Searching for luck on China's lesser traveled roads

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On a typical summer's night, I usually manage to become the victim of over a dozen misquito bits in under an hour while the companion next to me can walk away unharmed.
Such is luck sometimes. Many travelers to China might tell you that they ate suspicious food, drank the local water, or accepted invitations from questionable characters. And they never had any problems. But for those like me, who often find themselves in a lemon of an apartment, struck with food poisoning, and hustled by keen old ladies, it can make it hard to not denounce everything around you, and to maybe instead just accept that you got dealt the bad hand.
I had spotted a cycling route on my map last week, entitled Countryside Bike Tour which seemed like the ideal place to escape the traffic and loose myself in the beautiful rural countryside. So off I went on my two-wheeler rental, 15km outside of the city to a place called Dragon Bridge. Along the Yulong river, this 14th century bridge joined together the two sides of the village. Although it is still used for a good deal of foot and hoof traffic, the bridge is now the site of many bamboo boat cruises that float slowly along the route between balding limestone cliffs. Stopping to take a few photos and breathe in the scenery proved a bit difficult, as persistant locals trying to sell me everything from boat tours to dinners wouldn't leave me be, making me feel very uncomfortable and unwanted as I wasn't buying anything. So off I went onto what my map declared was the cycling route, a narrow lane of packed mud and stones winding in between rice paddies and lonely mountains. The first quarter of an hour was very enjoyable, bouncing up and down this ridiculous road, meeting only the ocassional startled ox. That was, until I discovered my back tire had gone completely flat, punctured by the unforgiving stones. If this was the supposed bike road neatly outlined on my map, it meant that I would be arriving back in Yangshuo in less than an hour. In the heat of the day, I continued onward, slightly worried about the horrible noise and the extra effort I had to exert. Met only by high cliffs on either side, I hoped maybe in the distance the road would improve. But, as luck would have it, an hour passed, and I was now faced with exhaustion, no food or water, and no idea where the hell I was. My internal compass told me that Yangshuo had to be just over some cliffs to the left, and so I desperately rounded every corner, hoping it would afford me a better indication that I was coming close. The prospect of going back 2 hours the way I came and then still having to get back to Yangshuo from there all on a flat tire wasn't too appealing. Occasionally, there would be a small dirt lane off to my left that would led up to a cluster of houses nestled against the cliffs. I hoped that another road may lay beyond it. As I pushed my handicapped vehicle through clumps of citrus trees, I found to my dismay, that the road really did dead end. As I began to turn around, thinking it was time to throw in the towel and go back to Dragon Bridge, I heard a cry from within the trees, "Helllooo!" I turned to find a squat peasant woman staring up at me with a huge smile. "Hello" turned out to be the only English she knew, as she continued to pradle on in Chinese although it was clear I had no idea what she was saying. So I tried my best to gesture that I was lost and show her that my tire was flat, and in response, she signaled that I was to follow her. Taking my bike, she lead me through the cluster of houses and to one that apparently was hers. Ushering me in, I got my first glimpse at the inside of a peasants' home; definately void of the term cozy, it was a square cement floor room, consisting of only a table, a bench, and a tv. She put down her shovel and began to change from her sensible work shoes into a strapy heeled number. I thought maybe she was going to drive me with the bike back to Yangshuo, and as I noticed she had a mobile phone, I tried to show her the number of my friend who if I could call, would be able to translate for me. But my clear gestures about using the phone were uneffective, as she simply ingnored my attempts and continued on in a string of Chinese. Weary, I gave up fighting fate, and put myself in the hands of this woman. And so out of the house she lead me, except not onto any marked road. Instead, in one quick sweep, she picked up my bicycle, threw it over her four foot frame, and began crossing a mountain pass. Baffled, I followed her across the peasant fields, waiting patiently as she stopped to chat with cow herders along the way. I wondered, why did she go to the trouble to