A day in the life of a Cantonese village household
27 May 2012 5 Comments
A couple of posts ago I received comments intimating that readers would still be happy to read about the most mundane of my experiences in China. With that in mind, you’d better brace yourselves for the following post!
A couple of weeks ago I was invited to have lunch at the house of the mother of one of the grade 6 English teachers at our school, Vivian. My defining memory of Vivian will surely be of her regular, tricky questions about the use of English. The questions are particularly difficult to answer because they derive from the awkwardly phrased exam papers that bear no resemblance to natural spoken English. One example was ‘Is a window in or on the wall’. The real answer is that you wouldn’t ever say either, but that didn’t satisfy the exam question that poor grade 6 students are expected to answer.
Vivian and her husband, like us, live in the school during the week. She goes to her mother’s house most weekends where she tutors local grade 6ers and helps out her mother, who spends most of her time looking after two of her very cute grandchildren – Vivian’s niece and nephew. Vivian’s own son lives miles away with her in-laws (I can’t remember where) and she only gets to see him once a month, in what is apparently a fairly normal setup in this part of the world.
The invite came about when I asked what there was to do nearby over the weekend. She suggested a garden and a mountain (hill) not far from her mother’s house. As it turns out, I never made it to either. Her husband, on whom we were dependent for travelling, had to go off to do something. He was due back at about midday but didn’t return until about 5!
I was picked up at around 8:30 in the morning and we picked up some cheong fun for breakfast. Cheong fun, so named because of its resemblance to a pig’s intestine (mmmm!), is a filled roll of very thin rice noodle and doused in sweet soy sauce. It’s pretty good but notoriously difficult to eat with chopsticks!
When we got there I met Vivian’s mother, holding one grandchild with another wrapped around her back, and Vivian quickly got to work setting work for the four newly arrived primary school children there. I was left to my own devices, trying my best to tear away strips of stretchy rice noodle with a couple of splinters of wood! The house was dingy and basic to say the least. It seemed all homeliness had been compromised in favour of practicality. There was laundry everywhere – I wondered if the clothes all belonged to their family or if Vivian’s mother earned a little extra washing other people’s clothes. I spent the rest of the morning trying to help with the English teaching. I wasn’t much use as they were busy with practice exam papers.
As lunchtime approached, Vivian told me it was time to make some dumplings, and without further ado plates of dumpling dough circles and a big bowl of dumpling mix were brought onto the outside table. Vivian, the children and I proceeded to fold the mix into the dough ready to chuck into a soup. I think my first attempt at making dumplings turned out to be a success.
After lunch all but one of the school children left and I spent the afternoon keeping myself entertained with basketball, mahjong and cards. Next door they had a few ‘automatic’ mahjong tables. The tables were clearly specifically designed to facilitate rapid transition from game to game, allowing the four competitors, gambling their spare change, to play again and again almost obsessively. The tables each had two sets of tiles, which were shovelled into a hole in the middle of the table at the end of each game. And, with the touch of a button, the other set would magically arise from within the table fully set up in front of the four players ready for the next game. As the next game ensued the table is clattering away within setting up the next game. I was well impressed!
When Vivian’s husband and brother finally returned from their day’s duties, they immediately insisted that I join them for a game of basketball. Before, I was just ‘shooting hoops’ with the one remaining school child, but now I found myself involved in an intense three-a-side game in my crappy, old sandals! Unsurprisingly, Vivian’s P.E. teacher husband was very good and her brother was if anything better. I was way out of my depth!
I haven’t really mentioned in my blog that I have become quite taken with playing basketball since living in China, not ever having played it before (if you discount St. Mary’s junior school). We (Simon and I) rarely do more than shooting during our lunchtime break. But occasionally we have played games with the teachers. I’ve been meaning to show off for a while now that I have now hit 4 half-court shots. Unfortunately, Simon can only vouch for one of them, but a keen basketball-playing teacher witnessed my first! I’ve improved a lot in a year, but not quite enough to hold my own with the company on that afternoon in sandals.
We played until dinnertime. It was so nice to see the whole family converge on the table in the evening having spent the day out and about pursuing their own agendas. The family included Vivian, her mother, father, husband, two brothers and their wives, niece and nephew, and the schoolboy who had spent the whole day at his teacher’s mum’s house. We ate very traditional Cantonese food: peppers stuffed with fish, egg and tomatoes, green beans, soup and rice and I can’t remember what else. After dinner I was taken back to school by the mother of the boy I had played cards, mahjong and basketball. The day wasn’t what I thought it was going to be, but I enjoyed it nonetheless. I probably wouldn’t have said that if the day’s activities were normal day to day occurrences for me, but this was the first time I have been welcomed into a Cantonese family home and I’m glad to have experienced it however mundane.
Ballet
16 May 2012 4 Comments
I hadn’t mentioned before, but a few weeks ago I bought a ticket for Cuban National Ballet production of Swan Lake in GZ. I bought it at the hugely impressive GZ Opera House just across the river from the Canton tower while on my way to Hong Kong. I was heading to Hong Kong to pick up my Easter ‘care package’. I’m still making my way through the sugary delights that it contained! I actually ended up spending two nights at Eleanor’s flat, thinking I was in no hurry to get back for lessons on Monday (because I now rarely teach on a Monday). It was not until I got an unrelated call concerning a question about English grammar that I found that that Monday was to be a Tuesday! While in Hong Kong I met an old school friend of my mother’s and went to the beach where I received significantly more sun exposure than is probably healthy! That weekend was just about the time summer was starting to kick in, so Hong Kong’s coast was baking in 30* heat. Once again I was wonderfully looked after despite the pressures of keeping children who have been off school for three weeks entertained!
So that was the weekend I bought that ballet ticket. Last Wednesday (9th) was the day that I went to the ballet. I had chosen to go on a Wednesday because I knew that, without any afternoon lessons, I would have plenty of time to get to GZ and I could avoid the rush hour. With the performance not until 8, I left the school at two. On the way to the opera house I took a stroll around Liwanhu park, one of many scenic parks dotted around GZ, before grabbing a dish of egg and tomatoes and hopping back on the metro across the city. I still had a fair amount of time to spare so, rather than making a complicated series of changes to get to the right stop I decided to get off a walk from the nearby Tianhe stadium through Zhujiang New Town. Zhujiang (Pearl river) New Town is the trendy new business district that owes much of its impressive recent development to the Asian games that took place here two years ago (hence the stadium). It is densely packed with lofty skyscrapers, none loftier than the eye-catching Canton tower that overlooks the area from across the river. Each night the Canton tower is brightly lit with rainbow colours, constantly taking on new patterns. The walk towards the river is deliberately arranged to allow constant sight of the tower, so my walk that night was a veritable feast for the eyes. The sheer volume of flashing lights in all directions might have appeared tacky were it not so gosh darn impressive! I arrived in good time, though later than I expected because the height of the tower in the distance created the illusion I was much closer to my destination than I really was.
As I entered the threshold of the Guangzhou Opera House I was hit by a wave of cool air. I quickly found my seat in the middle and just a few rows from the very back of the auditorium. As I looked around me I noticed most people were flicking through their programs. I regretted not picking one up on the way in. I regretted it even more so when I found that they were sold out by the first interval. The usherettes were kind enough to offer to look for a copy during the second act for me, but to no avail. Going to a classical ballet performance, I was looking forward to the music as much as anything else, so I was disappointed to find that there was not an orchestra in sight, but just loudspeakers. I’m hardly a seasoned attendee of ballet performances, but it struck me odd that every solo performance was followed by applause and bowing. It might just be my musical sensibility, but I felt this compromised the performance’s artistic integrity. Perhaps this was to appease an audience that seemed ill at ease with silence. I mentioned in my earlier posts on going to the theatre and Baiyun mountain the ubiquity of noise in China. Apparently it’s no different with the ballet-going upper-echelons of Guangzhou society. There were members of the audience who just couldn’t keep it to themselves if they were particularly impressed by a fancy pirouette or a daring leap. At one point, one person seemed to decide that a solo had gone on quite long enough and proceeded to applaud without inhibition, this set off a chain reaction amongst those whose concentration was wavering. Shining brightly through all this irritation was, to an untrained eye, a beautifully portrayed and choreographed display of athleticism. It was clear enough to me why Cuba’s National Ballet company is so highly regarded.
I talked again with the usherettes at the end of the performance and found that they were also heading towards the GZ metro. In typically Chinese concern for my well-being, they made sure to see me off on the correct train for my destination as if I had never been to GZ before. It was the cherry on top of a thoroughly satisfying expedition into GZ. Reading back, I realise I didn’t do Liwanhu park justice. Hopefully the pictures will amend that. Please note the link below. All will become clear when you click on it.
www.justgiving.com/Chris-Edis0
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*insert innuendo here*
05 May 2012 16 Comments
Since my last post (crouching tigre) the heat has hit southern China, and will be here to stay until around October. And with the heat have come the storms. In the past few weeks we have regularly experienced booming thunderstorms that exceed anything I have experienced at home. In this heat, sweating has also reached unprecedented levels. At midday I need do no more than sit down and I’ll be dripping! Three showers a day has become standard. It’s not pretty, but you should know how underrated Britain’s mild weather is!
Last weekend we (Amy, Emma, Cari and I) went to visit Danxia Shan. Danxia Shan is a UNESCO world heritage site a couple of hours north of GZ. We were taking advantage of three day’s holiday for May Day. I say three days but, given we had to work a Saturday and that one of the days was a Sunday, it was effectively one day’s holiday. We met Cari and Emma in GZ. A night in GZ was ample excuse for revisiting that Turkish restaurant! Another reason to choose the Turkish place is that Chinese restaurants weren’t likely to be open after 10. It was my third time at ‘Bosphorus’ having been very kindly treated by Simon’s visiting parents a few weeks ago. Before you go chastising my parents for not visiting, Simon’s parents live in Shanghai. Before dinner we had to find a place to buy tickets to Shaoguan, the nearest city to Danxia Shan. Inevitably, GZ was packed with people trying, like us, to make the most of the short holiday. Having tried two GZ stations (the first only had standing tickets at the wrong time; the second, the ticket office was closed), we settled for the more expensive coach.
We spent the night at the same hostel we had before. I had to settle for a pullout sofa because they had run out of space in the dorm. This meant I couldn’t get to bed until everyone else in the hostel decided to go to bed. On the plus side, this meant that I met some friendly people. I met a Turkish guy who spoke very good Mandarin, a Chinese girl called Eva, and a French guy who was working in Shanghai called Victor. That night I was mutilated by mosquitos! I think I just about managed 3 hours’ sleep. Fortunately, there was plenty of time to catch up on sleep on the 3 1/2 hour coach journey to Shaoguan. We spent the rest of our day walking around Shaoguan, attracting many a fascinated look from the locals (significantly more than usual). Shaoguan was a pleasant city, built along the river with an attractive park, ample shopping, flower stalls, and of course the ubiquitous KFC and McDonald’s!
Monday was set aside for seeing Danxia shan. The mountain was an hour from Shaoguan by bus. We arrived and joined the swarms of people queuing in the stifling heat for a ticket. The crowds continued as we attempted to board the shuttle bus that took us from the entrance to the feet of the mountains. It was every man for himself each time we got on a bus. To wait for the next bus in a couple of minutes was absolutely unthinkable! Our first port of call was probably Danxia’s best known attraction. From the chock-a-block paths we could see a very suggestively shaped rock that, for obvious reasons, goes by the name ‘Male rock’. There was a variety of anatomically themed rocks as well as a few other strange interpretations of the rock formations. Having negotiated the giggling tourists, vying for the best vantage point to take a photo of Danxia’s defining image, we gladly moved onto the main walking paths of Danxia Shan. On the way we caught sight of the ‘Elephants shuffling out of the mountain’ range. There was certainly a resemblance once it had been pointed out to us! It was a relief to get to the long, demanding, winding paths that are a true reflection of what Danxia has to offer. Not least because the claustrophobic number of tourists was stretched more thinly. It was by this time around midday and the heat was beginning to take its toll. After climbing a particularly daunting flight of steps to see ‘Candlestick mountain’ my shirt was wet through and so it remained for the remainder of the walk. By the time we had completed a circuit of the lake encompassed by the mountains, it was already time to head back to Shaoguan to get the train. I thought it was a shame we didn’t spend more time in Danxia because I was thoroughly enjoying the physical exertion of the undulating walk and could have gone on hours longer. Having said that, we did rather cleverly avoid a short but very sharp burst of rainfall (though that would hardly have made me any wetter!).
The train that we had booked the night before just so happened to be one of the new bullet trains. The super fast was to take about a quarter the time of the bus and was actually 5 yuan cheaper. It was a pain trying to get to the station to book the trains because every time we tried to ask a taxi driver to take us to the main station, he would assume we were talking about Shaoguan East. It later became obvious why when the bullet train station turned out to be about 20 minutes’ drive from Shaoguan and completely brand spanking new, only recently having superseded Shaoguan East as the main city station. This enormous and modern station was eerily empty and anomalously quiet. We arrived at the ‘departure lounge’ to discover that our train, a feat of engineering that stands at the very forefront of worldwide technological achievement, was delayed by more than the amount of time our journey was to take. It was no real concern as I was in no great rush and I met a nice Chinese lady who taught Chinese in a GZ middle school. Once we boarded the bullet train we enjoyed an immensely satisfying travelling experience: Air-con, comfy seats, smooth ride, and an led display proudly advertising speeds of up to 305 km/h.
That’s all for this week’s post. Comments are welcome as always, and I’m going to make a special effort to respond to everyone because it’s thanks to your feedback that this blog is still going. So now’s the time ask any burning questions!
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What’s going on here?
28 Apr 2012 6 Comments
I think I have established why blogging has suddenly become more of a chore than it was before. Since returning from our SE Asia trip life here has ceased to be newsworthy to me and has become routine. I realise my new experiences here are hardly less newsworthy for you, but it’s difficult to see it that way. It’s a sign that I am more settled and content with our situation here. Good for me, but not so much the readers of this blog! Rather than letting it defeat me I’m going to (yet again!) make a concerted effort to write up a weekly post.
I have about 20 minutes until I need to leave for GZ before heading to a place called Dan Xia Shan tomorrow with Amy, Cari and Emma, so today won’t be the day that I get my act together. But when I get back, I’ll have a good subject for the post that is to get me back on track!
Sorry for such a non-post. I can assure you the next will be more substantial. I guess this post is to show you that, despite appearances, I haven’t forgotten my blogging responsibilities. Please bear with me!
Hanoi: Sapa
14 Apr 2012 7 Comments
The trip to Sapa began with the night train from Hanoi. The train journey was 8 hours long – not long enough for a decent night’s sleep when you factor in settling into your bunk bed and being awoken at 5am by ear splitting Vietnamese opera! Half an hour before our train was due to leave we were hurried into a minivan with the one other person from our hostel on the trip, Maria from Argentina, a guide to help us onto the train, and the driver. It was just as well we had a guide because the train station was just about as chaotic as Hanoi’s streets. There were no mopeds, but hustling and bustling in all directions with their luggage trying to find the right platform in the dark. I say platform, but there really wasn’t anything of the sort. I merely refer to the stony ground from which you board your train. There was no designated area for crossing the tracks; people just stepped over them as they pleased. It was truly amazing that Vietnam’s train service could function at all, this being its capital.
After double and triple checking we had found our way on to the correct train and compartment we decamped in our compartment, which was shared with two quiet and unassuming Vietnamese women. As the train trundled on time out of Hanoi, we settled into our top bunks for the night. It was on this trip I realised the appeal of long distance. I was filled with a childish joy as I watched the barely lit towns and countryside pass by from under my blanket. I was to experience the worst of train travel before the rip was through, but at that moment I wouldn’t have wished to be anywhere else. Our sleep was rudely interrupted by the voices of wailing opera singers at around 5am. We drew up the station still almost an hour before dawn. We had to find our guide waiting for us at the station. Trust was a real issue because, just as with any station in SE Asia, we weren’t short of offers for taxi rides! It was obvious we had eventually found the right person because he was able to reel off our names. We yet again hopped into a mini van only vaguely aware of the tightly winding roads as we made the ascent towards Sapa. In between sleep I noticed the light of the new sun was reflecting off the barely visible hills below us. As it got lighter, it became clear that the light was reflecting off the rice paddies that striped the hills all the way up.
On our arrival at a hotel in Sapa, a French colonial town in the northwest reaches of Vietnam, we were allowed a shower in their rooms and a buffet breakfast that included coffee – utterly essential on this particular morning. The breakfast table was our first real opportunity to get to know the other people joining us on our ‘trek’ (I’m using inverted commas because it wasn’t all that demanding). There was Maria, whom we had briefly met already before getting on the train, and Jenny and her brother Robin from Sweden. Robin was visiting his sister who lived in Singapore and Maria was in the middle of three months in SE Asia having lived and worked in New Zealand for six months. During our breakfast we noticed that some members (all female) of the local H’mong tribe, armed with bags full of locally made merchandise, were well aware of our arrival and were spying us from the perimeter of the hotel’s property. We prepared ourselves for an onslaught of aggressive selling when we left the hotel, but it never came. What we didn’t realise was that they were playing the long game! Instead of taking the first opportunity to sell their goods they simply accompanied us on the walk. They were actually delightful company and earned the right to make a bit of money off us when we got to our lunchtime stop. They spoke remarkably good English – obviously having done this walk hundreds of times. We thought about how much the children at our school struggle when a girl, who couldn’t have been much older than 8 and had probably never been to school, was able to hold a conversation with us, They were eager to help if we reached any difficult terrain and they also made us toy animals out of the grass.
Also delightful company was our guide Muon (I’m only guessing at the spelling). He was also a member of a minority tribe but had ditched the traditional attire to be a guide. He seemed to always have a smile on his face and was always more than happy to answer questions. The real highlight, though, was the scenery. The terraced rice paddies that lined the valley all the way down were very pleasing to the eye, and further in the distance we could see the Fansipan, the highest peak in all of SE Asia. This was all complimented perfectly by the emergence of the sun during the morning. The sky was clear for the rest of our time in Sapa valley. We were told in no uncertain terms that we should be prepared for cold weather, as the average temperature there is significantly lower than that of Hanoi because of its altitude. It turned out that I needn’t have heeded this advice because, even without the sun shining for most of the day, the effort that went into lugging around everything I had with me on my back was easily enough to keep me far too warm.
The novelty of eating fresh bread hadn’t worn off by the time we had lunch that day after three months of living in China. Even more gratifying were the laughing cow cheese and the ham that came with this lunch. In normal circumstances I couldn’t imagine a less remarkable lunch, but that day it was a revelation! After lunch, a different group of women accompanied us for the shorter remaining stretch to our homestay location. These women were from the Red Dao tribe. They were far more obvious in their motives than their predecessors, which made them altogether less redeeming. Also, by that time the game had been given away. Each one of them had specifically chosen one of us as a ‘friend’ hoping that that friend would buy something from them at the end of the walk. It would have been easier to fold and buy something small from them but for the fact they just as the H’mong women did before, were charging real money for their, albeit high quality, textile bags and silver bracelets. All the same things were available in Hanoi for a lower price.
Our afternoon walk was pretty flat and took us through a Red Dao village. We were able to see the machines and tools that they used to make their clothes and their food. Having escaped the relentless hassling of our companions we reached our homestay village, which seemed to be a sort of ‘no go’ area for the minorities who wanted to sell their goods. There were still a few hours of daylight left and we took this opportunity to relax on the large rocks that provided a river crossing at the bottom of our village. I’m not sure I’ve ever felt so at peace as I did lying on that rock with a combination of sun and a cool breeze keeping me at just the right temperature. I could have stayed there for hours longer had the sun not dipped behind Vietnam’s tallest mountain range.
