Yangshuo to Dali

At 6:o0 a.m this past Thursday, I stumbled down the stairs at Lisa's Cafe and Hostel and found all the doors locked and barred. I had to catch the 6:30 express bus to Guilin, or I would miss my 8:50 sleeper train to Kunming, so when I found myself locked in, I panicked and ran all around the hostel, rattling doorknobs. Apparently, Chinese people do eventually go to bed, from about 4:00 to 7:00. I finally saw a light under a door back behind the kitchen, and roused the poor cook and her husband (who were catching a bit of sleep in their bunk, fully clothed). She was kind enough to let the jabbering foreigner out into the alley, and I caught the bus, although I had to leave my deposit behind at Lisa's. It was only Y20, and I still have the key.

And then came the sleeper train. Oh, sleeper train, sleeper train, may you and I never have occasion for future dealings. If you are lucky enough never to have ridden on one, I can now tell you that hard sleepers in China consist of six sort of bench-beds arrnaged in two tiers of three, in little un-air-conditioned apartments. The bottom beds are the largest (I had one of these), but they also serve as seats/card tables/dining rooms for all passengers during the day. The top beds are the smallest - little bitty slits up by the roof. My sleeper ride began at 9:00 a.m. on Thursday, and ended at 7:00 a.m. the next morning.

Luckily, there was a couple from NYC in my compartment, so I had people to talk to for the ride. Abby and Adam are doing a year-long round-the-world. They recently spent a month in Africa working on some sort of reservation for orphaned, endangered baby monkeys. When they're done with this trip, they want to start a family. They were going straight to Dali upon arrival in Kunming, and I decided to go with them, because I wasn't really keen to spend a night in a disco in Kunming. I've noticed in my travels that when I meet Europeans or Australians, they're usually traveling for a couple months, have been on many similar trips before, and are usually about 20 years old. But the Americans I meet are all older (late 20s to early 40s) and doing a much longer, more drastic round-the-world trip. The Americans were all propelled into travel by disillusionment or burnout or whatever, and the trip is a watershed. They've quit their jobs at home, and plan to move to a new city upon their return. It takes something major to shove an American out of America.

It took the Chinese a while to infiltrate our carriage. I think they felt they couldn't come sit with us three Westerners. Eventually, however, Adam got out his phrasebook and started talking to this really sweet, shy soldier bunking with us, and then everyone trickled over to look through the phrasebooks and guidebooks, and before we knew it, we were the most popular group on the train. Abby and I played cards with this woman and her husband. I'm not sure if they taught us the game, or if they thought we were teaching them the game; either way, the game made no sense at all, but we still played about 20 rounds. It was a lot of fun, except that the woman (who was very nice, and very affectionate toward me) kept moving more and more into my lap, until I was crammed up in this corner, and I was really hot and sweaty and feeling trapped. This couple were cops. There were a lot of cops in our train, and we realized after a bit that this was because two armed robbers were in the bunks next to ours. They were two boys who looked about 15, and were chained together at the ankles. Originally, we'd actually thought they had their bags chained to their ankles for fear of theft.

At 10, the lights went out, they made us close all the windows, and we all spread out on the filthy little matress pads. Another Chinese guy showed up, hauled himself into the bunk above me, and hacked a loogie on the floor. I scooted back against the wall. Our sixth bunkmate was a gorgeous, perfectly coiffed woman in a pale green silk suit, who'd hoisted herself into the cramped, broiling top bunk at the very beginning of the train ride, and came down only three times to visit the toilet, with nary a wrinkle or sweat stain on her suit. I didn't like her.

At about 6:00, some guy came around smacking everyone awake, and an hour later we arrived very abruptly and poured off the train. Some sort of weird skunk-tar stench had arisen from my mattress during the night and transferred itself to the backs of my bare arms. I could smell it for the rest of the day, and it made me gag. All I wanted was to get a hot shower, but first we had to use the toilet in the train station (horror, horror), get a bus to Dali, realize we were actually in New Dali, get another bus to Old Dali, visit a couple guesthouses and check in.

We're in dorms in a really nice guesthouse that's also a Korean restaurant with a peaceful courtyard. The beds are bunks (that smell like cedar) with screens you can close for privacy, and there's a dog here, and some little lovebirds in a cage, and washing machines and free Internet. I've been here for two nights now, and will probably stay two more.

Dali is adorable. It's a little walled city full of shops and cafes and so forth. It's a bit like Yangshuo, but bigger, and while it's as touristy, it's not as Western-touristy. Also, we're in the mountains here - they're plummeting up out of the rice fields from the West. The people around here are mostly Bai minority, and wear the traditional clothes, but there are also a lot of Tibetans. The Tibetans are larger people, with broader faces and high cheekbones. The women all have their hair wound in braids with brightly-colored bands woven in, and they seem to have a better sense of humor than the Southern Chinese. I'm able to joke with them a bit - if you do something stupid in front of them, they're more likely to giggle than to just gape at you as if you suddenly dropped from the sky. It's also not as crowded out here, and things are not as rushed. And one big reason for Dali's popularity among backpackers can be found growing along the roads.

