Guilin and Yangshuo (or There and Back Again?)-Part I

Getting to Yangshuo

Last Friday we ended our second 8-week module. And that means one week off. Having considered it as one of many options, options that included hitting up Thailand or Hainan, I finally decide to join Patrick on a little trip to Guilin and Yangshuo in southern China. Patrick spent 6 months in Guilin several years ago, so it’s a bit of a nostalgic trip for him.

After celebrating somewhat late into the night on Friday, we buy soft sleeper tickets (mostly because hard sleepers were sold out) and hop on the 4:16 T5 train.

The soft sleeper is the highest of China’s four-class railway system. There are four berths to a cabin, and the cabin has a sliding door and affords a fair amount of privacy. Unfortunately, buying tickets 3 hours before departure means Patrick and I are in different, though thankfully adjoining, cabins. The interior is quite plush. Each cabin has a large square window so the view is excellent, even if you are not sitting by the window. My companions are a youngish man, and two older men in their sixties. None are Beijingren. Conversation is not at a premium but we are also not the most garrulous of quartets. Over the course of the 22 hours we manage to discuss the price of tickets, Beijing traffic, how other parts of China don’t have as much construction, development in general, India’s IT industry, China and India (particularly their development and population), Guilin as a tourist destination, the weather, and so on. More often than not I am reminded how limited my vocabulary still is.

Over in the next cabin Patrick has a few PLA officers sitting with him. They smoke like chimneys, and he spends a lot of his time out in the hallway, on one of the pull down chairs, reading “Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance.”

I sleep a lot. Must be really tired from the semester, finishing grad school apps, and all that has been preying on my mind, whether I like to admit it or not. I also put in an hour on my translation for Caijing. Manage to translate the first paragraph or so. It is slow going.

Lying on my upper bunk I wade into Pamuk’s Snow. I have been laboring over it. Partly because it is rather dense at times, but also because I haven’t had the time to really sit down with it. Less than halfway through things really come to a head, and I am drawn in. I find many of the themes that Pamuk juggles also embodied in much of modern Indian literature. Struggles with modernity, the east versus the west, secularism versus religious fundamentalism, inequitable development, the chasm that separates the frontier from the heart of a country, and so on. I wonder what themes predominate in modern Chinese fiction. I am curious, is there as much of a contested understanding or approach to the west, and to notions of secularism and modernity?

We arrive in Guilin mid-afternoon. Outside the station are a slew of buses. Shouts of “Yangshuo, Yangshuo” ring the air. We are herded into a half full minibus. I refuse to put my rucksack in the hold: it has my computer and I am not letting it out of sight. We stop everywhere, as the driver and conductor search out potential passengers, attempting to fill every vacant seat. I eye my big rucksack swaying in the seat next to me. Soon enough it is the last ‘vacant’ seat. But not for long. We pick up one final passenger, and I have to nestle my rucksack on my lap. Having my computer along is an increasing source of tension. We will be trekking around Yangshou and I am not too happy about leaving it at the hotel.

As Yanghou approaches, Karsts start to dominate the landscape. They are interesting structures. Little pillars or out-thrusts of rock, rather un-mountain like. I later find out, from that most unimpeachable of sources that is Wikipedia, that “Karst topography is a three-dimensional landscape shaped by the dissolution of a soluble layer or layers of bedrock, usually carbonate rock such as limestone or dolomite.” Enlightening. Further down I find a slightly easier passage to relate to: “Mature Karst landscapes, where more bedrock has been removed than remains, may result in karst towers or haystack/eggbox landscapes. Beneath the surface, complex underground drainage systems (such as karst aquifers) and extensive caves and cavern systems may form.” This rather aptly describes the terrain we are in. I marvel at the landscape outside my window. My real chance to appreciate them will come tomorrow though.

We arrive in Yangshuo around seven in the evening and walk around. Yangshuo takes me by surprise. I was expecting a little provincial hill-station. It is all that, but also heavily commercialized. The bus-stop exit channels us into a long alley with shops and hotels on either side. Patrick has no recollection of these structures so they must be fairly new. We are harassed as we walk along, but most locals are surprised and impressed at our relatively standard Beijing Putonghua. The accent here is at times hard to decipher. We earn respect wherever we go, though somewhat undeservedly I feel.

After asking at a local tourist agency, we finally locate the Karst Hotel. A double costs us the princely sum of 25 kuai each. It is good to travel during off-season! The room is decent, has attached bath, with running hot water. Sold! We dump our stuff, take quick showers, and step out in search of food. The little alleys, impressively clean, full of restaurants and cafes, advertising mostly European and American fare, render a distinctly European small town feel to this Chinese city. Oddly the Chinese fare on the menu is more expensive than staple ‘western’ items like fish and chips, spaghetti, and even steak and chips. Patrick digs into some fajitas as I order the fish and chips. While Yangshuo doesn’t reflect Guangxi’s poverty, the five tiny pieces that claim to be fish can easily lay claim to an impoverished background. Washing this rather unsatisfactorily meal (Patrick isn’t too impressed with his fajitas either) down with the local Liqun beer, we continue our stroll.

Over dinner I have decided to buy a backpack so that I can lug my laptop around with me the next day. Not the ideal solution, but far better than leaving it at the reception tomorrow. I need the peace of mind. I find something suitable, and haggle the price down from 120 to 55 kuai. I could probably have got it for 30, but I am yet to master this art.

We find a café next to the Karst, which has free internet. We settle in for some beer and French fries. The waitresses are friendly; speak better English than their counterparts in Beijing. One of them, a pretty girl, after establishing I am Indian tells me I look like ‘that Indian’ guy from ‘that American movie.’ A couple of minutes and we are finally able to deduce the movie is Van Wilder and I am being likened to Kal Penn. I am not sure I like this. I get the sense this is lone brown man in yellow land syndrome. A variation on the “all you XXX look alike!” (Replace XXX by whatever skin color catches your fancy.) We hang out at the café late into the night, and as we leave are encouraged to return for breakfast by the same girl who made the Kal Penn comparison. She really is quite cute. I say maybe we will.

After leaving the café we continue our stroll around town. It is quite dark now, and the karsts are hardly visible. Other tourists too are rare. The river right now is more like a stream, though fairly fast moving. I am pinged by Lauren who informs me that Caijing is now looking for a fulltime translator. So that puts paid to that. Suddenly the laptop feels heavier than its already weighty seven pounds. It also gets progressively colder, and we take the executive decision to head back to the hotel.

The temperature continues to drop and our room is freezing. The 25 kuai rate does not include the AC. But once under the covers, things are not too bad. We doze off to the TV screening some premier league game.