That evening our hosts treated us to a wonderful meal. The woman who prepared the meal for us had clearly been doing this sort of thing for a while and she was very adept at keeping us at ease. Her main tool in helping her achieve this was rice wine. I had only once before encountered this foul spirit that the Vietnamese call ‘happy water’ in China. I guess I couldn’t argue with this name given that the evening was certainly a happy one. After we had eaten and sat and talked for a while by the fire, our hosts took us do somewhere in the village where there was music and dancing. I call it dancing, but it was really just jumping over sticks. The people jumping over sticks were actually students from a Vietnamese international school. It wasn’t really as great as it sounds. The music came from a sound system and it was really only put on to keep the school teens entertained for an evening. Far more impressive was the dazzling night sky as we walked back to our homestay to go to sleep.
I woke up early the next day having slept beautifully. No one else was awake so I followed the sound of the rushing river and dipped my feet in the cool water and watched occasional villager slowly making their way across the river. Our breakfast consisted of pancakes, bananas, honey and coffee. We soon set off and made our way further down the valley. The walking on this day was a little more challenging, with steep climbs and descents and tiptoeing to avoid mud as we walked through bamboo forests. The walk brought us to the top of a waterfall with breathtaking views. In fact, the whole morning brought more views that a camera couldn’t really do justice.
Lunchtime and the end of our ‘trek’ came all too soon. It was a shame we didn’t really get a full two days of walking in the valley. But the time that we did get was very special. We had time in the afternoon to see the market in Sapa and to get a drink and a French-style meal. We were just killing time before we had to get the minivan back to the station. In the van we again met a Canadian couple that had been in the minivan on the way to Sapa. We chatted about our respective experiences in Sapa and it seemed utterly bizarre that it was only the day before we had been drowsily driving at dawn to the hotel in Sapa town, The chaos that ensued at the station was hardly any different from Hanoi two nights before, but it was a whole lot easier to take a second time around. The snorer we got in our compartment highlighted how lucky we had been with our first experience of travel by train in SE Asia.
We again alighted our train at around 5am. Hanoi at 5am is a million miles from Hanoi at 5pm. The streets and the pavements were empty – as you would expect. People were just beginning to emerge to set up their stalls for the day. This walk back to our hostel was a perfect illustration of how much Hanoi is defined by the chaos of its streets. Finally arriving at the hostel far too early for breakfast, we slumped into a vegetative state. And so our Sapa trip ended very much how it began: hanging around the communal area of our hostel waiting for a minivan to pick us up and take us on the next trip.
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Another show
02 Apr 2012 11 Comments
Contrary to popular belief, today (April fools’ day) was Friday. We have the next three days off because it is the national ‘tomb cleaning’ holiday. In Chinese schools it is standard practice to make up for days lost to holiday at the weekend, therefore completely defeating the point of a holiday. Still, overall we’ve managed one day off. Had it not been for my depleted schedule, I would now be a wreck having completed seven school days on the trot.
I might have mentioned before that on Fridays the school puts on a show to keep the parents, who have come to pick up their children, amused. It just so happened that today’s show took an English theme. It was basically a compressed version of the school shows we did last term involving grades 1 to 5. It was also another opportunity for us to make complete fools out of ourselves (which was appropriate given the date!). It was presented by four grade 5 students who were presented with a script containing highly suspect English.
After a few dance routines from grades 1 to 3, we all had to take part in a ‘fashion show’ which involved many of the English teachers. I took this opportunity to debut the new tailor-made suit I had acquired in Thailand. I was paired with Beryl and we and the other two grade 3 teachers (Nicky and Francine) had to present a series of poses that we had hastily run through the day before. The next piece was a game that I had to play with grade 3 and Nicky’s assistance. The game was ‘Simon says’ but the words ‘Simon says were replaced with ‘uh-oh’. Don’t ask me why! My explanation of the rules in English fell on deaf ears. The children are brilliant at quickly picking up and sticking to a set of rules, so it was almost impossible to catch them out when they had been well drilled and were especially keen not to falter in front of an audience.
The next game was with grade 2, and involved us three. The game this time was ‘duck, duck, goose’. Again gifted the pointless task of explaining ourselves in English, I was happy to pass over the mike to one of the children to start off the game. She needed a little help when it got to the point where she wanted to say ‘goose’, but the game went smoothly enough. The only thing was that the stage wasn’t nearly deep enough for our purposes so the chase spilled onto the steps above.
I wasn’t able to witness Simon’s involvement in the final grade 1 piece, but I wish I had. In April the children were singing ‘we wish you a merry Christmas’. And you’ll never guess the part Simon had to play…! The grade 3 teachers wanted to get photos of us in our fashion show get-ups. I’m hoping there’ll be photos of the show on the website but, for now, I just have a selection of the photos we took just after the show. For some reason Beryl omitted the pictures omitted the pictures including herself. I have only uploaded 4 photos because our internet is spectacularly slow at the moment (it has been for at least a week). One picture takes about 5 minutes!
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Crouching tigre, sitting duck
24 Mar 2012 10 Comments
The reading figures for the blog have dropped dramatically to an all time low. I only have myself to blame. It’s a struggle writing about things that happened two months ago. I’m more comfortable in the recent past, and so this post is another deviation from writing about SE Asia.
Last weekend saw a massive rise in temperature, and in the last few days the ubiquity of puddle has finally ceased. Yay! It also saw the return of the mosquito – my main reason for hesitation when deciding whether I prefer ‘too hot’ or ‘too cold’. ‘Tigre’ is not a typo but a reference to the stripy brand of mosquito that I had to contend with during my year in Bologna. I received my first mosquito bite of 2012 in China in a hostel in GZ. The bastard got me square on the forehead while I slept.
I was in a hostel last Friday night after celebrating Amy’s birthday. A group of eight ate of us at a Turkish restaurant in GZ. The food was great and entirely authentic. The almost exclusively Turkish clientele that filled the tables to capacity was a testament to the quality of the restaurant. But we had to get there first. Amy, Simon and I left school at 3 and we did not sat down in the restaurant until 8. This did include an hour or so settling into the hostel, but it is still dispiriting losing a large chunk of the day to travel. Once we finally got round to it, we did have a great night, although there was still a significant amount of time spent in taxis. What’s frustrating with getting taxis in GZ is that you can never be sure that they understand what you are trying to say. They’d rather just guess and take the fair. It doesn’t matter if they say they know where they’re going. We had among us a French guy called Damien who could speak Mandarin pretty well, and still we struggled to communicate what we wanted. Even getting the taxi back to the hostel, which we had walked to once in daylight, we were entirely reliant on the name of the main road and my sketchy memory of what the place looked like. The rest of the night was spent pubbing and clubbing in true western style. Not really my cup of tea, but I can’t say that I didn’t enjoy it.
The week since has contained little out of the ordinary. We’ve been teaching in the day and going out to eat dinner in the evening as we do most days. At ‘English day’ on Tuesday the entire school sang happy birthday to Amy. You should check out the video I posted on Facebook of one of Simon’s classes dancing to Jackson 5 and singing happy birthday. I’ll try and get it up on Youtube so that everyone can watch it. Hopefully there’ll be more videos to come.
