We're deep into planning a July trip to Szechuan and Xinjiang provinces in China and then a quick spin through Kyrgyzstan & Kazakhstan. The full range of luxury hotels on offer today in Chengdu and Urumqi contrasts utterly with our first China visit almost fifteen years ago.
I went back to find a little taste of how China, mid-nineties, felt to a first timer. Here's an excerpt from our wide-eyed first trip to Guilin:
Kiosk keepers huddled under strings of bare bulbs. An old pagoda perched high up on the hill across the river. Fruit and vegetable vendors and a magazine stand stood open at nine o’clock at night. Around a bend in the road, storefronts set sample dishes on the sidewalk, just out of the rain.
A wet old man beckoned me in. We didn't speak a word in common except “OK” and “bye bye.” I drank a couple of big tall green bottles of beer I couldn't read and I bought a bottle of something he thought I should buy. And there was some clear toast he kept pouring. Mostly we sat in his store and stared into the fog.
A boy who'd studied English for three years came in. Then his brother came in, and the thing they could do best in English was urge us to come back tomorrow.
*****
One side of Guilin was shiny, the other just rubble. Five years before, Guilin tore down the buildings on the whole west side of Zhongshan Road and rebuilt them all. Now they were doing the same thing on the east side.
A bed careened by, balanced on a bicycle. Pointy-nosed little three-wheeled machines sputtered along, almost but not quite trucks. Water buffalo halted traffic and chewed the roadside, right in town. Guilin, somehow, was dusty even in the rain.
*****
Though morning came dreary, misty and clammy with no hope of clearing, our Toyota Crown sedan stifled warm inside. We’d arranged a boat trip starting at the nearby town of Zhujiang. Our minder was named Long and our driver was Chang.
Speed limit signs hung over the road. On one side was an orange orchard with a collective housing block for the farmers.
Close to Zhujiang the pavement turned to six-sided blocks that fit together like the runways at Rinas airport in Tirana, Albania. That fit. China was Albania's only ally in the world for a time.
*****
Two boats idled at the dock - both bright red with yellow trim. Big colored dragons stretched the length of each side of the boats.
Inside, thin orange curtains, with red, blue, pink and yellow bright plastic moulding ringed the cabin, all trimmed with multi-colored Christmas-type lights. A Beijing brand TV stood at the front, hiding our smoking pilot and presenting a videotaped tour in Chinese.
Along each side, seven sets of four by four airline-type seats faced one another with a long wooden table in between, topped by a yellow tablecloth on which sat teacups (China) with tops, oranges, hot towels, packages of nuts, a rose in a vase and toothpicks. A cadre of stewardesses served tea, coffee and Tsing Tao beer.
Three smoking Japanese fellows sat across looking back at us as we pulled out into the mist. One owned a shop near Tokyo. He promised our polaroid would hang on the wall of his restaurant.
Roger, in the window seat, was Chinese/Canadian from Toronto. He estimated that you need to memorize about 5000 Chinese characters to read properly. Since they're characters, of course, not an alphabet in which letters have individual sounds, you can't sound 'em out. You either know 'em or you don't.
Travelling alone, Roger had left his onward air tickets on the seat of a cab, so he wasn't sure when he could leave.
*****
The Lijiang River (Li) meanders 437 kilometers through Guilin, Yangshuo, Pingle and Wuzhou.
From the banks of the river jutted the famous limestone peaks immortalized by Chinese painters since forever - abruptly rising off the valley floor in impossible shapes. Standing on the upper deck, I tried to decide whether they were beautiful or just very very strange.
Clouds played with the tops of the peaks. If you climbed up into the chill on top of the boat, you’d turn up your collar and stuff your hands deeper into your pockets. The whole world was muted in mild grays, greens and blues.
A billion and a half people in China and nothing on these riverbanks except fishermen and evil, dark cormorants, trained to plunge into the water, grab fish, surface, and spit 'em back at their masters. And one lone peasant, poling along with the current, fishing seaweed from the riverbed.
Working men, in their pointy round straw hats, walked down through rice paddies with poles across their backs supporting two baskets. They piled dirt down at the water's edge.
The Li ran low and clear enough to see that sometimes it was only three or four feet deep.
We passed such sights as "five tigers catch a goat," "yearning for husband's return rock," and "an old man push a mill." During the second half of the float bamboo began to appear among the Osmanthus trees. Some of it grew to be fist-sized and 30 feet tall.
*****
It looked like all 20,000 in the village of Yangshuo were bicycling by just as we put out. Chang and his Toyota arrived from Zhujiang. He and Long and Mirja and I packed up and headed back north 80 kilometers to Guilin.
Chang (who had no English) had to pay a toll. Long explained, "This is special road from Yangshuo to Guilin."
She was indoctrinated. Went to university at Nanjing. It was easy to get into the language program - lack of demand. So she took English and got her job on graduation. Said she could go abroad, but didn’t have the money. Had a nine year old daughter. Mirja asked about the one-child policy.
"People have accepted this."
*****
Water buffalo, rice paddies and orange groves passed outside. Roadside stalls peddled identical stacks of pomilons, yellow, big as a grapefruit at the bottom and shaped like a pear. Long said they taste like oranges but "not so juicy."
Guilin farmers still plowed by hand with oxen. Long was disarming: "Almost all farmers have cattle because before they plant they need to plow." Of course.
All manner of two, three and four wheel vehicles traversed the "special road" with us, honking and ringing their bells and passing and spewing exhaust.
They burned cheap coal. You could smell it, and car exhaust, through the walls, on your clothes, everywhere. It was cold and damn wet. There was one time zone in China, by God Beijing time, and it got dark about six o’clock.
- Read more from the eventual book on Common Sense and Whiskey or, on EarthPhotos.com, read stories about Greenland, Siberia, Tibet and Malawi.
Photo of a cruiser on the Li River, Guangxi, China. See lots more photos in the China Gallery at EarthPhotos.com.
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