Yesterday, I biked about 50 miles. I wanted to go around Erhai lake, a large freshwater lake just to the East of Dali, but the people at the ferry wanted to charge me Y80 for a ticket, so I cycled around the Northern end, through multiple little villages. Once again, breathtaking scenery. More rice fields spreading up to mountains, but these mountains are much larger than those in Yangshuo, and because it was a cloudy day, they were striped impressively in swaths of light and shadow. In the fields and along the roads, there were donkeys and cows everywhere. Every village I rode through seemed to be having its market day. At one point I was so busy staring at a parade of young men, who were going along singing and waving paper lanterns and wearing white kerchiefs on their heads, that I rode into a ditch, which totally made their day. I passed the halfway point, and immediately felt I couldn't go on, but by then it was too late. I had to press onto Wase, where there was a single boat that headed back across the lake to Xizhou at 5:00.

When I got there, there was a couple from Sydney, Trevor and Iris, who'd begun negotiating with the Bai woman selling boat tickets, but it was hard work. Iris is from Hong Kong, and speaks Mandarin fairly well (they speak Cantonese in Hong Kong), but the people here use a Tibetan-hybrid sort of dialect, and she and the woman couldn't really understand each other. After endless arguing, we finally got the woman down to Y20 for each of us (the locals were paying Y4). That's how it is in China; it's really annoying, but when you're standing on the wrong side of the lake from home, all nasty and knackered with your bike, and there is only one boat going back that day, you're not in the strongest negotiating position. Still, we paid the woman a lot less than she wanted, and she really thought I ought to buy a tablecloth at least. She followed us onto the boat with the tablecloths, and I said no for at least 30 minutes. I offered to sell her one of my passport photos (autographed, of course), but no dice.

When we at long last arrived at Xizhou and the locals began to unload the 90 burlap sacks of chestnuts that had been piled in front of our bikes, it had turned quite cold and begun to rain. We still had over 12 miles to bike back to Dali, and by this time, my thigh muscles had just quit. Also, my delicate parts were bruised beyond repair and joy of joys, there was a nice, long cobblestone road leading up to the highway from Xizhou. I just tried to turn off my mind and keep up with Iris and Trevor, but the ride back was certainly one of the most physically difficult things I've ever had to do.

Today, I'm taking it easy. I really need to buy a fleece or something, but all the warm things here are for men, and also, I just hate, hate, hate shopping here. As soon as you enter a store, someone comes and stands at your elbow and refuses to leave, obnoxiously talking up everything you glance at. And then the bargaining...how I hate the bargaining. I think I'd almost rather continue higher into the foothills in my hippie skirt and tank tops.

Yangshuo...Still

I have turned into the world's laziest tourist. I have seriously done nothing for four days. Well, that's not true. I've been hanging out at a lot of cafes with many Swedes, Slovaks, Brits, Israelis, Danes and so forth. And eating a lot of overpriced noodles and pancakes. And I bought a pair of wrap-around pants.


Also, I finally went biking yesterday. I left at 9 with two kids from my hostel and our guide, Julia. We rode through some rice patties, which was nice, and then we stopped by her house. She lives in a quite large brick house with holes in all the bricks, a dirt floor, and a massive stack of wood covering the front wall. The living room had what looked like giant oil barrels in one corner. She gave us some chestnuts and oranges, and then took us to Moon Hill (Yueling Shan in Chinese - too lazy to look up the correct spelling), which is a hill with a large arch-shaped rock formation at the top. The hole under the arch looks like a moon, hence the name. It's insanely hot and humid here, and climbing all those stairs was a trial. Plus, this little Chinese lady ran alongside me the whole way fanning me in the hopes I'd then feel obliged to buy some of her overpriced beverages. Oh, it was annoying, but there was no possible way to dissuade her from her self-imposed task. When I first arrived in Yangshuo, I felt awful about not buying the postcards and little wooden dolls and other bits of crap that all these cute old women, totally bent double under their giant baskets, are constantly shoving at everyone. Four days later, I have no sympathy whatsoever. These women are everywhere, and they continually bother you all day long. They will come up and set their basket of junk on your dinner table:

'Hello, postcard?'

'No, no thank you, boo.'

'Hello, postcard?'

'No, shay-shay, boo.'

'Hello postcard?'

...

'Hello postcard?'

'Hello postcard hello postcard hello postcard hello postcard?'

I kid you not. They'll even smack you with the postcards. And when one finally goes away, it's maybe two minutes before another one takes her place. What was I talking about? Ah, yes. The bike ride.

