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Ni hao!
After thoroughly enjoying ourselves in Hong Kong, we were perhaps a little apprehensive about moving on into China. It is, after all, a totally different country (NOT), and rumoured to be one of the most challenging places to backpack around due the fact that no one speaks any English. What is said about the border crossing is 100% accurate. Getting through customs from HK is easy-peasy (Chinesey?) but once on the other side the English signs stop and the pointing, grunting and smiling politely begins. Weird huh? Almost as weird as the fact that you have to go through a border crossing...surely its like going to Scotland? Thankfully the bloke who sold us our tickets to Yangshou wrote information on them in Manderin. All we had to do was show our tickets to someone official looking and we would be pointed towards the correct bus. In theory anyway...
Have we mentioned the toilets at all throughout Asia? Well, after India we felt prepared for anything. Squat pans, once so alien and terrifying, are now a matter of course. In fact, crimping a loaf (Andrew) is easier due to that slightly lower, squat position. The only minor annoyance
A little bridge in town
The first of many...Andrew has developed bridge lust! is that they are always BYOTP (bring your own toilet paper). Even that is no longer a problem because we are both accustomed to the use of the handy hose, taking careful aim so as to avoid accidentally removing our scrotum/clitoris. However, China has thrown a new breed of toilet into the fray. The absolutely-no-privacy-urinal-style-squat-pan. Even for the girls. Imagine sharing your most base bodily function with a room full of gawking spectators. We have both decided that we would rather go in our pants.
Imagine Lara's face. Yes she is much less posh in her toilet needs now (if she ever was - most of us have seen her squat in a bush on the way home from the pub) . However, on entering the WC at the bus stop to be confronted with a load of whiteish coloured bums facing her, and the realisation that she has to do the same (which I did and they all laughed at me...is it possible to sit on these things the wrong way???) I thought she might cry. Six months ago she would have, however, having had diarrhoea in the desert in India where BYOTP would have been a luxury
she is acepting of the fact that we must bear all in front the rest of the public toilet going community. Put it this way....even Andrew will be helping himself to Lara's shit busting max strength Senokot as our "straining face" is not something we want to share. Surely they can't take away that privacy?...Well they can as Lara found out when visiting a coveted doored cubicle. Once safely inside with the door shut she turned to look to the side and realised that the wall was about 30cm high and her neighbouring chinese toilet fellow gave a cheery "Ni Hao". Why bother!
.....Anyway, what we found when we arrived in Yangshou was a scene of such picturesque tranquillity that we are now so excited about the rest of China we can hardly control our bowels long enough to make it to an enclosed lavatory.
There is one word to sum up Yangshou. Pretty. The town centre feels like a tiny, quiet village even though it is surrounded by a quite large and busy sprawl that has clearly sprung up in the last few years on the back of the tourist Yuan. Meaning "Bright Moon", Yangshou is surrounded
by spectacular karst scenery on the bank of the Li River. It has presented itself as an excellent place to calm our ruffled nerves, recuperate from months on the road and dry Lara's tears. The pace is slow but the time has simply flown by. The majority of our time here has been spent just pottering about, catching up on these blogs, reading in a cosy book exchange cafe we found and walking in the near-by country side. You don't have to travel far to see some impressive scenery. The peaks that are virtually inside the town have stone steps carved into them, which you can climb up to pavilions perched on the side of the cliffs overlooking the town. Some of the peaks have small caves in them, which have been turned into grottoes by the local gents for playing cards - one even had a bar inside. Weird.
We hired a guide and spent a day cycling along the muddy paths between villages that led us to Moon Hill, 10 km out of town. This is, as the name suggests, a hill. What sets this particular hill apart from all the thousands of other hills in the
region is the enormous hole in the middle of it - like a half moon. The climb to the top was not easy, made worse for the 2 hour cycle to get there. Luckily we had a couple of lackeys in tow who, although elderly and very short, showed us up tremendously in the fitness stakes. They followed us all the way, fanning us when we stopped, selling us drinks at the top (which they had carried in cool boxes from the bottom) and finally assisting Lara over the slippery steps down as she was an invalid. They did these things whether we wanted them to or not. Lara was less than impressed at being described as "large" although simmered down once we realised it was her height that was being referred to. Andrew taught our new friends that the correct English word for him was "massive".
Despite the pissing rain and chilly temperatures we also took a boat ride on the Li River between Xingping and Yangdi. Even the bus 30 minute bus ride to Xingping Pier afforded us the gorgeous scenery and a taste of the, um, quaint rural life of the locals (Lara nearly had apaplexy
when a woman boarded the 16 seat bus - already seating 25- carrying a live and flapping chicken). The river meanders through the finest countryside in the region. Shallow green water is flanked by a procession of jutting karst peaks in a host of improbable shapes, all of which have names associated with legend. Nine Horse Fresco Hill, Tortoise Climbing Hill, Dragon head Hill, you get the idea. In between admiring the 100m high peaks we glimpsed pretty rural scenes of locals poling themselves along on half submerged bamboo rafts and small villages.
Obviously, not to be shown up by a silly little thing like a language barrier, we took a two hour Mandarin lesson. Hoping that this will help endear us to local shopkeepers, we actually found that two hours only taught us how to be frustrated at our lack of ability. Mandarin has four tones - which are indiscernible to our Western ears. To lighten the tone of ones voice instead of keep it flat during a vowel sound is to say "dog" instead of "mother"..... A veritable minefield. Brimming with confidence, however, Andrew insists now on greeting people (even fellow round eyes) with a cheery "Ni
hao!". Practise does make perfect and we will probably be practising saying the title of this entry plenty - "Do you speak English?"
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