change her shoes? Over and down the other side we went, until we found ourselves on a paved road. Although I still had no idea where I was, I was happy to see a normal road again. Eventually, we got to a river, and surprise, surprise, the location of another bamboo rafting service. She passed my bike over to her friend, who swiftly lifted it onto the raft. Next, her friends, who also only knew how to say "Hello" and "Pay me" demanded that I give them 200 kwai(four times the normal rate) to take me back into Yangshuo. I opened my wallet to show them that all the money I had on me was 100 kwai and then climbed onto the raft to show them that my bicycle tire was flat, so all I really needed was help. Again, all three went off in a flurry of Chinese, apparently the woman who "helped me" wasn't happy that I didn't have the money to fork over. Finally, one of them said, "Okay, pay me, pay me". Thinking that meant they had decided to take my offer of 100 kwai to get back to Yangshuo, I forked over all the money I had. But instead of pushing off down the river, he simply took me 30meters over to the other side and made me get off! I stood there furious and without the vocabulary to say so. All I could manage to do was repeat, "yi bai kwai!!" and gesture at my flat tire. Finally, he called over one of the other boatmen who was bathing shirtless in the sun, and told me to follow him. Exhausted, upset, and penniless, I followed yet another local up a dirt path to his shack, where he thankfully set to work patching my tire. Well, now I just had to worry about being lost. When finished, he got up to go back to the boat dock, leaving me standing on his porch. Not again, I thought, and followed him, repeating ,"Yangshuo, Yangshuo!" Finally, he stopped and begrudgingly lead me through to the proper route that would take me back into the town. As luck would have it, just as he was about to depart, I head someone cry, "Hey, I know that girl", and turned around to find a teacher from the school on the back of a scooter driven by his tour guide. I quickly explained to them how I had just been ripped off, and the guide set to work questioning the man whom immediately defended himself, saying he didn't know the other people, they were not from his village. Seeing that this was going nowhere, they offered to lead me back into town, which as it turns out, was less than 5 minutes down the road.

And so, in China, one often finds themself the victim of such schemes, the price one pays for pearly skin and a foreign accent. But I have also found myself in a quite different seat, as the honored guest in people's homes, the very sort of people whom had just so callously used me to their advantage. The weekend of September 13th and 14th is known as Mid-Autumn festival in China, one of the few times in the year in which migrant workers are able to leave their city jobs and go home to visit with family. Like American Thanksgiving, it is celebrated with a feast and consumption of moon cakes, usually followed by a stroll outside to gaze at the moon. Some of the Chinese staff at my school had rented a van to go back to the countryside and visit their families, so they invited myself and another volunteer, a Japanese girl named Miho, to come along. This gave me a rare opportunity to dine and sleep in the homes of some of the most commonfolk people in China.
We set off at seven in the morning, leaving the common sites of Yangshuo behind.
We first stopped in a town two hours north of Guilin, which was the home of Gary's uncle and also the location of both Gary's and Rickie's high school. (please note: Most Chinese, when they begin to study English, take on a Western name, which they often use for business and foreign interaction. As it is the person's own preference, these Western names are not exactly conventional; some of the students at my school choose names like Sunny, Apple, Kiki, Sparkie, and even Bobo).
As most peasant villages are not able to support high schools, rural kids whose homes are as far as 50km away are sent to high schools like this, to live on campus in dormatories. Rickie proudly took us on a tour of his old campus, pointing out buildings and recalling many of his cherished memories. The dormitories looked pretty much like project housing, except without the meanacing presence of Gangsters Disciples out front, of course. He then took us behind the campus to where he said there used to be a temple and a hill which he used to escape when in need of solitude. The hill was actually a cemetary, and the temple, once probably quite beautiful, was now dilapidated and in the process of being torn down. We climbed up the stairs and behind the temple to where we could reach the top of the hill, affording us a great view of the city.
Again, I got the chance to spend the afternoon living like a local Chinese, where we got a tuktuk ride, an ice cream cone, and a one hour boat ride on the river for under 6 yuan (less than a dollar)
Afterward, we headed to the home of Gary's uncle, who had prepared a typical Chinese feast in our honor. This involved a whole duck mercilessly chopped to bits floating in spicy sauce, a whole chicken chopped the same way in ginger sauce, and a giant whole fish also served spicy. Everyone sat on low stools around the wooden table in their cramped one bedroom apartment (in which 3 generations of family members were living) and dug into the main platters with chopsticks, spitting bones and other inedible body parts out onto the floor. Before we pilled into the van to go, I had to earn my keep by posing for photos with various members of the family.
Back on the road, we now set off for the home of Gary's parents, where we would dine and sleep for the night. Another two hours through the countryside on dusty, polluted roads brought us to a river just as twilight was approaching. As there is no bridge to access the town, we took a car ferry across the river, a slab of iron with a boat attached which pulled us the 200 meters. On it with us were many carts and peasants, returning to their village after a day of selling their produce in the market. Now pitch black outside, we bounced up and down a dangerously unkept path of packed mud. Like the road that managed to do quick work to my bicycle tires, these roads consisted of just mud and stones, suitable to the regular traffic of oxen, but not to our heavily loaded van. Inside the car, we were thrown around like flying sacks of rice, all the while our driver replaying the same dance music CD, featuring a bad electronic version of "If you're happy and you know it, clap your hands"
When we arrived at the house of Gary's parents, we were greeted by two dogs barking at us from the roof of the house! Upon entering, I saw that the reason for this was that half the house did not have a roof at all, only a set of staircases that lead onto a concrete slab of second floor, totally exposed to the elements. The only furniture in the house consisted of a low wooden table and about ten stools, and, of course, a television.
As would hold true for many of the homes I was to visit that weekend, a yellowed Mao poster afixed to the wall served as the only decor.
Gary's parents were in a boisterious mood, despite the late hour of our arrival, because of the rare opportunity to see their son. Like many migrant workers, Gary and his brother have gone into the cities where it is possible for them to earn incomes, leaving behind their elderly parents to raise a five year old girl who is Gary's niece. What it must be like for her to be raised in a cluster of dilapidated shacks without her parents, I can only imagine.
Again, another feast was awaiting us, with the same set of customs observed earlier in the day; the host typically presents too much food, and pressures everyone to eat past the bursting point, while making sure the platters are never emptied (it is an embarrassment for a host to have all the plates whipped clean, it means that they were a stingy host and did not present enough food). Drinking large quantities of alcohol also accompanied the meal. The common drinking custom in China is that you must match whatever the host drinks, and so while you are all engaging in your meal, the host will continually shout "compe" (cheers). When the host finishes taking his swig, she/he holds out the glass to show how much he has drunken, and your glass must be equally as empty. After the beer was gone, Gary's parents focused on myself and Miho, who as the foreign guests, were made to try the local firewater. Although mistakenly referred to as "wine" by the Chinese, its likeness is more to that of moonshine. I held out as the victim of this cruel drinking game for a little while, until I was cleared of my drinking duties by excusing myself to tend to Miho, who began to throw up from the excess food and alcohol. After getting Miho safely to bed, I sat up with the women of the group, who schooled me on a few games of Mahjong (Chinese card game, like rummy, but with brick shaped pieces assigned different Chinese letters). Suffice to say I was beaten mercilessly by Gary's keen mother, who kept peaking at my cards.
I was woken by the sound of roosters at 4 am, sounding like it was right outside my door. Like a reliable alarm clock, the rooster sounded its cry every 15 minutes or so, until the rest of the group came to bang on the door and inform me that it was time to go. As I emerged still full of last night's "wine" I saw that the roosters really were outside my door, along with several ducks, chickens, dogs, and a pig, which were taking a causal stroll through the house, the dogs fighting playfully as the chickens hopped up and down the stairs, the ducks played in the well water pit on the floor, and the pigs searched the floor for any neglected scraps of food.
