From Endless Landscapes...

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Life since my vacation has been crazy (as it usually is after relaxing for a week) but I’ve been working on this blog for 5 mins here and there and finished it at last!

After seven days and 354 pictures (and that was after I deleted everything but the best ones) I returned to Wuhan with a new love of China. Claire and I made the most of our trip, waking by 10am every morning and to collapsing on our pillows between 4 and 6am every morning. I was lucky enough to experience two polar opposite lifestyles of this country: the endless landscapes of the Guilin/Yangshuo area and the endless skyscrapers and crowds of Shanghai.

When I first met Claire on the plane to China, she talked about this place she had to visit called Guilin. I had never heard of it, but from what she told me, it sounded pretty cool. So that was our first destination for the week. Before we left, everyone was telling us “Guilin is not where you want to go, Yangshuo is. That’s where all the backpackers hang out” but we thought we’d wait and see. After about 10 minutes in the taxi driving through the city of Guilin, we both agreed, the city is not where we want to be. As soon as we checked into the hostel, we looked into traveling to Yangshuo and opted for the scenic boat ride.

That night we walked around Guilin, took a bicycle ride and shopped the markets. The next morning we loaded the boat and headed down river towards Yangshuo. A four hour boat ride, we were surrounded by water and trees and mountains and I felt years away from everything I knew of China, that is, until I looked at the people crammed into the boats in front of us. The scenery blew me away as I wished I had an iphone so I could google how the heck those mountains were made (don’t worry, I’m fully aware of my loser status). This is an area that China is very proud of, and you see landscape scenes like this all over art, pictures, even on one of their bills. I felt very fortunate to be a part of it.

Shortly after we left the dock, I see these men on these bamboo rafts. Thinking they were fishermen, I pondered what they were doing hanging onto the side of the ferries. Well I should have known better, living in Asia this long. They weren’t fishermen, they were salesmen haha. I thought maybe they’d sell some cool fruit or something, but nope, they were selling ornaments, ugly green ones. There were a lot of these guys, but I didn’t see them actually make a sale. Most of them just laughed and took their picture, myself included.

When we got off the boat, the whole place screamed tourist destination, as people are posing with their birds for money, or selling random items, “Hello! Good price for you!” Thailand all over again, minus the ocean and the elephants. We got there, dropped our bags, and immediately went on a tour to a very humbling farmer’s village. Here, the houses are made of brick but have no windows, just empty spaces. We were told this is because the size of your house is directly related to your status, so they build as they acquire money. Windows are usually the last on the list of priorities. I can’t even imagine what that’s like in the winter. We were also told about many superstitions or beliefs that these villagers have. Red is by far the most popular color in China and a lot of people (everywhere, not just Yanghshuo) decorate their doors with red borders. This is because red wards off evil spirits. Another addition to keep the pesky evil spirits away is a mirror above the door. The belief is that the spirit will approach the door, but then be so scared by its ugly image in the mirror that it will run away. I kind of chuckled but thought, meh, safer than being haunted all your life.

After seeing the village, our guide took us to a famous spot called Dragon Bridge. I cant remember why it was famous (something to do with battles on either side of the river) but I stood on that bridge and the view was amazing. It reminded me a lot of Bali with the brilliant green rice fields and the peaceful river running along side. The hills in the background looked almost like Hollywood, barely real. It was a scene that no matter how many angles and pictures you take, you can’t capture the beauty of it all.

From there we went on a bamboo raft ride down the river. They took us to the rice fields and to where the big fat water buffalo (aka cows with horns) graze. I wanted to hang out with the rice, but Claire was all over the cattle. Those of you who know me know that I had a small fear of cows as a child (and a teen and an adult hahahah) “You can feed them!” said the guide. Oh sure, you give them a leaf, turn your back, and next thing you know your getting tossed in the air by his horns before you hit the ground and he stomps all over you in a wild rage. Luckily, my crazy image didn’t turn out to be true. It also helped that they were leashed through the nostril to their owners hahah. After getting over that experience, we took our little rafts to watch how the men fish with there cormorant birds. This is a very interesting way of fishing. A man will goes out on his bamboo raft with about four or five cormorant birds. The fisherman puts a tie around their neck. Then he picks one bird and sends it out looking for fish. It finds one, surfaces and then put it in his mouth, but cannot swallow it due to their neck being tied. So it swims to the raft, and the fisherman squeezes his neck and the bird chokes up the fish, then goes out again to find another one. Apparently one bird can catch up to 50 kg of fish a day. It was insane to watch.

After a night of partying, we got up early and rented bicycles and headed out with this horrible map. After asking for directions, and deliberately riding in the wrong direction for 15 mins in order to lose a tour guide hunting us down (I think the map and confused faces gave us away) we got on the path we wanted to be on. It only took about 3 minutes to ride away from the busy town center with construction sites and honking cars and enter another world where “noise” is defined as birds chirping, farmers cutting down their crops (with their knives, not their machines) and bamboo clumps creaking in the wind. Claire and I hardly even talked during it all, except for “take a picture of this”. It seemed unnecessary. We rode to an intersection and got out our map at one point trying to figure out which way to go when someone came up to us and said “bamboo!” and pointed down one road so we decided to see what that was about. Well, that led to yet another guide following us and no matter how rude we were to them (with our little Chinese) he kept on. We ended up in this crazy market at the river where they give bamboo raft rides to all the tourists. Of course, with that attraction, they have to have women following you endlessly trying to sell waterguns, flowers, food, jewelry… anything they can. Usually I can embrace these places and have fun checking out the cheap goods they are selling, but riding from the countryside to this was incredibly overwhelming, like walking on a lonely beach and then entering the New York Stock Exchange. Anyways, we got the heck out of there. We heading back into the villages where it was more of a pace we were looking for: a woman strolling up the street with her three baby cattle, groups of men playing Mahjongg on the side of the street. We eventually wandered back to the city and once again was overwhelmed by the crazy Chinese city life which I have known for the past two months.

The next day we headed changed pace once again and headed to Shanghai, but I’m going to save that story for a couple days or there would be no way you’d be able to get through all this! Haha. To be continued…

---

---