When we got down from Moon Hill, Julia tried again to take us to this mud cave that we'd passed on earlier, so we got out the map and showed her where we'd like to cycle. She was really nice about it, even though she was in jeans and long-sleeves, and riding a one-speed, and obviously not planning on biking until 3 in the afternoon, which is what we did.

We went through more rice fields, and some little villages, and for the first time in China, I was bowled over by the scenery. The rice fields spreading up to the mountains, and groves of citrus trees along the dirt roads, and the farmers trying to coax their oxen out of the little water ponds...oh, I'm sure it's a hard life, but the backdrop is truly stunning. By about 2, though, I began to fear I'd disgrace myself by collapsing. We were biking through a moist oven, and there was no shade anywhere, and I've developed a really embarrassing perspiration problem. By this time, I could have filled a wading pool by wringing out my clothes, and was glad to get back to my hostel and take a cold shower. It was a full five minutes before I was drenched in sweat again.

Yangshou has been good for me, I think. I've learned a lot from observing other travelers. I've gotten much better at bargaining, for one thing. I know I have, because whereas vendors used to finish a transaction by calling me 'beautiful, beautiful lady,' they now swear at me behind my back. Also, I'm ever less finicky. I've been wearing this outfit for two days now, and I slept in it, too. It's so awesome!

High time I moved on, though, and I'm taking a 22-hour sleeper train to Kunming tomorrow morning. I dread it. I've booked a bed in Kunming for two nights, but I fear I may have booked it in a disco. After Kunming, I'm going to go on to Dali. I couldn't find any rooms available there online, but after racking my brain for a perfect solution, I've decided to just go and take my chances with finding a room.

So, I wrote this back in Yangshuo, but it wouldn't publish, so now I get to add a little story: on my last night in Yangshuo, these kids from the boarding school there came around the hostel trying to scare up Westerners for this Wednesday night thing they do. They had little fliers promising free beer, and featuring little charicatures of hippies with huge backpacks. A bunch of us went over to the school, and we were distributed among several tables of giggling 17- to 18-year-old schoolkids, and chatted with them in English while they kept refilling Dixie cups of beer and complimenting our appearances. The school is a boarding school that teaches only English and computer skills. The students go from 7:00 to 9:00, but they do get three hours in the afternoon and weekends off. These kids were so cute. They were especially taken with Emil, my Danish roommate, and kept asking me if we were together (I tried to explain that we were just sharing a room, but it was lost in translation), and if he thought Chinese women were pretty and so forth. Emil is kind of shy, and quite thin and boyish-looking.

'Bloody 'ell,' he had to say of all the attention. 'Don't get that at home, I can tell you.'

There were a couple Westerners teaching at the school - an older Kiwi and a tattooed punkish Brit, and they led us in a game of 20 questions, and then we had to take about a million pictures (everyone does peace signs here). There was a huge banner over the school: 'Success in English...Success in Life.' None of the students could figure out why all the Westerners loved it so much.

Hey Mary Jane, if you're still reading this: MySpace won't load on any of these computers, which is why I never replied to your message. I don't think I have your actual email.

Yangshuo

Saturday I took my Li River cruise. Before we got on the boat, we had to take a bus to the loading place and once we arrived, the bus unloaded into an absolute swarm of Chinese tourists (sprinkled with Westerners) and I promptly lost sight of everyone in my group. I found them again inside a sort of mall thing, featuring a lot of little jade Buddhas on strings (those are HUGE here), and some Korean businessmen, who didn't really speak Chinese either, explained to me that we were meant to walk around and shop for an hour, and then we'd be sent to the boats. When that time finally came, the tour guide told me to follow this really spastic girl in a white tracksuit, who managed to get us to the right boat, but only after a whole lot of flapping around and checking and rechecking our tickets and pointing violently in all directions.

The boats were glassed in on the bottom level, and we all sat at tables and had tea. I ran up on top as soon as I could, which was much nicer, except that Chinese girls carry umbrellas around to guard themselves from the sun, so the view is always obscured, plus they aren't at all careful about jabbing out the eyes of everyone around them. The Li River lived up to its rep - it's broad and flat and placid, and surrounded on all sides by those great mountains, and filled with fishermen on bamboo boats and water buffalo and little white ducks and naked Chinese boys.

I met a guy (whose name I just can't even come close to getting) who's going on much the same Chinese tour as me. He was nice, but his English was bad, and it gets really tiresome after awhile to communicate across a language barrier, not the least because you can't joke or be sarcastic at all, and I find constant sincerity to be utterly exhausting. Plus, you can never rise above, 'So pretty!' 'Yes, pretty!' 'Beautiful country!' 'You go to Chengdu?' 'I hope to.' 'What?' 'Yes. Later.'