I was told we were to take a morning stroll of the village, and as I stepped outside, I found that all the neighbors were already up and standing outside their homes, eager to check out the group of visitors. Mostly elderly people with young children in their arms, they stood in the roads or peaked out of their homes as we walked around, probably aroused from the strange sound of English in their streets. The homes were all made of coarse mud and brick, some with cyrptic messages spraypainted by government officals on the facade (see photos). Inside the homes were either concrete or mud packed floors, just as sparsely decorated as Gary's parents. Most of the roofs were caved in in places, and rubble was piled haphazardly outside. In the early morning light, various oxen and chickens were already moving around in search of food.
I had a feeling we might have consumed all the food Gary's parents had to offer at our luxurious dinner feast, as his parents did not offer us anything for breakfast, only putting out what was left of the tray of nuts from the night before. So, again we took a round of group photos before waving goodbye and heading back across the river via car ferry to eat a breakfast bowl of steamy rice noodles at the local market. We had a tight schedule, as we still had two more homes to visit, and then a long drive back to Yangshuo.
The next desination was the home of Rickie's parents, another two hours away on unpaved roads. Along the way, peasants on foot would occasionally give a shout at the van to get a ride. And so, our 7 person group grew to a size of 12 as we picked up and dropped off various people loaded with bags of rice and grains, live fish and chickens. We bounched along the road while chestnuts, oranges and rice cakes were passed around and consumed.
Just as I thought my stomache could take no more of the jostling, we pulled up to Rickie's house, in a tiny village near a stream. You could tell that some of the money being earned by family members in the city was already making an impact on the village. There were new homes going up, most people bring able to upgrade from mud floors to the coveted concrete version. Some even had glass in the windows and toilets inside the home. Gary's village only had a communal outhouse, a hole dug into the ground with two planks of wood on either side to squat over. I thought how amazing it must be to these migrant workers who arrive in cities like Shanghai and see a ceramic squat toilet for the very first time.

We dropped off some fish and produce with his parents, so that while they were preparing lunch, we could travel along to Rickie's grandpa's house, one hours drive up a mountain path. Rickie's grandfather had long passed away, but the house is still inhabited by Rickie's aunt and uncle. Located in the mountains, the primary income for these villagers is logs and bamboo.
When the heavy snow came last year, the entire village was cut off from electricity and water for over a month. The pipes being bamboo, they had become frozen and broke open, leaving Rickie's family to resort to boiling down snow as drinking water until the spring thaw came.
We drove as far as we could to his grandfather's house, and then parked the car to set off the rest of the way on foot. Up a mountain we went on a narrow path, until we reached a dilapidated wooden house, one wall missing so that the main rooms of the house were completely exposed to the environment. Only the bedrooms were completely enclosed. Rickie's aunt was waiting to receive us, and upon our arrival, pulled out some stools and handed out some weak tea. Strangely, we didn't really engage in any conversation, as the TV was on. This is another feature I have consistantly noticed about every house I have seen in China, no matter how poor: They all have satellite dishes out front, and the TV is almost always on.
Now back with Rickie's parents, we enjoyed our third feast for the weekend before pilling in the car for a long drive back to Yangshuo. On the way home, my head was swimming with all I had observed and experienced that weekend. I now can understand the peasant class better, and I can understand the roots of some of the disturbing scenes which I had written about my first week in Shanghai.
