Bamboo Rafts, Butterfly Caves, and a little old lady named Mama Moon

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Hello and thank you for all the wonderful support I've been recieving about my blog. It is quite interesting to me that for the duration of the year that I kept a blog in Japan, I only once recieved a comment from a Japanese who happened to have read my blog. Yet, in less than a month of traveling in China and only 3 blogs into it, I have recieved numerous emails and comments from Chinese writing in to either agree or disagree with my perceptions of their country. I find this difference very interesting, and I am amazed at how many people other than my family and friends read this blog. It shows that perhaps this website can also be used as a tool to facilitate conversation and understanding between different cultures.
With that said, here is hopefully another colorful entry about experiencing new things in new places:
The town of Yangshuo is so small that any location can easily be reached by foot. You can't go very far without bumping into an aquaintence and stopping to chat. I think that's part of what makes this place so special. Life takes its own course. A simple stroll along the river turns into dinner with a friend at a street side cafe, and throughout your meal, another friend turns up, and then another, until your quiet dinner of two turns into a lively party. This is how my days and nights have been spent so far, drifting amoungst different situations and groups of people from all walks of life. In Yangshuo, you can find rich tourists, grungy backpacker-hippie types, Chinese university students, European pensioners starting on their second life, Ex-pats, locals with excellent English working in the tourist industry, and everyday locals who just go about their lives as if this oddball colony did not exist.
During the week, I rise early in the morning and pick out one of the many cafes to splurge on a cup of coffee while I read a free copy of China Today which is China's version of the New York Times. I then make my way down to school to do a little lesson planning before lunch. After lunch, most of the teachers relax for a few hours with games of chess or pingpong before they have to go back to afternoon classes. Since I'm still only volunteering, I still have time before dinner for my free Chinese lessons, a stroll around the town, or a climb up one of the cliffs for a panorama view. Yesterday, I tried out one of the many massage parlors in town, and for 70 RMB ($12) had an hour-long theraputic hot oil massage. Next week, I may try out the acupuncture. The school wants me to start teaching some classes next week, of which I will be getting paid for, and as RMB wouldn't really yield much to exchange back into $, I now feel I have the luxury to splurge a little. I also found time to duck into the wholesale marketplace, a must-see for any traveler to China. Like the fish markets I saw in Japan, where restaurant owners haggled over quality to an audience of expressionless fish heads, in Yangshuo, the market is also a free-for-all of buyers and sellers. The main hall is lined with plain wooden tables offering hunks of unidentifiable meat exposed to the 30C/90F degree heat layed right out on the table or hanging from metal hooks. I spotted more than one whole, skinned dog hanging from those hooks. In an adjoining room, various kinds of animals, but mostly ducks and chickens, were packed in cages, cramped and squawking. They were to be sold live, probably so the meat can be served as fresh as possible. Meanwhile the floor space, covered with muddy sludge, was lined with farmers who squated down next to their baskets of produce, probably hoping they sold enough to lighten their load on the way home. Also, lying on the filthy floor, was a pile of fish, probably to be sold to the restaurants that day. In general, the place gave off such a bad stink that I couldn't bear to stay inside the building for more than a few minutes. I refrained from taking any pictures, because it just didn't seem like the type of place that a tourist should be walking around, sticking a camera in people's faces. So you are spared the sight of roasted dog. During a conversation with some of my students, the topic of local delicacies came up, and I found out that some of them have eaten, among other things, cat, snake, and even rat meat. The girl that ate rat assured us it was from a fancy restaurant and extremely tasty. Contrary to the scene some of you might have that people are going aroung trapping cats and rats in the alleys to eat, my students all told me that these dishes are actually quite expensive delicacies. But, to their defense, a number of them also confessed that they have never eaten fast-food like McDonalds before, so I can certainly praise them for that.
