15: Guangxi Experiences
26 May 2002
We’re still in southern China, now over in Guangxi Province, another stunningly beautiful area. Currently, we’re esconsced in the backpacker mecca of Yangshuo set amidst beautiful limestone peaks and winding rivers.
A Visit to the Doctor’s
My meagre mandarin does not seem to be getting us very far, as it is limited to the basics of how to get around, how much things cost, etc. So when Josh developed an ear infection (god knows how) in Nanning, we marched towards the hospital, English-Chinese dictionary in hand. Of course, no one spoke a word of English there, although we were quickly surrounded by four giggling, smiling personnel. Leafing through the pages of the dictionary, I managed to say haltingly: “His ear hurts very very much. Started this morning.” At which point, I get a whole babble of questions directed back at me. The only word I think I can get out of it is “water.”
So I shake my head and say, “No water in ear.”
Now, unfortunately we are at an impasse, because I don’t understand anything else of what they’re asking, and they can’t really use my Chinese-English dictionary because the Chinese entries are alphabetized by pinyin (Romanized form of Chinese characters) and not the usual characters. All the personnel just look at each other and laugh and laugh.
We’re both feeling just great about being in this unreal situation. Eventually Doctor Li pulls out an antiquated light director to look at Josh’s ear.
We’re thinking, “Shit, they don’t even have one of those ear-looking-into doo-hickeys that you normally see.” Eventually a man who can read my dictionary appears. After much laborious page flipping, he looks up to us and asks, “Have fever?”
OK, aren’t we at the doctor’s, and shouldn’t they be able to tell that Josh doesn’t have a darn fever or just produce a thermometer to check?
But in the end it was all OK. After many more rounds of laughter and amusement on their end, nice Doctor Li took pity on us and didn’t charge us the foreigner price. The total bill for being seen by four doctors and receiving three different types of antibiotics – about USD$2.5. And Josh seems to be quite recovered now.
The Most Beautiful City in the World
From Nanning, we headed to Guilin, which was ambitiously known as the “Most Beautiful City in the World” when it was founded. Either the government official who came up with that moniker was extremely doped up, or the ensuing years have not been kind to Guilin. We had intended to spend several days there, but fled in fear after one night.
In the daytime, Guilin itself looks like a modern Chinese town, with well-laid-out roads, the usual shops and restaurants. Unfortunately, many of the tall buildings obscure the beautiful views of the limestone peaks and the river surrounding the city. However, the fun really starts at night.
At dusk, each establishment along the main road starts lighting up their neon signs. Walking down the road is like seeing the seedy Las Vegas strip 15 years ago. Not only is the neon offensive, but every single sign dances and blinks in an dizzying ballet of light. Not even the street lamps are immune – they’ve turned into blinking multi-colored palm trees with light coming from the coconuts. As we silently walked back towards the hotel, trying to get the flashing spectacle out of our eyes, we see three spectacular floats zoom by, looking somewhat like Disneyland’s Electrical Parade. One of them has gyrating harem girls… and I’ve since eradicated the others from my mind. Is this what the Chinese like to see when they vacation? The lesson learned today is: if you come to southern China, skip Guilin.
The better place to head for is Yangshuo, about an hour south. We’ve camped out in this idyllic place for a little while now. If you’ve seen traditional Chinese paintings with mist-shrouded tall craggy peaks, pagodas, little bridges over gentle streams… well then, the area around Yangshuo is really like that.
One day, we took a long lazy boat ride down the Li Jiang (“Li River” in Chinese), lying on the roof of the boat and watching the spectacular scenery go by. The hills around are lush and beautiful, also in more spectacular forms – Boy Praying to Buddha, Elephant Trunk Hill, Moon Hill (with a hole through it). Another day we rented a tandem bike and slowly made our way through the small towns in the countryside.
We explored a fascinating cave, wandering through dripping stalactites and crawling through tiny holes on my belly like a snake, hardhat firmly on my head. Something like this would be way too unmapped and dangerous to be allowed in a Western country. In the depths of the cave, we found an underground river to swim in, complete with waterfall and all.
One night, we saw the fascinating practice of cormorant fishing. The fisherman had a flock of seven cormorants, black birds with the body and webbed feet of a duck, wide wingspan, long goose-neck, and sharp beak. The man would send the flock diving gracefully through the water. As soon as a cormorant would catch a fish in its mouth, the fisherman would poke a long wood stick into the water. The cormorant would step onto the stick and be hauled onto the boat by its neck, and have the fish massaged out of its beak into an awaiting basket. He managed to haul in quite a catch in the hour or so we watched for!
We’re off to Hong Kong tonight, and then a brief jaunt back to Bangkok before heading back through China.