For example, when meat is served in China, there is none of the fancy fat skimming or de-boning that goes on in first-world countries. The common practice is to slaughter the animal, and then chop the whole thing up into pieces. When a dish of duck, for example, is brought out to the table, it comes head, beak, claws and all jutting out at different angles from the bowl. You pick up a piece of meat with your chopsticks and knaw all the edible bits off, spitting the remnants onto either the table (if you are in a restaurant) or the floor (if, in this weekend's case, you are in a peasant's home). Almost everyone we visited had at least one dog, whos job it is to swiftly manuever under the table trying to gobble up all the dicarded bones. (By the way, if you are going to dine at a peasant's home, be sure not to wear nice shoes, as there is bound to be casualties with all the flying scraps). Any other garbage is also tossed onto the floor, from seeds to shells to wrappers. When the meal is over, the host simply pushes the table out of the way, grabs a broom and a shovel, and scoops up the mess.
Thus, the peasant mentality is that the street is the place you throw your garbage, allow children and animals to relieve themselves, spit, and generally dispose of any other foul matter. Yet, if you are in China, the streets are also the place where you dry your food in the sun, sit to eat your meals, and squat to sell your produce. For the unseasoned traveler, it is the mixture of these two elements that is hard to stomache.
As I stated in earlier blogs, there are public education commercials that air in big cities which attempt to curb this bad behavior, but it will certainly take a few generations before I think any real change will take root. There have been many times I have watched, for example, a mother go into a store and buy something for her child, only to have the child unwrap it, walk to the doorway of the shop, and throw the wrapper onto the sidewalk while the mother looks on indifferently. If a child is not educated, they will grow up to be just as ignorant as those who raise them.
Moving on, in lieu of the Mid-Autumn festival, my school hosted a midnight BBQ at what is known in Yangshuo as the secret beach, an river inlet of picturesque, clear water from which we could enjoy a full moon whilst eating an assortment of grilled meat, and generally anything else that fits nicely onto a metal stick. Since the weather is still quite hot here, regularly averaging 35/90 degrees, swimming in the river has been a usual occurance.
Also amoungst daily occurances is my regular Tai Chi classes. For the past two weeks I have been enjoying Tai Chi lessons taught by a local whom also runs an English school. Our teacher, who's practiced both Tai Chi and Kung Fu for over fifteen years, is a true master of his profession. Tai Chi is about very slow motions which are fluid like water which strenghtens your "chi", or your ability to remain balanced and strike hard, exerting power with your whole body when necessary. Although upon observation, it may look more like an exercise routine, the ultimate goal in fighting is to be able to throw your opponent's own attacks back at them, using their own force to defeat them. In two weeks, I was able to study the 'essential 18' moves of Tai Chi, although I am less graceful than my cat-like instructer, often not looking very water-like or threatening. It is however, the perfect activity for the unbearably humid heat of Southern China.
My Chinese lessons have also been progressing, as this week, our teacher focused on one of the most important topics to anyone traveling in China: bargaining. We learned ever-important phrases, such as "Duo xao qian" How much?, and "Tai gui le" Too expensive!, as well as "Ni pian wo!" You cheated me! We also had a chance to take to the streets and got schooled in Shopping with a local 101. Our friend Seven, whos sister owns the restaurant we frequent, took us shopping one afternoon though souviner-lined West Street. The key to bargaining in China is to offer one third of the overinflated price which the shopkeeper quotes, act insulted when they refuse to bargain down, and then walk away, saying you will buy it somewhere else for cheaper. They will call you back every time, agreeing to your offer. It can certainly be interesting to watch and partake in, but it is definately not something I would want to deal with every day. I much prefer walking into a shop, looking at the marked prices, and making my own decision without being pressured and hastled. Although I have gotten some amazing bargains here, I often walked away with items that I really had no intention of buying in the first place.

As my days in Yangshuo have been winding down quickly, I find it very difficult to say goodbye to all the friends I have made, and to the beautiful town which I have become so accustomed to. Yangshuo truely is a special place. Tomorrow, I will leave for northern Guangxi, to hike the world famous Dragons Backbone rice terraces, before returning to Shanghai and heading back on the ferry to Japan. But just as I will miss the craziness of China, I am also really looking forward to getting back to the serenity of Japan.

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