I’m not sure I’ve mentioned Tick’s yet. It’s actually called Kaya and it’s ‘the only bar in the village’. We call it Tick’s after its owner. We’ve spent a huge amount of time there playing cards and liar’s dice so it’s only right that it should be mentioned in this blog. On Wednesday they were showing the CBA (Chinese basketball association) playoff final between GZ and Beijing. Beijing were comfortable winners but GZ are still in with a shout as it’s the best of 7 just like in the NBA. GZ are nicknamed the Tigers and Beijing are nicknamed the Ducks. Beijing’s name is already comical, but even more so when you consider that a Cantonese speaker reading the team’s name at the end of the court would read it as ‘The Peking ducks’. Sounds like a good Sunday buffet, not the best basketball team in China!
Everything is puddle!
12 Mar 2012 6 Comments
I’m taking a brief interlude from writing about our trip to describe to you the weather situation of recent weeks. As you can imagine, it was always going to feel cold coming back from Thailand. The cold here is greatly exacerbated by the humidity and the complete lack of heat or insulation in any buildings. Almost every day, the children have been wrapped up in thick coats during lessons. In the school building and the canteen, windows and doors are open all the time, which can be completely exasperating. Even in our flats, where we do have the sense to close windows, it wouldn’t be more than a day before the temperature inside matches a drop in temperature outside.
But this is nothing we haven’t dealt with before. Was has been different lately is that the humidity is even higher than before. This means much more rain. Rain that refuses to evaporate no matter how much time you give it. The outside basketball courts have been harbouring standing water for about three weeks straight. Some clothes have had to hang for over a week before we give up and just wear them slightly damp. Outside the school, there have been extensive road works adding a lane to the dual carriageway. This has a huge inconvenience to us. Seemingly the only people who walk anywhere from our school, we have been forced to take this hazardous route into town. We are confronted with an unappealing choice each time we leave school: tiptoe over bricks and paving stones along the extremely narrow bit of road barriered off for pedestrians, or walk along the side of the road facing the traffic. On the way back we usually catch a moto taxi. The humidity and rain have prevented any progress with the roadworks, which means that this has been the status quo as long as the basketball courts have been out of action.
The worst by-product of this combination of moisture in the air and cold is the condensation. On several days we have woken to find that the tiled floor outside our flats have been covered in sheets of water, the tiled walls all covered in beads of water. If we had left any windows open, it would be no different in our flats. The situation, if anything, has been worse in the school building. The children have rarely played outside their classrooms in weeks. And there has been no morning exercise for all this time. At its height, the moisture was even enough to put the lifts temporarily out of action. This can’t be an unusual occurrence, as it has barely been commented upon by the teachers at all. But you would have thought that some precaution could be made to ensure that this condensation isn’t so disruptive. A perfect demonstration of the non-cautious approach here was made when I asked what had happened to the music that we had become accustomed to in morning tea. I was told that the CD-player had been broken by rain. I guess you’ve just got to laugh!
The weather has improved in the past few days, but there is still rain to come if BBC weather can be believed.
There are now photos up for the previous post. Take a look if you haven’t already. The post on Sapa and Halong bay is underway!
Hanoi: Hoa Lu and Tam Coc
09 Mar 2012 7 Comments
The next stop of our trip was Hanoi. I’m going to have to turn this part into two posts because there’s simply too much material to fit in. The next part will cover Sapa and Halong Bay.
Hanoi is the capital of Vietnam and has been for most of the last thousand years (the 1000-year anniversary of its foundation was just over a year ago; Vietnam’s only other capital). France’s 50-year occupation of the country has a profound effect upon the main cities in Vietnam, not least in Hanoi, which served as the capital of French Indochina (The French-occupied territory that comprised Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia). To us this effect manifested itself particularly in the appearance of the buildings in and around Hanoi and also in the cuisine. But most memorable of Hanoi’s traits, though not necessarily the most endearing is the swarms of motorcycles that descend on the city every day. I’ve heard various statistics about their number compared to the total population. The one that’s stuck is the one told to us by our guide on the bus to Halong Bay. He said there were 5.8 million people and 3.8 million bikes. True or not, it’s like nothing else in the world.
The sheer number of motorcycles is what first struck us as we shared a taxi with Mike, whom we had met on the bus, from the bus station to our hostel in the old quarter. The relatively short journey took a long time, edging our way precariously across each junction. The bikes, like wasps, buzzed around us. Though wasps don’t have horns, which the drivers in Vietnam use at every opportunity no matter how empty the streets are. You’ve just got to hope you don’t get stung! It later transpired, when we met Mike by chance, that our taxi driver had an ulterior motive for elongating the journey. Despite having determined an already high price for the three of us, the driver had the cheek to charge Mike the ridiculous price he had managed to rack up on his dodgy meter. Mike stood his ground and refused to pay more than the agreed price, and after a good few minutes of litigation the driver drove off with one of Mike’s bags still in the back of the car. Luckily, a travel agents Mike knew from a previous visit had the presence of mind to take down his number. Remarkably, the driver later sheepishly brought back the bag, leaving his number and insisting that Mike call it and pay up at a later stage. From then on we probably became over suspicious of the taxi drivers who would tussle for your custom at the destination of any intercity coach or train, especially after our experience in Yangshuo too.
I have to admit my heart sunk a little when we first stepped foot into our hostel in Hanoi, ‘Hanoi Backpackers’ Hostel’. It was everything I feared it might be despite positive reviews and high ratings on Hostelworld. We might as well have walked into a bar in Newcastle for all the bronzed partygoers and the loud obnoxious music that drowned the communal area on the ground floor. To me it was a feeling at once familiar and alienating. As it turned out the hostel itself figured little in our experience of Hanoi and the rooms and facilities were actually excellent for the price. Also, through them we booked one of the highlights of the whole trip – our two-day outing to Sapa valley.
Out of fear from not being able to get to Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) because of the Tet (Vietnamese name for the lunar new year) holiday, we were harried into rash and expensive decisions. Though, given the chance again, I couldn’t confidently say that I would have done any of it differently. All at the same time, we booked a trip for the next day to Tam Coc, our trip to Sapa valley, and our 35-hour train to Ho Chi Minh City. Maybe it would have been better to fly, as most people did, but it would have taken away from the trip had we booked a flight. You can catch a flight to anywhere you like and the experience would be much the same, but the train would be unique.
