambled eggs, Beijing roast duck, and watermelon. Today was definitely a full day and tomorrow will be as well. I just hope that I can face tomorrow significantly more well-rested. Things should also be a little more relaxed because we’re starting it off with a 3 hour river cruise to the little farming village of Yangshuo.
Loved the post and the pictures!
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