Last weekend was my break from school, so I set off by bicycle to see what could be discovered on the outskirts of Yangshuo. Cycling in China, however, can be quite an assault on the senses. Every vehicle honks at you when they pass, as if you didn't already know by their deafening motor that they were approaching. And when they pass, you are left behind in a cloud of hazy exhaust fumes. When I went riding with my Chinese students, they thought it was funny that I kept jumping at the sound of a car blaring its horn at me, as it didn't seem to bother them. Once I got far out enough that only the occasional truck blarred past, I could appreaciate the beauty of the etched cliffs with their tufts of green. Many other tourists were out cycling along the road, and to provide for them was countless umbrella stands offering cool drinks or noodles. "Helllllooooo do you want to byyyyeeee" was often the cry as I cruised past. At one point, I came upon a picturesque bridge, over one of the spots offering rafting tours. Before I could get out my camera for a quick picture, I found myself surrounded by old ladies, heads barely at the height of my shoulders, shoving all sorts of souviners at me. "Bu qu, xiexie! Bu qu, xiexie!" (No thank you, No thank you!) I cried, but they only crowded in closer, more insistant than ever. I had to make a quick get-away, sailing down the road until I came to a placed called Moon hill. Throught this area, many sightseeing places owe their claim to fame in that one of the karst cliffs resembles something. In Yangshuo, there is one cliff that is supposed to look like a horse, one that they say looks like a boy bowing to a girl, and a group of five that are supposed to resemble a hand. Although I have been unable to see the resemblence in most of these 'famous' spots, Moon hill is a genuine spot to view different phases of the moon, represented by a hole in the karst rock, by changing your vantage point. A hike to the top takes about twenty minutes, and from there, you can have a captivating view of your surroundings. After paying my admission, I was locking up my bike when another elderly woman, resembling the ones I had just escaped from, aproached me. 'Hello, she said. I go with you." Umm, I didn't think a guided tour was necessarly, let alone desired. "No, no," I said, "I go alone." The woman was insistant as she began to follow me. "No. You need water. When you get to the top, I sell you water." I noticed the small cooler she had fastened around her waist. "I have water", I said, showing her my water bottle. "That's not enough. You will need more when you get to the top. Each of us to one tourist, those are the rules." I looked around to see many other peasant woman had also singled out one begrudged looking tourist to trail behind. All of these women where at least over 60, with dark creases etched into their sun-worn skin. I admitted to myself that I probably would need more water eventually, so I stopped arguing with the insistant woman. The many days spent hiking and cycling have given me pretty strong legs, so I sprited up the stone steps as this poor woman huffed and puffed behind me, fanning herself and begging me to slow down. I began to really resent the fact that this woman was following me, not allowing me to do as I pleased. Throught the climb, she kept checking with me, "So, when we get to the top, you buy a drink from me, ok?" I wondered to myself, what are these women doing? Obviously, they are local farmers. Can they really make more money by selling one bottle of water an hour to a tourist than by farming their land? When we reached the top, the woman collapsed under a small triangle of shade. Ok, let's get this over with, I thought. "Ok, now I buy your water so you can go back down. How much?" "10 yuan", she said. "What!" I exclaimed. I showed her my water bottle. "This water cost me 2 yuan." "That is the price on the ground. This is the price on top. You said to me you would buy." She said. "I'm sorry, but I will not buy your water for 10 yuan." I said angerly. "Fine, 5 yuan." she replied, also angerly. I did feel a little bad that I had agreed without asking the price when we were on the ground, so I reluctantly agreed to buying her overpriced water. I tried to dismiss her, but she would not leave, she kept following me. I had seen another narrow rocky trail that you can take to get to the very top of the hill, and knowing she wouldn't be able to climb it, I was able to ditch her. At last, I found the serenity I was looking to achieve, left alone to contemplate the beautiful surroundings. Feeling emotionally refreshed, I climbed down to find that the pesky woman was waiting for me! "When we climb down, you buy another drink from me, ok?" This time I really lost my temper, but I just couldn't be mean to a feeble old lady. All I could say was "No, no no no! Nooo Thank you!!" And started to make my way back down. Several of the other old women, seeing that I was now 'unattatched' from my companion, tried to trail me to buy from them. I refused to even look at, let alone talk to them so I could get out of this situation as quickly as possible.
A few days later, I rented bicycles with a group of my students, and we found ourselves heading out to the same area. But this time, the experience was a much different one. As we paused momentarily in front of the enterance to Moon hill for a picture, one of the peasant women flagged us down as usual. But this time, one of the students regognized her. "You're Mama Moon.", she exclaimed, "Mama Moon is very famous in Yangshuo. She can neither read nor write, but she can speak eight languages." Mama Moon demonstrated by giving us a round of greetings in different tongues. According to the local guide book, she can trek up and down the mountain for six hours carrying her cooler of pricey water without getting tired. After chatting for a while, Mama Moon invited us to have lunch with her at her nearby home-turned-restaurant. We climbed onto our bicycles and cycled over bridges and streams to Mama Moon's two story shack, where we were served up large portions of 'farmer's food' while some of the students tested her language skills. "Wow, Mama Moon can even speak better English than me!", some of the students remarked. Again, I was a bit puzzled why an old peasant woman who owned a restaurant would be dragging herself up a hill six hours a day just to sell water. But I was also grateful I got a chance to talk to and appreciate one of the water women, because it helped erase some of the sore feelings I felt from the other day.
After waving goodbye to Mama Moon, we headed out to the Butterfly caves. Yet again, somehow the student's bargaining skills pulled through, and the admission was lowered from 45 RMB to just 25 RMB. Once inside, we were given a tour through a cave filled with stelagtites and stelagmites. The tour guide explained to us how one particular mineral formation resembles a butterfly, giving rise to the cave's name. While quite beautiful, you can see from my pictures that there is no natural touches left in this cave. Most of the stelagtites have actually been sawed off and arranged in these types of stage sets, which are then cast in mutli-colored lights. As one tour guide leaves the room, she switches the lights off for the next tour, making you feel like you are visiting a cheesy wax museum rather than a natural wonder. Outside, we were taken under a waterfall and over a vine bridge to the top of a cliff for another panoramic view. Again, we were informed by our guide how so-and-so cliff resembles a butterfly, and another resembles a monkey. One of the students declared, to my amusement, "I don't care what you say, it looks like a cow to me". At last, we arrived at the tour's highlight, a trip through a garden to where over 300 species of butterflies are kept, and got to 'oo' and 'awe' at these creatures who are so oblivious to their awesome beauty.
Having the students to hang out with has truely been great fun. Last Saturday, the school organized a trip to do bamboo rafting on the Li River, the main vein of the Guangxi region. Twenty or so of us were taken by bus upstream to the town of Xingping, a place famous for its old architecture and lazy elderly population, who sit in their open houses playing mahjong all day. We hiked a little more upstream to the location of the raft rentals, an area of the Li River so picturesque that it is found on the back of all 20RMB bills. Many Chinese tourists were smiling proudly with a 20RMB note in their hand as their friends snapped a photo. We continued on a little further to a small shack supported by beams along the river. Here, we enjoyed another hearty communal lunch of farmer food as we watched peasants tending to their oxen, while local children jumped into the river next to them for a gleeful swim. I wondered what it must be like to be a child growing up in these surroundings. Everyday, do they look about in a fit of wonder at just how beautiful it is? Do they think the whole world must look like this? Or are they simply bored of it, willing to trade it in for a playstation and a KFC? When lunch was finished, we piled onto the bamboo rafts waiting below, four to a raft. They were powered by a motor attatched to a broomstick, which was thrust in the water in order to steer. The students I was paired with decided to make the driver race one of the other rafts so we could have an all-out water fight on the river. Our seasoned boatmen laughed at the antics, a cigarette dangling from both their mouths as we quickly became soaked. We arrived upstream at a location I was told we were going to swim at. This area of the Li River was considerably cleaner than downstream in Yangshuo, where the water is a creamy brown, often covered with a layer of rubbish and debris. I was quite surprised when I first arrived in Yangshuo, to see that the local women still come to the banks of the Li River every morning to wash their clothes in the murky water. Surely, it isn't really sanitary. But, traditions die hard, and I think the locals don't have the power to change these kinds of things. During English Corner, I was discussing factory pollution with some of the students. While I firmly blame nations like the US for China's pollution, since we are the ones who closed all our factories in the US to exploit China's cheap labor market, now there is a serious pollution problem that the Chinese government needs to deal with. Yet, it seems those foreign factories have all the power. I put the question to my students, "Why don't these factories (or why doesn't the government make these factories) be environmentally more efficient?" "Because", my students said, "The factories would not comply. It would be expensive, and so they would close the factories and move to India, where they can have cheap labor with no environmental restriction. Then, China would have unemployment. Unemployment is a greater risk than pollution right now." "Well, there is one thing that they are doing", one girl said, "they are moving a lot of factories out of cities like Shanghai and relocating to small towns inland, so the effect of the pollution will be less concentrated." And so now, I gaze out at areas like Yangshuo and wonder if one day they will be transformed into an industrial lot. Will their beauty and tourist income escape them from this fate? Will the industrialized nations ever wake up from their greed and stop poisoning us? Or is it far more important to save a few dollars by shopping at Wal Mart?
As I said earlier, China is a noisy place. Even when I get out into the rural areas, sounds of machinery banging away envelope me. But these are also the sounds of progress. Construction projects, factories, ship building, road building, car loads of raw materials being taken to their fate... to Chinese ears, perhaps these are sounds to be proud of. As China attemps to continue it's phoenix-like rise to fame, I think all that onlookers such as myself can do is hold our breath and hope for the best.

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Comments

[Laurel H]

Foreign Interest
God, Lisa. I love your blog. That closing paragraph's a killer, and I agree with that last line completely. The more I look into the efforts to preserve indigenous cultures (including my own), the more I'm realizing that those interested in preservation have to give the people of that culture the right to choose what they think is best whether it means maintaining the natural beauty of a place or leveling it for commerce and industry. The right to choose becomes a touchy issue, however, when that industry affects global health as it does here in the US and, increasingly, in China and India. "Unemployment is a greater risk than pollution right now" captures that mentality perfectly because it literally becomes a decision about who lives and dies. It's easy to see the effects of unemployment. It's a lot more difficult to gauge the long-term repercussions of environmental damage. As a bonus, quick fixes and gratifications tend to cast better light on politicians. Sigh. Miss you!!