Our first full day in Vietnam was spent on the day trip we had booked to Hoa Lu and Tam Coc. Day trips are easy to come by in Vietnam, since a lot of what Vietnam has to offer lies outside the cities. The hostel books you a place with a travel agency; the agency sends a minibus complete with guide and driver to pick up the happy travellers from their respective hostels all over the city before heading to its destination. Our first destination that day was Hoa Lu, Vietnam’s ‘ancient capital’. It was a seat of power for only 41 years before moving 90km north in 1009AD to where Hanoi now stands. It was nice, after months of living in China, to see something of genuine historical significance. But Hoa Lu offered little beyond that. There were a couple of temples, which were certainly not 1000 years old, and very similar to the Buddhist temples we had seen in China. The guide’s English wasn’t really good enough to provide an insight into the remains. Instead, it was the surrounding scenery that stole the show. And it was for the scenery that we hopped back in the minivan and went to Tam Coc.
After a buffet lunch, the two of us were rowed along a stretch of water that snaked through karst ‘towers’ much like those in Yangshuo, though perhaps not as tall. Our oarsmen, like most of the others that plied their trade there, used his feet rather than his hands. An ingenious way to reduce the effort of a long row, but requiring a fair amount of dexterity of foot! He took great pride in the speed at which he propelled us, repeatedly indicating to us that our boat was ‘number one’. Tam Coc, meaning three caves, is so named because of the natural caves that you pass through along this route. Our winding path was lined with rice paddies, but you wouldn’t have known, as it was a long way off harvest time. This hour and a half boat was at least as spectacular as anything we had seen in Yangshuo – almost too much to take in all at once.
After the boat ride there was just enough time to fit in a short cycle ride through more rice paddies before heading back – probably too short for it to have been worthwhile. But the whole day trip was worth it for the three caves of Tam Coc alone. Back in Hanoi we had plenty of time to find somewhere nice to eat. So we followed the advice of our guidebook to a place a fair distance. On the way and completely by coincidence, we bumped into our Californian coach companion, Mike. It was then we learnt of his altercation with our taxi driver. Mike joined us for dinner and we discussed our future plans in Vietnam. It turned out to be great choice of restaurant. It was a big place and the rows of full tables (mostly outside) were a testament to its deserved popularity. We ordered a Vietnamese pancake on the recommendation of the waitress. This turned out to be a sort of make-your-own spring roll. When a waiter saw that we were obviously struggling to eat it he demonstrated, with incredible finesse, how to construct the spring roll with the rice paper greenery and seafood. I tried with my hands to replicate what he had managed with chopsticks. Needless to say I failed completely! Still, that and my Pho (noodle soup) made for one of the best meals of the trip.
The next day was our Hanoi day – the day we had set aside to explore the city itself. It was actually (with the exception of our minibus ride to Halong Bay) the last time we saw Hanoi in daylight, despite the fact our departure of Hanoi was still three days away. It will become clear why later on. We started our day having endured another terrible night’s sleep. There was nothing wrong with our dormitory, but rather one of its occupants. For two nights running this guy had woken us both up in the middle of the night. The tragic irony is that, as he had woken us up, he was enjoying blissful sleep. He managed this with his truly monumental snore! I have never heard anything like it, and I’m sure Amy would say the same. Once I had given up on sleep, his snoring even distracted me from reading. That very morning, I discovered that we had met the snorer on our first evening in Hanoi – a perfectly pleasant Australian traveller. We hadn’t worked out that we were in the same dorm before because we went to sleep and woke up before him. I actually found it difficult to converse with him, knowing the suffering he had inadvertently caused!
Another less redeeming feature of our stay in this hostel was the free breakfast. It was clearly deliberately bad to encourage us to go for the cooked breakfast. It consisted of going stale rolls, butter and choices between a bizarre relish and a sorry excuse for marmalade, and between pre-mixed coffee sachets and Lipton’s yellow label tea, which is ubiquitous in all places that don’t ‘get’ tea. They underestimated my thriftiness. If they offer a free breakfast, then a free breakfast I’ll get! Besides, the breakfast was made up for in two significant ways. Firstly, the big screens showing live Australian open games (I particularly remember a gripping encounter between Lleyton Hewitt and Cedrik-Marcel Stebe); secondly, another of France’s more positive legacies in Vietnam is the coffee. Anywhere you go in Vietnam you’re likely to find quality coffee. It is often drunk with sweetened condensed milk (perhaps that’s the USA’s input into Vietnam’s unique brand of coffee). For those that like it, it makes for an excellent iced coffee.
Finally steeled for a full day in Hanoi, we set off first to Hoan Kiem Lake. This lake is a defining feature of central Hanoi, evidenced by the several happy couples that had chosen it as the venue for their ‘western-style’ wedding photo shoot. A large lake right in the very centre of activity in the city, its serenity offers a welcome reprieve from the surrounding roads that are beset with unrelenting chaos. The extremely rare species of turtle that dwells within has given rise to a legend in which the Emperor, Le Loi, returns a sword to the golden turtle god, Kim Qui. We saw one of these turtles on display on one of the two islands in the lake, which is easily accessed via a bridge. The other island is very small and has just enough space for ‘Turtle tower’, which is lit up at night.
After that, we visited Hanoi’s neo-gothic, catholic cathedral, St. Joseph’s. Unmistakably an allusion to the Notre Dame with its circular stained glass, it was little bit of Paris hidden away in the back streets of Hanoi. We helped ourselves to a croque monsieur and an omelette for lunch. Once replete, our next stop was to be the temple of literature. The temple is dedicated to Confucius, sages and scholars, and functioned as a university from 1076-1779, meaning that it predated any university in Europe. The temple grounds are made up of five successive courtyards that contain, among other things, turtle stele with the names of successful graduates and fish-filled ponds. At the end there was a performance of traditional music. I had not heard such instruments being played since I went to Shanghai around ten years ago with the Haringey Young Musicians’ Big Band. It was delightful. I listened and reflected on what a shame it is that so few people learn these instruments nowadays. After we left the temple, I got a shave on the street. I had deliberately left without any shaving equipment, with the intention of allowing a chin of hair to grow. But it was irritating me so I gave up on the idea.
The temple is dedicated to Confucius, sages and scholars, and functioned as a university from 1076-1779, meaning that it predated any university in Europe. The temple grounds are made up of five successive courtyards that contain, among other things, turtle stele with the names of successful graduates and fish-filled ponds. At the end there was a performance of traditional music. I had not heard such instruments being played since I went to Shanghai around ten years ago with the Haringey Young Musicians’ Big Band. It was delightful. I listened and reflected on what a shame it is that so few people learn these instruments nowadays. After we left the temple, I got a shave on the street. I had deliberately left without any shaving equipment, with the intention of allowing a chin of hair to grow. But it was irritating me so I gave up on the idea.
Next on the day’s agenda after seeing the temple of literature was to visit Ho Chi Minh’s mausoleum. Ho Chi Minh, largely responsible for reuniting Vietnam and repelling the French and the Americans, is practically worshipped. His visage is plastered all over Vietnam, not least on every bank note whether it be worth 500 Dong (roughly 1.5p) or 500,0000 (£15). You can go inside and see the embalmed body of ‘uncle Ho’. It’s curious that a nation that adores him so would deny him his dying wish to be cremated. We didn’t go inside because it happened to be closed to the public when we got there. Instead we just rested while listening to the ridiculously jolly patriotic songs that blared out all around. So severe was the guard stationed outside the mausoleum that one of the guards blasted his whistle furiously at a small girl when she strayed slightly too close.
The walk back to the old quarter was fraught with danger. It coincided with rush hour in Hanoi. Traffic lights were largely irrelevant at that or any time. In fact, so were pavements! There isn’t a time of day where the roads aren’t swarming with motorcycles. It’s pretty simple, though scary, to negotiate the roads when there are only motorcycles because the onus is on them to avoid you. The problem with rush hour is you can hardly cross the road the same way when there are cars involved. Having made it back unscathed, we used our remaining time that day preparing for our two-day trip to Sapa – the night train was to leave at 9 that evening. After a hearty western dinner, I picked up the laundry I dropped off that morning and we retrieved our bags from storage. I was to regret not purchasing a smaller bag and leaving the bigger one in Hanoi for the trekking up hills.
So ended our experience of Hanoi city three days before catching the train from Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh City. Still to come before then was Sapa and Halong Bay.
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Yangshuo
27 Feb 2012 8 Comments
Guilin, Guanxi province, and the area around it, is legendarily beautiful. So much so that each and every 20 yuan note is adorned by its fantastical karstic landscape. ‘karst’, wikipedia tells me, is the technical name for the mystically bizarre rock formations that this, and other areas, is famous for. We were to see more such rock formations in the north of Vietnam. Less than 5o miles south of Guilin lies Yangshuo. Yangshuo is the go-to place for travellers wishing soak in the staggering scenery without having to negotiate the city. It doesn’t matter where you are in Yangshuo, there’s a photo opportunity everywhere you look.
It didn’t come all that easy, though. Our trip, as we always knew before, coincided with the largest annual migration in the world. At Chinese New Year roads, trains, buses and planes are crammed with Chinese people taking the opportunity to go home to their families. To give you an idea of the extremity of this migration: We’re not talking about any journey, but a journey between two of the four principal agglomerations of the world. Simon, on requesting a ticket from GZ to Shanghai, was informed that, unless he bought a ticket for that day or the day after, he could not get a single train ticket in the next 4 weeks. Can you imagine every single seat on every single train from London to Edinburgh being fully booked for four weeks?
We experienced this migration in full force when we went to GZ central to buy our bus ticket to Yangshuo the week before leaving. Luckily, Yangshuo wasn’t one of the more popular locations on the map, so a week before leaving was ample time. Outside the train were thousands upon thousands of people queueing to get on trains north. As I heard the buzz of an electric razor, it dawned on me that these people had not been waiting for hours but days! We scrummaged our way through the swarms of people to the bus station, which was surprisingly empty. You could hardly swing a cat in there, but given what was going on outside… This was certainly not the case when we got there to leave. For some reason, it was the bus station’s turn to be prodigiously busy. We stood around waiting for our delayed bus, with four weeks’ worth on our backs. The journey itself wasn’t much fun either. The Chinese tolerance of almost all noise translates to a tendency to make it too. The fact we were on a bus wasn’t enough reason to stop a couple of people hocking and spitting noisily into a tissue. The person next to me just chucked his tissue on the floor. The same person (a middle aged man) played Westlife’s version of ‘You raise me up’ at full volume on his mobile phone. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry!
Our stay in Yangshuo got off to an inauspicious start. It was already dark by the time we got there (our day was shortened by the fact we had travelled west. There are parts of China at the same longitude as India, yet on the same time as Beijing. In real terms that’s three and a half hours’ difference!). We thought we could just walk to the main tourist centre from the bus stop. We had serious doubts when we ended up walking down an unlit road with Chinese people eating by candlelight at the sides of the road, so we flagged down the first taxi that we saw. He professed to know the hostel to which we were headed before parking at the tourist place to ask in there. When he finally got to our hostel ‘En attendent Godot’ he charged us waaay too much. We realised we had made a very good choice of hostel when the young owner, Zack, proceeded to argue with our taxi driver insisting that he charge a reasonable price. Up to that point we had been so careful in China about agreeing the fee before getting in a taxi without a meter, but this was a lapse due to our desperation for a taxi. It turned out the dark road we were walking along was exactly the right road and there just happened to be a very badly timed power-cut along that very road. Typical!
The virtues of ‘En attendent Godot’ didn’t stop at shouting down dishonest taxi drivers. The hostel had a relaxed, youthful atmosphere. There was a posse of Chinese people who seemed spend their whole time there drinking tea or going out to pick fruit. They also spoke very good English – a feature that was to distinguish Yangshuo from anywhere we had been in Guangdong. My good impression of this hostel was reinforced by the friendliness of the Germans we shared the dorm with on the first night. There was just one downside to this hostel that I imagine is common to all hostels in the area: there was no heating. Just like my room in Shishan, the outside temperature matched the inside. Most the year round, this wouldn’t be a problem in Yangshuo but when we arrived the temperature was 2*C! So, after quickly exploring the main tourist street and helping ourselves to dinner and a game of pool at ‘M.C. Blues’, I experienced one of the coldest nights of my life wrapped up in half the clothes I had brought. The next morning I discovered how to use the electric blankets. Sleeping in the cold ceased to be a problem!
We emerged drowsily and late from the hostel to be struck by our first view of the town in daylight. The surrounding scenery was utterly jaw-dropping. Unfortunately our time in Yangshuo was to be blighted by murky grey skies, but that took little away from the experience. It’s only a shame that, as a result, the photos I took didn’t do the place justice. Despite the jutting karstic landscape, the lie of the land around was pretty flat, so it was ideal for cycling. The first trip on our hired bikes (£1 a day) was to Moon Hill, on which there is a huge naturally occurring arch that is covered underneath with hundreds of stalactites. At the foot of the hill near the entrance we were accosted by two women, who turned out to be mother and daughter, offering us a cut price entrance to walk up the hill. Only when the younger of the two produced a book full of ringing endorsements in various languages did we yield. It was in fact the 70-year-old mother, introduced to us as ‘Mama Moon’, who led us to a point in the wall that could be climbed. She then, agile as you like, climbed over the wall and waited for us to stumble over it. She then sneaked ahead to make sure there were no staff ahead and pointed us in the right direction. After a laborious climb we were surprised to see her waiting at the top of the hill to sell us drinks and postcards. The views were easily worth the climb and the reduced entry fee. We left ‘Mama Moon’ at the top of Moon hill and made the considerably easier walk back down. Inexplicably, ‘Mama Moon’ was back where we first found her. She had somehow managed to overtake us undetected via different less direct path. We cycled back in puzzlement!
That night we dined at a German restaurant, enticed by the novelty of finding a restaurant in China that serves Wurst and Spätzle and its German owner. As with many culinary temptations in China, it didn’t live up to expectations. The restaurant was extremely cold despite its fireplace and the food unGermanly meagre. We spent the rest of the evening out with drinks and pool in a bar called M.C. Blues. That German place (and an Indian restaurant) would turn out to be the only place on West Street (the main tourist area) we visited only once. When we got back to the hostel we found the German girls playing cards with Stan, a Dutch guy whom we had met briefly that morning. We joined in with much enjoyment and by the time we went to bed we had agreed to meet with Stan the next day for another cycle ride.
We decided to cycle to a place called ‘Silver Caves’. We had been told it was a must-see. I once again hired my lovely pink bike! The ride there was a good 2-hours and along the way we began to wonder if we hadn’t taken a wrong turning. Along the way, we asked, with the aid of our map, pomelo-sellers the way. I found the ride to ‘Silver Caves’ wonderfully liberating and certainly worth it for the journey alone, which was just as well because we didn’t find much there when we finally got there much later than planned. We saw no caves there. Just a sort of park with a lake. It was undoubtedly beautiful, but not at all as advertised. We raced the sun back to Yangshuo, unwilling to share the road with unpredictable drivers at night time without lights! Stan made excellent company on that day and for the rest of the time he stayed at En Attendent Godot. With him we also visited the Buddha Water cave, so named for an apparently naturally occurring Buddha image inside and the spring in which you could, and we did, bathe. We got to the water caves by ‘bus’. I use the term bus loosely, as it was really just a mini van. They packed us into this 12-seater with thirteen other people!
Another person we met in Yangshuo was Maja. She is an American MIT student who was studying abroad in Beijing and had some time between semesters to travel around China. We enjoyed two great days out as a foursome (and a few enjoyable nights too!). The first of these days out was a cycle ride to ‘Dragon’s bridge’. Once again, had the bridge been the sole focus of the day, we would have been sorely disappointed. But it was the cycle ride that along the river and the beautiful agricultural land that made the day. At one point along the route we had to cross the river with our bikes. It’s wholly intentional that the path we took had no alternative but to pay to cross the river. But it’s an experience we would gladly have paid for given the choice. The transportation across the river consisted of simple bamboo rafts. They took their time getting us and the bikes across, achieving the feat in two shifts. This was probably to give more time for the hawkers there who preyed upon tourists waiting to cross the river. Stan went on the first raft with the bikes, and Amy, Maja and I went on the second. For almost the entire twenty minutes we waited there, one woman pestered me to death trying to sell me a bag of oranges. When we went across we had to squat – in the manner to which so many Chinese people are accustomed – because water seeped through the gaps between the bamboo. After taking a few photos at the underwhelming ‘Dragon bridge’ we found our way to the nearest town, Baisha, to get some lunch and to visit the market we had been told about. This town was completely unaffected by the nearby tourist trade and there was nothing much to distinguish it from any other town apart from its scenic setting. The square buildings were the same, the shops were the same and the market was entirely unchanged by the potential for tourism. This, though, was our first experience of a rural market town. We were disturbed by the dangling pig’s organs, the flopping fish (particularly Amy!), and especially by the routine slaughter of chickens. Once carefully selected by a customer, the hen would have its throat unceremoniously cut and then would be shoved flapping into a barrel in which it would convulse as it bled to death. Not a pretty sight, and one that makes you think twice about eating meat.
That night, we went to a place called Lucy’s. It was not our first time there. We went there the night before after going to a restaurant that was recommended to us for its beer fish. Beer fish is the local dish in Yangshuo and is actually quite delicious. I was a sceptic before I tried it. It’s my first and only time in China that the quality of a fish dish has outweighed the fiddly extraction of bones. We went with Stan, Maja, the German girls and a Canadian guy they had met called Dan. In Lucy’s after the meal, Dan regaled us with fascinating stories from his travels. He was comfortably the best travelled person I have ever met. As a gardener, he had 4 months holiday a year, and those months did not go to waste. For the past 13 years or so he has been escaping the harsh Canadian winters in search of exotic wildlife and heat. In that time he has visited all but two of the equatorial countries around the world. China was the coldest trip he had planned to date. But that wasn’t enough to put him off coming to see the pandas. We managed to meet up with Dan once more at Lucy’s while we were in Yangshuo. Lucy’s was on a small street of cafes that were known to us for their western-style breakfasts. There was another place on that road we went to called Kelly’s. There they made great milkshakes.
The second of our days out together was the other way along the river by motorised bamboo raft to a town called Fuli. This vessel was a great deal sturdier than the ones that took us across the river the day before! If the cycle was beautiful, this was utterly spectacular. We just sat wrapped up in the cold and admired the passing karstic mountains. On the river we saw cormorant fishermen. These people drift on the water with cormorants on their boat. The cormorants, as nature intended, dive into the water to catch fish for their owner. They are prevented from swallowing big fish by a snare tied around their necks. Unfortunately, we didn’t see them in action. It was market day in Fuli and the market hardly differed from the one we saw in Baisha. There was however a couple of places where we could get souvenirs just where we left our driver. We tried with little success to find something palatable for lunch in the market. So looking slightly further afield we found a sort of hotel. There they offered us a hot pot. Ah. Just what we were looking for – or so we thought! The with the hot pot we were offered a tray of organs. From which animal we had no idea. None of it was edible. We needed something reasonable to eat so we asked for some noodles. At this the owner called his son who rushed out and bought some plain cooked noodles in a bag for us. The canteen at our school has sometimes not been too appetising, but this meal was on a whole other level! Still hungry, we headed back to the raft by taxi – the taxi would be better described as a motorbike with a trailer. The driver had been waiting for two hours without complaint. For our last evening with Stan and Maja, and also Dan, we enjoyed an excellent Indian meal. Just like the night before, we played Chinese dice in Lucy until they closed.
On our last day in Yangshuo we went on a quick jaunt to the ‘butterfly cave’. Didn’t see any butterflies except for the huge one above the entrance. It didn’t take long for us to walk through the whole thing. At the end there was some sort of variety performance. We have no idea what it was for or what its significance was, but it was interesting to watch objectively. It mostly consisted of singing and dancing. Maja was still around when we got back so we went for a final meal with her. Her parting gift to me was her copy of ‘The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo’. I ended up reading the whole trilogy during our trip, as did Amy. Counterfeit copies of popular books were easy to come by on the backpackers’ trail that we took. The next two days we had plenty of reading time, travelling across the border into Vietnam with a night in between in Nanning – a forgettable place that I will remember for the glass-walled bathroom in our hotel room! The only other westerner on our journey was a Californian, about 50-60, called Mike who was switching his English teaching job in China for one in Hanoi. He was very helpful, having been to Hanoi once before, and we saw him once more during our stay in Hanoi, as you will find out in the next post!
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