For some reason I expected Yangshuo to be a pretty, quaint little mountain town with a lot of backpackers. It's not. It's the most touristy place I've been so far. It's in a gorgeous area, but you can't see the mountains for the shopping. Just tons and tons of crap everywhere. Silk pashminas and wooden bracelets and woven purses and those freaking green Buddhas. I walked around in a really foul mood for awhile. I just hate shopping so much, and there's just so much crap everywhere! But on the other hand, one thing I've found problematic in China is that there is nowhere to just camp out for awhile - there are no Borders, and the Starbucks don't work the same way. You can't just sit somewhere public for hours and read, especially at night (because in daytime, there are the parks). Well, in Yangshuo all you do is sit on patios and read and have a beer and watch the tourists flow by. Which is really pretty nice. Also, there's a great deal of eye candy here, of the tattooed, shirtless climber variety. And all the restaurants have giant, IHOP-like menus with a page for Western breakfast, a page for traditional Irish breakfast, a page for Mexican food, a page for Italian food, and so forth, with all the usual noodles at the back. And everything here is in English. And there's so much coffee!

I invited myself to dinner with three people sitting across from me: two of them are girls from Chicago, and one was even involved with Plasticene Theatre - small world. They're on the first leg of a five-month round-the-world, and were with a Portuguese navy guy who'd been traveling with them for a couple days. We traded war stories, and they gave me some good advice.

I had to take the bus back to Guilin Saturday night, and return here yesterday morning, because for some stupid reason, I'd taken my hotel in Guilin for another night. When I got here yesterday, the bus dropped me off outside of town. I hate that. I was trying to read my map and ignore everybody, but one guy who runs a hostel kept after me to come look at a room, and since it would get me into town, I took one of the little motor cars up there with him. He showed me the room, and I knew I didn't want it; we started going back down the stairs, and I told him I'd look around and maybe come back. He began to bargain with me, and stood right in my path. I told him to let me by, and he said no, and I tried to shove past him, and he pushed me! So, I wailed on him, employing many elbows, and shoved my way past. There were a lot of people all around, so I wasn't really frightened, but it was certainly not a pleasant experience.

I ended up staying in my first dorm. It's not really a dorm - there are only four beds in the room, and only two other people currently staying there, and I really like the companionship. I think I will stay in dorms from now on. One of my roomates is an Australian girl named Emily who's working her way home after spending three months working in some program in Kazakstan. She's very cool. We had a beer and got massages, and then met up with the kids from the night before for dinner. I could get used to Yangshuo.

The only problem is, this ain't China. It is a nice break, though. Nothing's difficult here, and it's so easy to meet people. But it's not really what I came here to experience. I keep torturing myself with the idea that I'm not backpacking "correctly." I feel like a real traveler (as opposed to a tourist) would have hopped off the bus at one of those tiny, dusty farm villages, won over the locals with sheer enthusiasm and perhaps impromptu renditions of local pop tunes, and been tilling those rice fields alongside the people by noon the next day. I am not that traveler. But then I tell myself, I have only been at this for a week and a half and, you know, baby steps. Plus, I am a woman, and thus can never take any risks or do anything fun at all ever. But another nice thing about Yangshuo is that there are many, many seasoned backpackers here for me to learn from, and I'm picking up a lot from their tips and their general attitudes. I still payed way too much for a very ugly pair of shorts last night, but I'm learning. I'm learning.

I have a major problem on the horizon: National Week is the week of October 1st. That week, all Chinese tourists take to the road, prices shoot up, and rooms are scarce. Everyone (Chinese and Western alike) has told me it's nightmarish. I can't figure out whether to go somewhere and camp out for the week, and just pay too much and bear the crowds, or if there's some way to avoid it. Suggestions?

Guilin

I say Guilin is Gatlinburg-esque, because it's a very touristy town in the middle of gorgeous mountains. The similarity ends there, however. Guilin is also on the Li River, which winds through the city, puddling into many lakes surrounded on all sides by landscaped parks. The parks and the river are lit at night with colored lights everywhere, and in the mornings, mist hangs over the huge, blobbish mountains that surround the city, and it's lovely really. Except for all the tourists.


Of course, I got there at 9 at night and didn't see any of this. I swam through the usual crowd of touts, and ended up going with one especially persistent woman who quoted me a very low rate to a nearby hotel, which seemed dingy but fine, so I took it. Oh, but then there were roaches. So many roaches (but very small ones). And the toilet (which I'd tested) ceased to work as soon as I'd paid. I slept like the dead anyway, but I bailed at first light, after a roach crawled out of my gear. I relocated to a great hotel, where I have a big window overlooking the Li. This toilet doesn't flush either, but I've only seen two roaches so far.


I took it pretty easy on Thursday. I walked around the city, and walked around a park (again, called Seven Star Park, but in Chinese, it's Qixing). And I saw a panda! A panda!! It was just sleeping, but I got really excited about it. I had a couple minutes alone with it, in between Chinese tourist groups. When we heard the next one coming, the panda threw a paw over its eyes and blew a raspberry. I sympathized.


