Advertisement
27/03/05
It'd been a while...almost 8 months since I came back home From the India trip. tomorrow I will begin my exploration in China again. strange...no matter how many times I hit the road. I am still nervous. you know what I mean...! sometimes I got this guity feeling of leaving all the responsibilty that I should have taken with other of my family member at home. I was so lucky that they all understood me and I took it for granted. better not go into that much otherwise it will really spoil my traveling mood! anyway...get an early bus to catch tomorrow. just wait and see where I will end up this time.
GuangDong
28/03/05
Took the direct bus from hk to Chaozhou, it was a boring 6 hours trip with not much change in scenery, if not the border crossing and a short toilet break. I would have a solid 6 hours sleep. The weather was humid and foggy in the morning, and it got suffocating hot by the time I arrived in Chaozhou. a city boast 1600 year of history. I hurried to looking for a guesthouse with my world traveler technique, and soon find
out it got rusty after 8 months rest, I was walking on the opposite direction of the bus station out of the city center indeed. laughing at myself while I tracing back my footstep... world traveler... haha...! not much I would like to do in town, but as a city, it look better than Shanzhen, the old town is located at the east side of the city which winged with the River Hean underneath the rebuild city wall. not that kind of old town feel that I had expected and there wasn't much to write about. also Chaozhou is quiet than what I expected too. rain started by late afternoon and guess what... I will stay in earler.
29/03/05
It rain like hell today but I need to find something to do. heading out of town looking for an old walled city, took the 5km journey by bus then I was out on my own on the street, there was no sign for the walled city, and no one seem to understand my Chinese(or do I really speak Chinese?), here they speak a different dialect even we are still in Canton. no problem... I got my final weapon...
I can write. then they all sound different... ahhhh... Gu-E! a different name, but the same place I was looking for, after some finger pointing I was on the right track. finally I got to the square shape walled city, it was clean and tidy. perhaps because it had been promoted as a tourist attraction. the compound criss-cross with horizontal and vertical lanes, said it has more than 70 wells but I never counted. a nice and quiet spot for a day out. back in town but the rain pouring more frenzy. guess a comfy dry room with a tv wasn't a bad idea for the rest of the day.
30/03/05
I could hear thunder all through the night, rain never stop but I got to move on. further up north I was hoping to check out some Haka traditional walled building, which would come in different shape, some are round, some are rectangular, and some are semi-circular. and I chose YaoYang to be my first place to start my exploration. took the bus at 07:30, a bus with window all coated with sun shade... I hate it ! it made the rainy sky even more darker! and
later I find out it was all like this in this part of China. after 3 hours I was in the single street town YaoYang. secured a room in a nearby guesthouse then I began to check out the area around. there are many walled buildings but most of them are mixed with the ugly chinese tile decoration, still... those without are gorgeous and really attract attention. l was more hoping for the hospitality as most of the books had mention about the HaKa people. no... although they wasn't unwelcoming but... just cold...! or was it because of the weather?
31/03/05
The 400 years old DaoYun building is the biggest wall building that was existing. octagon in shape, imitating the Eight Diagram of TaiChi. as the typical style of all walled building, a patio in the center with the main structure surrounded. almost every houses has it own well, most family had fit in an in-house toilet after the repairing and renovating. here you need to pay entrance to go inside the building... RMB 10...and it will automatically like grant you a permit to walk inside someone house, go upstair to take picture, even people are more welcoming,
all with smiling face. all for only 10 yuan. I was welcome into a Mr Wong house, anyway... the whole village are from same family group, all name "Wong"! I don't care was it the 10 kuai effect, I did find my host genuinely friendly, Mr Wong born in Veitnam, came back here before the Nam war. he can even speak some French... vou le vos...! he was so eager to tell me the background and facts of this building, and it was almost the same language as the poster which I had read at the entrance. I could imagine there must be a training course in the community. who care... all I know is they are trying to make me welcome. that what I appreciate. what exactly is a walled building? can't tell you much, it could be a fortress with it high wall, an enclosed structure with a single entrance(some has a small side door), I think the original idea is for defending, protect themself from bandit or enemy during war. help and look after each other. with time went by, it build more with style and mixed with the idea of FungShui. now most younger generation didn't want to live in walled building, they don't want to share or even help the other, they want privacy so they will build another house once they growth up, a house for his own family. now even most buildings had lost its soul... its fundamental idea, but the cumbersome huge structure still an awesome scene to look at.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.051s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 9; qc: 28; dbt: 0.029s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb