Jan 6-7; 2 days in Guilin

We pulled into the Guilin station at about 6:30 in the morning, and it was still dark. Chilly too – we’re a little north and a lot inland from HK now, and the weather feels damper and colder. I was so comfortable in my cozy top bunk that I rather wished we had a few more hours to go. When we tumbled out on the platform, I felt sleepy and unsure of myself. We didn’t have a hotel or any idea where to find one. But – lo and behold – we had scarcely looked around like lost sheep for thirty seconds when a woman bustled up to us.

“Hello, are you looking for a hotel?” she asked in passable English. “Yes, yes – we are,” I replied. “Please come with me,” she said firmly, and turned on her little high heels and tapped away down the platform. Pollo and I looked at each other for a second and followed obediently.

The woman – whose name was Lucy, we found out – took us to her office, which was a tourist agency. She asked us what kind of hotel we were looking for, and I answered quickly, “Cheap.” “How much you want to spend?” she pressed. I hazarded a guess based on our Shenzhen stay: “Under 200 a night.” She hummed and hawed, and tried to get us to spend “just a little more” for a much nicer hotel in the center of town. But I insisted on the less expensive, 160 RMB per night option, so she filled out the paperwork and collected 3 nights’ worth of rent from us. Meanwhile, she was also trying to sell us on river cruises and bus trips at what seemed like exorbitant prices. Too much for us to spend, anyway, if we were going to manage 2 weeks in China. So we politely declined the tours and Lucy said she would take us to our hotel.

She walked a few blocks with us along the lightening streets of Guilin, and I asked our guide where she had learned English (at university, she answered). We encountered a lot of stares, partly at our faces and partly at our bikes. Lucy stopped in front of what appeared to be a construction site; she seemed momentarily hesitant, but then her high heels tapped resolutely forward into what we then saw was – or had been - a hotel lobby, stepping delicately over piles of plaster debris. She spoke for a few seconds with a girl in a winter jacket sitting at a stool behind what appeared to be – goodness gracious, it was – the reception desk. Then she motioned to the elevator. “We go to leave your bags in your room, then you come down and show passport, pay key deposit,” Lucy stated.

“Umm,” I started timidly. “Do you think they will give us a discount on the room since it’s under construction?” “Ah, no,” replied Lucy quickly. “This room is much better than the one you pay 160 for.” By that time we had exited the elevator on the second floor, and she was opening the door to the room. It seemed to be a pretty nice room – spacious and clean – so I didn’t argue any more. Plus, I figured, they were letting us check in pretty early, which had to count for something.

So Lucy took her leave of us, after giving us her card and suggesting several times that we call her to arrange a tour. Pollo and I fell into the queen bed and had a nice little nap. We were woken by the sound of construction coming from the lot behind the hotel. We looked at each other and just laughed. Here we were in Guilin, with three days to explore. After a 13-hour train trip, the first day was going to be all about riding our bikes.

We wheeled our bikes out of the elevator and through the lobby, which seemed to have been further demolished in the few hours we’d been sleeping upstairs. Our exit elicited many stares from passersby on the street, whether because of the bikes, the maelstrom of dust and jackhammers from which we’d appeared, or what, I don’t know.

We rode south out of the city, toward the town of Yangshuo according to the map I’d purchased from Lucy at the tour office. Riding in China is like two-wheeling in New York City, only more so; besides taxicabs and trucks to watch out for, there are scooters, bikes, and pedestrians on the road. The roads seem to be divided everywhere into the vehicle lanes on the left, and the bicycle/pedestrian lanes on the right (with a raised curb in between with frequent entrance/exit breaks). This would be quite orderly if the intended users would only occupy the lanes delineated for their use…however, as it is, scooters weave around bikes and trikes in the bike/ped lane, honking their alerts; and slow-moving cargo trikes loaded high with heavy stuff wobble ponderously in the main road, being dodged by zooming motorscooters and diesel-spewing three-wheeled trucks. As a whole, it is utter chaos – the type of obstacle-laden course that would normally thrill me to high-alert mode.

However, my lungs were being seared by the exhaust, and every breath was a burning effort. I couldn’t wait to get out of the traffic. Finally, the flow of vehicle thinned, and we were out of the city on a wide main road. We rode on the wide shoulder, looking at the farms and small buildings to each side. This looked like what I’d imagined China to be: open land planted neatly with vegetables, old buildings with tiled roofs, cows and water buffalo being led to pasture. Fairly frequently we’d pass someone on a bike or trike; usually pedaling a heavy load. I marveled at the strength and toughness of these people. A lot of them were old – even maybe in their eighties – and they were hauling really huge loads. We saw one old man pedaling a tricycle creakily, and in the wooden box on the back was his equally ancient wife. I held out my camera to ask if I could take a picture, and both their faces broke into wide grins.

We saw an old, old woman bent under an enormous load of firewood. It was tied in a bundle far larger than she was, and she was dragging it along the verge of the road. It occurred to me that 1) I bet two thirds of the folks over 65 in this country – both men and women - could probably bench press more than I can, and 2) as difficult as life must be, to have to work so hard at such an advanced age, there is something to be said for continuing to work and produce useful labor, both for physical and mental health.

(At any rate, I resolved to remember these haulers and riders of cargo bicycles anytime in the future I should feel tired and weak and overwhelmed by the road ahead of me on my bike. I used to consider myself to be fairly tough (“Whew – look at me riding up River Road from Trader Joe’s with $150 of groceries!”) but realize that I’m a whining baby compared with these people, who perform their labor without any silly self-congratulation. They perform feats of physical labor every day that soft Americans would consider literally impossible.)

Some way along our route to Yangshuo (65 kilometers away), I saw a farm with a collection of buildings quite near the road; there was a cluster of 30-40 people gathered amongst the buildings. Pollo and I wondered together whether it was a cooperative farm, and decided it probably was.

Another item of interest I saw was a sign – in both Chinese and English – saying something to the effect of: “School for All Children: Education is Good for Families and a Better China!”

We reached Yangshuo around 2:30, and headed immediately to a small restaurant on the main street. There was a table out front with baskets of all kinds of meat and about 30 different types of vegetable and mushrooms, all raw. The proprietor explained in sign language that we were to fill a small plastic basket (like a pencil basket you might see in a primary school classroom) with our choice of food. Once we’d selected what we wanted, he took our baskets in the back and, in minutes, came back with a freshly stir-friend meal. Mine (all vegetable and mushroom) cost 7 RMB, or about a dollar. And it was absolutely scrumptious.

Meanwhile, the owner/chef was looking intently at our bikes. He picked mine up (it was leaned against Pollo’s, which was leaning against the wall) and hefted it. Then he made a gesture as if asking to ride it. I tried to explain in sign language about the fixed gear; that if he were to stop pedaling the bike would pitch him off. I’m not sure he understood my motivation in keeping him from test-riding, but I thought it was better to be seen as mistrustful than to have him fall off in the street!

There was a tourism office just across the street, and so we stopped in briefly to ask about river tours and such. The helpful young woman showed me a route on our map so that we could ride our bikes to the start-point of the boat tour of the river. She also said we could get on a boat for about 100 RMB (a lot less than our friend Lucy had quoted us).

The ride back to Guilin was long and pretty rough for me. I could play the tough girl and shrug off a 130 K round-trip on a fixed gear bike…but I’d be a liar! Besides my lungs and windpipe feeling like those of a kid who’s just inhaled his first cigarette, my legs were tiring and my butt was feeling the strain of several seated hours. But we took it nice and easy, and made it back to our hotel just as dusk was falling. By this time, the lobby was totally gutted, and the construction crew had to pause in their labor to let us pick our way across to the elevator. This story for our grandkids just keeps getting better and better, Pollo and I remarked to each other.

We went out in the evening just to look around, and were glad we had; the streets were bustling with nightlife. Instead of a real dinner, we just snacked on street food: steamed chestnuts, mandarins, lychees, and some other nuts which looked like water buffalo horns!

The next day we went out on the bikes again, with the intent to ride to the little town on the Li river where we could find a boat to take us downstream on a tour. I had misjudged the distance to the turnoff for this little town (Yangdi), and it felt like a long way that we rode on the main highway before reaching the turnoff. This little road was more poorly paved than the main highway, and buses thundered by (mostly in the opposite direction) in the middle of the road. And – in a shock to my legs unaided by shifting gears – the little road wound up and down in addition to around. By this point we were getting very hungry, so stopped briefly for a snack of candy and nuts that we’d packed along.

Here and there we passed little shacks on the side of the road made of mud bricks with corrugated metal roofs or sometimes clay tiles. The mud bricks looked like they were just stacked together with no mortar. I wonder how the occupants stay warm in the damp chilly nights here. I guess it never gets much colder than it is now in this area, but the nights must get down to the low forties Fahrenheit, and I can’t imagine that unmortared bricks offer much insulation.

We finally arrived in Yangdi, and no sooner had entered the main street than we were swarmed by people shouting “Boat, boat, boat!” No, we shook our heads, and made the universal “eating” motion of bringing imaginary spoon to mouth. “OK! OK!” a woman beckoned to us, flapping her hand and running away from us, looking back over her shoulder to make sure we were following. “OK, OK!”

We looked at each other, shrugged, and decided to follow her and see what she had in mind. I’m undecided when it comes to these hawkers: on one hand they’re annoying and aggressive, but on the other hand they can provide a valuable service of leading us to what we’re looking for. We followed the woman, who had run down the street and turned off it into a little alley leading to the courtyard of a home. Beckoning and looking behind her, she led us into the courtyard. She called out to a young woman, who came out and smiled shyly at us. She bade us be seated at a little table in the courtyard, after leaning our bikes against a low wall. This table, and the chairs beneath it, looked like they belonged in a kindergarten classroom, so tiny and low they were. Pollo and I sank gratefully into them.

Then Pollo went to work “ordering” his lunch. He pointed at one of the chickens running around the courtyard. So the older woman went over to a bamboo basket with a few little hens inside, and grabbed one of them, squawking and clucking (the hen that is, not the woman). I’ll leave out what happened next for the sensitive souls among my readership, but suffice to say that Pollo was sitting down to a garlicky fried chicken within 20 minutes. He asked for some eggs for me, and surprisingly, they were prepared scrambled, with tomatoes – they were utterly delicious and tasted more like the cuisine I eat on a daily basis at home than anything else I’ve consumed during this trip. Oh, and I’d asked for vegetables too, and the next thing we knew, an enormous head of cabbage was presented on our little kiddie table, entire. I’d thought I was hungry, but the 5 eggs with tomatoes, plus mound of white rice, plus the discarded bits of chicken off Pollo’s plate, plus the stir-fried cabbage, totally finished my hunger off.

While we were eating, the older woman was washing clothes in the courtyard nearby with a large basin and a washboard. Pollo took off his Mengoni jersey and gestured to ask her to wash it, which she did without comment, hanging it to dry on a pole hanging from the roof for this purpose.

During the meal’s preparation and consumption, our hosts were trying to convince us to hire a man for the boat trip. But the first price they named – 500 RMB, made us think we’d have to reconsider the river trip. We only had a little over 300 RMB cash, and the meal was going to cost us, plus we’d have to have enough for the bus home once we disembarked from the boat. At first they thought we were just bargaining, and with a great show of capitulation, went down to 400 RMB. Finally, to get through to them, I took out my wallet and showed them all the money that we had. Since the young woman spoke some English, we could explain that we needed to get all the way back to Guilin with this money – not just to the end of the river tour. She understood, and they began what seemed to be an animated discussion of ways and means. Ultimately, with a small reduction in the price of the meal (whole chickens are expensive, as I think they should be – after all, how many eggs can be produced over the life of a free-ranging hen?), and setting aside the bus fare we’d need, they got the boat driver (possibly another member of the household) to agree to take us for about 200 RMB. (Pollo found a few more small notes in his pocket and gave them to his laundress.)

I’d changed into street clothes to be more comfortable before we started the meal, and Pollo followed suit before we left for the boat. This was moored just a few hundred yards away, across a rocky beach. We handed our bikes through the front door of the cabin to our driver and climbed in ourselves. The boat was about 30 feet long and had a low cabin behind the foredeck, where we sat on tiny wooden stools.

The photos from this part of our day will really tell the story better than any of my words possibly could. The famous limestone formations were just as stunning as I’d imagined. And there was plenty of cultural interest as well – from the water buffalo swimming wide-eyed into the current, to what looked like itinerant camps on the water’s edge. I was fascinated by the fishermen plying their long, narrow rafts (made out of about 6 enormous bamboo “tubes” lashed together and riding just barely above the water). They stood balanced in the middle, moving the rafts with one long pole and stopping to pull nets up from the bottom. We’d thought the water cold, dipping our hands in, but we saw a few people up to their armpits bathing. Our guide pointed out the names of some of the peaks (which are fantastically creatively named – like Grandfather Watching Apple, Penholder Peak, etc.) on a minute map of the river (obtained at some point, I imagine, from a slightly bigger river tour outfit). It was incredibly peaceful, floating along with the boat’s engine at a low hum and the sun very low in the sky.

When we arrived at Xingping, our tour was over. At this little hamlet, there were a lot of school children in sweatsuit-type uniforms – apparently at a camp – hauling buckets of water from the river up to a complex that housed the biggest building in the place. We stopped for several minutes to watch a few young girls try to fix the bicycle belonging to one of them; using sticks they were trying to push the chain back onto the chainrings. Pollo would have stepped in, but they succeeded and pedaled happily off. We followed them, after pointing down the road and asking if it went to Yangshuo.

It was 16 miles to Yangshuo, and although we’d planned to take the bus, all the ones we saw in Xingping were tiny buses, so we decided to ride. Man, I was so tired of my fixed gear by that point. And I’d never changed back to spandex, so I was riding in jeans…OK, I know the messengers have that style but wow – I don’t know how they do it. Ouch. Anyway, as we rolled slowly along the tiny road among country fields, the sun set and the sky slowly purpled. Pollo was calling out the mile markers as we went: “10 to go! 9 to go!” As it got darker, I was getting a little worried about making it in the dark. When a bus thundered by, Pollo threw up his hand to get it to stop, which it did. The driver opened the “trunk”, which was quite shallow, and we put the bikes in; since my wheels don’t have quick releases, my bike didn’t quite fit, and the driver couldn’t close the trunk completely. He wasn’t worried (he charged us for the bikes), but I looked out the back window the rest of the way back to make sure the bikes didn’t fly out.

The bus was full of quite a few tourists. One of them heard Pollo say something in Spanish, and answered him, and the next thing we knew there were a few voices calling greetings in Spanish. 2 guys were French, and another one was Greek but living in Cuba. I wanted to talk with them more, but as soon as we got off the bus in Yangshuo, we heard hawkers calling that a bus to Guilin was leaving, so we hustled over there and never saw our European friends again. I was actually feeling a little lonely for more company, and it would have been really nice to eat dinner with them and hang out for a while, trading stories about our China experiences.

We sat in the bus for a long time before it began to fill up and finally left for Guilin. Luckily, we were entertained by the Kung Fu movie playing on the bus’s TV screen. It was a good one – extremely goofy but with a self-deprecating humor, with English subtitles to let us in on all the quips. However, I was tired, tired, tired…and nodded off a few times on the way home. After what seemed like a long trip back to the Guilin train station, we forewent dinner in favor of bed.