I've seen a lot of hilarious Chinglish signs, and there was one in the park I loved so much that I am going to reproduce it for you here:

Dear tourists: There are a group of wild monkeys accounting about 100 at large surrounding these hills, who frequently appear and disappear by the road and path. These lovely wild monkeys have become a natural scene of the park and have attracted broad tourists very much. But among the monkeys, some of them are bad tempered, sometime they attack on tourists casually. Therefore, please keep a certain distance whenever you meet the monkeys.


That night, I was walking back to my hotel, when a girl on a bike 'hello'd' me. I said hi, and she followed me along awhile. She lives in Guilin, her name is Wan Chai Ling (sp?), she wants (like everyone) to practice her English with foreigners. And so forth. I asked her what I should make sure to see in Guilin, and she said I had to take the Li River cruise. I said it was expensive for English people, and she said she'd go with me so they'd sell me a ticket for the Chinese tour, which is less. Well, I think we all see where this is going. I saw where it was going at the time, but yet...I got hosed, my friends. But not until the next day. Actually, she did get me a good price on the Li River thing (I knew what the ballpark should be), and I really did want to do that, so I started to trust her. She asked if I was going to hike up Solitary Beauty Peak, and I said actually I was going to do that the next day, and she said maybe she could come along. We arranged a meeting place, and she said she hoped I showed, but if I didn't, she understood.


So I went, because I figured as long as we just went where I was going anyway, she couldn't really trick me into buying anything. But as soon as we met up, she had to stop by the art gallery where she's a student to drop off her bike. The art student scam is so old, it's actually described in my guidebook...and I fell for it ANYWAY! The thing is, it's social pressure. I refused to buy a painting, but she was so nice, and the gallery owner so eager, and then there were some for $10 U.S., so I just bought one to get out of there and resolved to shake her as soon as we were done seeing the peak. She gave me a tour of the park, and when we arrived at the base of the peak, she said she'd wait at the bottom for me. On the peak, I had to have my picture made with 19 Chinese tourists, and started talking to some similarly plagued kids from Ft. Lauderdale on a semester at sea, and lo and behold - they told me they'd met a Chinese girl who was giving them a tour and was waiting at the bottom for them right now! And she and Ling were hanging out when we got down.


I have to say, I was probably the most obstinate mark Ling has ever had the misfortune to choose. I didn't want a massage, I didn't want tea or a name chop or to go to the minority theatre or on a bamboo boat, I didn't want lunch or to try some snake. But I did let her take me to an Internet cafe, where she got to watch me check my email and blog comments, and then I told her I was going to my hotel for a nap, but she said I was going to have some tea.

'No, I'm going to my hotel to nap,' I said.

'Yes, to relax and cup of tea,' she said. One thing about not speaking a language very well is you can often feign obtuseness to get what you want. I've done this myself.

'I have to have tea to get away from you?'

'What, my friend?'


So I went to a freaking tea shop. To my credit, I'd gone on the slight off chance that she really wanted to have a cup of tea at a cafe, and if it was a shop, I was going to walk right out. But when we got there, the Ft. Lauderdale kids were there having the Best Day Ever, and had just purchased hundreds of yuan worth of tea. And then the guy who poured Ling and me our tasting was really attractive and charismatic. I would have like to have been his friend, had his friendship not clearly been contingent on my buying his tea. Which I totally refused to do, over and over and over. But the social niceties had to be observed and even after the whole thing had turned sour, the tea guy, his manager, Ling and I all sat around and finished the tea and chatted stiffly, even though everyone really just wanted to get away from each other. It was much like being back home in the South. They charged me Y30 for the totally unwanted tasting. I should have refused to pay it, but I kept thinking of Richard Gere crawling into a tiny cage, and just wanted to get out of there. I actually ran into the tea shop guy later that night in the street. He tried to salvage things briefly by asking if I'd like to buy a ticket to the minority theatre, but we both knew it was never meant to be.


This is random, but one thing I really love (and also hate) about the Chinese is their ceaseless enthusiasm about everything. Jay told me that Chinese school kids go to class from 7:30 to noon, take two hours for lunch, have class again until 5:30, break for dinner, and have class again until 8:00. The adult work day is much the same. I would think that after a day like that, you'd be all in. Lord knows, Americans are totally beaten and resentful after 7 hours at a desk (at least, this American was). But the Chinese (of all ages) party all night, and at maximum volume; they never stop. They do not seem to require sleep. Maybe it's all that tea. I saw a light and water show in Zhaoqing, where fountains sent jets of colored water high into the air. American teens would have stood around looking bored, but the Chinese ooh'd and aah'd and snapped photos, and screamed and ran every time it looked like the water would crash down on them. Every time. When movies play in buses and something funny happens, they squeal with laughter. Audibly. Every time. I absolutely love the raw displays of unguarded delight everywhere. It's so refreshing.


My experiences are piling up faster than I can blog about them. I'm relocating to Yangshuo tomorrow morning, which is a small town in the mountains just an hour away, also on the Li. Yangshuo is also backpacker central - it's also very touristy, but in a more low-key way, as it mostly caters to smelly, Western hippies trying to make a little money last forever. Guilin is to Gatlinburg as Yangshuo is to, I don't know, the Old City? I should probably sleep.

Zhaoqing and On

Sorry it's been so long since my last dispatch, but I've been busy getting schooled.


My first official travel adventure began on the bus to Zhaoqing. The only passengers on the bus were me, and a very pretty girl named Jay, who is home on holiday from the University of Birmingham in England and lives in Zhaoqing. She struck up a conversation with me as we went through the border crossing, and in discussing my plans, I realized that I would be arriving in Zhaoqing with no money. See, you can't change money into yuan outside mainland China, and by the time we got to Z., the banks would be long closed. I'd sort of thought there'd be a ton of money changers at the border, like at, say, the Canadian border, but there were not. There was one small bank counter, and the woman behind it looked at me like I was mad when Jay asked if she could change a travel check (I'd spent all my Hong Kong dollars).


'I'm sure some hotel will take a credit card,' I said to Jay.


She lifted an eyebrow. 'I wish you luck.'


While all this was going on, we'd wandered out to the parking lot where the bus was supposed to pick us back up in China. We waited there for a ridiculously long time, and then suddenly the bus driver and about four women came running up to us, screaming Chinese and flapping around. Turns out we'd gone the wrong way after diverting to go to the bank, and had ended up back on the Hong Kong side. Jay explained, and everyone started laughing, except for one woman, who confiscated our passports. Jay's explanations started getting panicky and no one would tell me what was going on. Finally, after all the other women told her to lighten up (I gathered), the woman grumpily gave us our passports back, and we got back on the bus.


Jay then called her mother (I guess about my situation), and her mom said that she and some other ladies were currently playing mah jong in a hotel room they'd taken for the evening, and I was welcome to stay there when they were done. I said I'd like that very much. Then the bus driver told Jay I was going to Zhaoqing, which is not where she lives after all. Jay lives in some similarly pronounced city on the way to Zhaoqing. So we were back to the drawing board. Jay got back on the phone to her mom, and they decided I should still stay there, and they'd take me to the bank in the morning to change my money, and then to the bus station and put me on a bus to Zhaoqing. I'm going to owe so much karma when this trip is over, I'm going to have to go around looking for poor, lost idiots to assist.


Jay and I met her mother and three other ladies in a private dining room at the hotel, and had an enormous dinner, where everyone stared at me the whole time, and discussed in Chinese (which Jay only partially translated) how stupid I was to come to China without speaking a lick of Chinese, and how I would likely be dead in a few days, so the least they could do was feed me.


'Eat more,' they kept saying (through Jay). 'You want some spaghetti? A pizza? A fork?'


I guess people come to this hotel and play mah jong all the time. The rooms had big mah jong tables in them, where the tiles rose up through the felt when a button was pressed. There were a bunch of young men were in the next room going 'WOOOO!' repeatedly, and when I left at 8:00 a.m. the next day, they were still at it. Their revels kept waking me from my dreams, in which Jay's mother took me down to the docks and explained that everyone was discussing what a price I'd fetch if sold into white slavery.


Next morning, Jay and I went to the bank and got some money changed (it took two full hours), and then we had congee with her mom, and then she and her mother put me on a bus. They're the best people ever, and I hope they have long and satisfying lives.


The bus ride lasted about an hour, and when I got off at Zhaoqing, I wanted to die. Everything in China is in Chinese. I knew this. There's no reason why it wouldn't be. But yet somehow, the truth of it didn't really fully sink in until that moment. Standing in the bus depot, swarmed on all sides by men on motor bikes yelling at and prodding me, gawked at by all other bystanders, and squinting at the tiny characters on my shitty map trying to see if any of them looked like the characters on the street sign I'd found, I started to think perhaps I made a mistake. I started to think I might like to just sit down in the dirt and have a good cry.


But then I took some deep breaths, busted out my phrasebook and went back into the depot, where I accosted a girl at a counter. Man, I love seeing the look of horror on vendors' faces when I come up to them with my phrasebook. They know they're in for a long, frustrating exchange. What usually happens is that at some point in the transaction, some bystander who speaks a bit of English will chime in, and this time was no exception. Some older folks were going to the same place as me, to see the Seven Star Crags, and they explained what buses I needed to take, and then let me ride with them. Once I got into the center of town, things were easier. I had a guide for that, and things were a bit more set up for lost tourists (if not English ones), and I found a hotel pretty easily. I spent the afternoon walking around the crags, which are four limestone peaks around a big lake, with all sorts of parks and pagodas and Buddhas and bridges and things. There's also a tres bizarre cave with all these eerie plaster figures illustrating what I guess must be the history of Zhaoqing or something. I'll bet some villagers hid in that cave from the Japanese at some point. Villagers are always doing that.


The next day blew again. I got on a bus to Guilin at 8:00, and didn't get off until 8:00 that night. And in between, I sat just behind the crew of five rambunctious boys who for some reason were needed to staff the bus, and I sat just under the speaker for the television program of about 14 screaming music videos played on a loop, and I suffered. The boys screamed along with the videos and spat and smoked out the window and reclined their seats into my lap and (I'm pretty sure) mocked me from time to time. And the driver honked and honked, so joyfully. And the roads were small and clogged with bikers and people with carts and roadblocks and oxen. And the way was long. And the way was slow. And we kept making potty breaks at these sort of rest areas/noodle stalls in very rural areas, and all 30-some people there would just gape at me the whole time. I mean, just stare, with their jaws dropped. If I shifted my weight, 30 people gasped. I get that they don't see many foreigners, but by the fourth potty break, which occurred at about hour 9 of this interminable bus ride, I just wanted to impale them all on their own chopsticks.


I hate to end on a negative note, and I do have more to say about China, but this entry has gone on quite long enough, so I'll just say that I'm in Guilin now and it's beautiful here (albeit in a Gatlinburg-esque way). More soon.

Hong Kong II...and On

Alright, I've bought a skirt and braved the noodle stalls, my laundry's done and my bag is packed, I've got a Chinese visa in my passport and a bus ticket to Zhaoqing, and I'm ready to get the hell out of Hong Kong. Not that it's not a hilarious place to visit, but man, I need a bit of space. It is just so crowded here.

On Saturday, I took a bus to Stanley, which is...well, it's another market and another mall (markets and malls, that's HK), but it's also on the Southern (?) coast of HK Island, and it was a nice change of pace. There are also some shrines there, tended by bald nuns in long, gray robes who keep the deities well stocked with incense and grapefruits. I then went over to Aberdeen, which is a bustling harbor with a ton of touts trying to get you to come for a ride on their boat. I had a nice, long walk through an industrial area to get there, because I stupidly followed some clueless Brits off the bus two stops early.

On Sunday, I'd planned to go to Macau for the day, but sadly, sometime in the night my legs crossed over from "very sore" to "unusable," and I also felt pretty burnt out, so I took it easy. I sat around in the park all morning watching all the old folk do their tai chi, and then I went to the history museum, which I probably should have done when I first got here, as I would have known a lot more about what I've been looking at for four days.

HK's been a very good starter city; things are sure to get a lot hairier from here on out. I arrive in Zhaoqing at about 7 tonight, so I'm a bit nervous about finding a room. But I can't wait to see mainland China!

Hong Kong

After spending essentially two entire days on a plane (uneventful, except for some terrible turbulence during which I thought I'd be airsick for the first time in my life, until the guy across the aisle lost it utterly and for some reason I felt entirely better), I have arrived in Hong Kong. I am staying in a hole on Nathan Road, which is this very frantic shopping district in Kowloon. Nathan Road features many "mansions," which are giant shopping arcades, and a couple of these feature about 14 floors of super-ghetto guesthouses. I'm staying in Mirador Mansions on the 12th floor. I have a closet with its own bath - the sink's on top of the toilet and both are in the shower, but it's private, which is nice. I'm paying about $20/night; would be less, but I'm a dreadful haggler. The manager actually raised the price on me, I'm so bad.


Thursday sucked. I admit it. I was trying to stay awake until night, and it absolutely poured here, and I just sort of wandered around all day feeling incredibly conspicuous - I'm just so big, and I have such insane quantities of mad, red hair, and my bosom is just so shamelessly garish. I feel like a cross between Yahoo Serious and Belle Watling swanning around Kowloon. Also, I think I may finally have found a city that moves at a fast enough pace even for me. While Hong Kong is not as big as NYC, it's far more populous - there are a ton of people everywhere, all the time. There is nowhere to linger and no time to think and no space for hesitation. You'd best be moving. Which is tough for the poor foreigner, but then again, everything in this city is in English and also, it's the most well-labeled city on the planet. Their MTR (subway) is so beautifully easy to follow that I almost wept from aesthetic delight, and there are signs to everything. I haven't had to consult a map once, and I got lost in my own neighborhood in Chicago.


Yesterday was better. I first took a stroll through Kowloon Park, which is beautiful, with birds and fountains and weird sculptures, and a lot of Middle Easterners who stalked me tenaciously, though I studiously ignored them ("Lady, you lucky. I know your face. Having a nice day? I am from Egypt; I won't kidnap you, don't worry. Don't want to talk. Good. Silence begins now. ... Lady, you want Gucci watch?) I then took the obligatory tram ride up Victoria Peak, which is the highest peak in HK. The tram deposits you in the lobby of a mall (most things in HK funnel you through malls; these are the only places where the exits aren't clearly labeled), and after you work your way up through eight stories of stores, there's a viewing platform and some little trails. After that, I went to the bird market, which is really pretty cool: there are so many birds for sale, and I think they're all for pets. I wanted to ask someone why there's such a market for little birds, but no one would cop to speaking English, and then a giant grasshopper attacked me and I made such an ass of myself, I had to leave. There were a lot of men standing around who'd just purchased birds, and they all stood in exactly the same attitude: cage resting on flat of palm, other arm behind back, pensively regarding bird.


Last night, I confess I ended up in an overpriced faux-Irish bar talking to some pilots from Milwaukee, a couple of Brits on their way to Australia, and an Aussie chick on her way to England. Well, I'm sorry, but I don't speak Cantonese and I was lonely.


Overall, HK is a piece of cake. I have substantial room for improvement, however, in two areas: shopping and obtaining food. I find shopping intimidating at the best of times, but these girls shop like they mean it. There's a constant, intense, visceral war going on at all boutiques and street markets, at all times. I'm in the market for a long skirt, but each time I've seen one that looks likely, I've realized I'd have to punch some bitch out for it, so I've backed off. The other problem is the bargaining. It's partly that I'm shy, but also that the prices are so low anyway, I feel like a heel trying to wear the vendor down.


As to food, those who vend it are among the few folks in HK who don't speak English, and given the above-mentioned frantic pace here, they do not have time to find my retarded fumblings endearing. So, I'm sort of scared of most restaurants. I'm very comfortable with the bakeries full of filled buns, and also with this one kind of street food where there are a lot of things displayed around a vat of oil, and you sort of point at a bunch of stuff and then the woman screams at you for awhile, and then takes some money, and gives you a paper bag full of mysterious items speared on toothpicks and covered in sauce. It's really fun finding out what all of it is.


So, that's HK. I will be here until Monday, when my China visa is ready, and then I'll be venturing into the mainland.

Preamble

About two years ago, I participated in a game of Trivial Pursuit with 10 other actors. We’d all just been cast in a show together, and the initial rehearsal consisted of getting-to-know-you board games. One of the questions posed to my team was, ‘What’s the capital of China?’ We quickly answered Beijing, but then there was some second guessing and nervous debate (yes, over the capital of China), and I actually said, ‘Well, it’s not Hong Kong, is it?’ At which point one of the other women, who was larger and older and thus had some gravitas, crowed, ‘Hong Kong is in Japan, honey!’ And we all laughed and laughed.

Now, while I was stupid enough to think that Hong Kong might perhaps be the capital of China, I was nevertheless pretty sure it was not a city in Japan, but I figured that 10 out of 11 college-educated actors couldn’t be wrong. Which just goes to show how much I overestimated the intelligence of actors – we had all just voluntarily signed on to spend a gorgeous summer in an un-air-conditioned theatre, slaving sans pay to put up what turned out to be a truly excruciating production of one of Shakespeare’s more overdone comedies. But I didn’t contradict her, because I figured she must be right.

This Wednesday, I will fly to Hong Kong, and when I touch down Thursday morning, I’ll find out first-hand whether I am in China or Japan. And from there, I will go to a lot of other places and see a lot of other things. One exciting result I anticipate from this adventure is the automatic authority it will grant me on every topic. For example, if the above scene were to play out a year from now, this is how it might go:

Me: ‘Hong Kong is a large city in China, although certainly not the capital, because any idiot knows that Beijing is the capital of China.’

Larger, older woman: ‘Hong Kong is in Japan, honey!’

Me: ‘Well, I have been there, so I know first-hand that it is in China. First-hand.’

LOW: ‘Wow. I bow to your unquestionable authority.’

Me: ‘Also, in Hong Kong people are terrified of puffins. If you so much as say the word ‘puffin,’ they run screaming from the room.’

Eavesdropping third party: ‘I don’t think that’s true, actually.’

Me: ‘Well, perhaps you didn’t hear before, but I have been there, so.’

ETP: ‘Well, I lived there for a year, actually. Studying Cantonese. And Chinese culture. And puffins.’

Me: ‘Oh.’

I’ve gotten off topic. At any rate, travel is broadening, and I’m going to China in less than a week! From Hong Kong, I’m making my way across the Southern part of China toward Tibet, and then I will either head to Laos overland, or fly to Thailand, or something, and then I’ll be traveling all across Southeast Asia, and from there, who knows? I will be blogging about my travels here, so that family and friends can keep up with me.

Right now, what I know about Hong Kong is that it is on an island, much like Manhattan, and that all the cool kids stay in Kowloon, where the rooms are dirt cheap and highly flammable. I also know that dim sum consists of dumplings sent around on little carts, and that the big Buddha on Lantau is touristy and probably skippable. And that when you take an overnight train in China, you should go for the hard sleeper, as the soft sleeper isn’t worth the extra money, and you should also try and get the middle berth, because the top berth is probably next to a screaming loudspeaker, but everyone sits all over the bottom berth all day long. Everything else, I plan to figure out as I go along.