Fireworks light up the horizon in all directions as China welcomes the Year of the Monkey. This is to a peaceful and prosperous year according to lore, one in which China may continue to entice travelers with its phenomenal culture. I have a week to spend over this festive period and have chosen to visit Guangxi province in southern China, an area renowned for its karst rock formations and patchwork of ethnic minorities.
Whilst Guangxi is easily accessible by flying from other points of southern China, I chose the rougher option of the overnight bus ride from Guangzhou in Guangdong province. This brings me to my first port of call, Yangshuo. As the sun vainly attempted to break through the thick clouds to summon the day I began to be able to make out the outline of the towering karst rock formations littering the countryside as we approached Yangshuo. The small town is nestled on the bank of the river Li, which winds its way between the karst. I got off the bus, a little dazed and confused and was immediately surrounded by locals blowing thick plumes of cigarette smoke into the cold damp air of the early morning. They each politely moved forward to let me browse their hotel cards. I randomly chose a guy and he quickly broke off from the pack and led me into town. He took me to the Western Hotel, whose owner offered a price of 50 yuan for a double and he quickly hustled me upstairs. The room was fine, if a little cold, as the doors and windows were flung open to the elements on this cold January dawn. Each day I stayed in Yangshuo, I would return from breakfast to find my bedroom spotlessly clean, icy and exposed. Many of the hotels here are owned by mountain dwellers to whom a cold draught is no hardship.
West Street, where I stayed, has the appearance of being new with whitewashed alpine lodges, built in a terrace leading towards the riverfront. Beautiful red lanterns hang above street level from the balconies above the many cafes and shops which spill out onto the cobblestone street. West Street is called so because it was built for the western tourists, yet there are many domestic tourists here sipping coffee and browsing CDs in this strange Disneyland. Travelling in China involves a great deal of pointing, gestures and feeling more than a little detached, but in Yangshuo, the Chinese waitresses are practically tumbling out of restaurants to practice their English. The town is noted for its concentration of western tourists and consequently there are many girls such as Yang Hung, who come here for 12-hour working days in exchange for food, lodging and the chance to chat about the gloomy English weather. As I sip a tea, she demands I think of an English name for her, so she can be like her friends. I scratch my head and wait for a name to appear. I tell her ‘Penelope’, but she prefers Angel. Her friends are called Doris and Maggie and there is even a 17 year-old girl by the name of Aaron, the result of a few too many beers I imagine.
In Yangshuo, one can eat well, drink and dance in a soul train in the early hours if it’s what you want. You can also buy Mao Zedong lighters, mugs and a plethora of such memorabilia and after the rigors of a long trip through China, I am sure this place might seem like a paradise. However, I have only just arrived in China and am itching for a day out.
A little hungover, I decide to visit the nearby town of Fulli to satisfy a little Chinalust. What better place than a rural market to do so? I was certainly not disappointed. Fulli is about 6 kilometers from Yangshuo, easily reached by being almost crushed to death in a packed minivan. The town is set amongst towering karst pinnacles and tumbling bright rice paddies. The buildings of the town are ugly grey concrete boxes clashing brutally with the gorgeous countryside. The main road was choked with an odd assortment of Asian vehicles and people walking with chickens in cages or sucking nonchalantly on sugarcane whilst pulling cows home. I found the bustling market easily by following the throngs of people and the rank smell. At first glance, the market didn’t appear unlike any other market in Asia with rows of brightly coloured vegetables, boxes of unidentifiable plastic goods and a stench-ridden butchery area. I was alerted by the yapping of dogs and headed towards the sound. At its source was a row of cages containing puppies. At the end of this row was a bare-chested Chinaman blowtorching a skinned hound. He was grinning at my most British consternation. Dog is a favourite food in Guangxi and can be seen, along with rat and snake, on many menus in the region.
Continuing through the mud I noticed an impromptu dentist set up on the edge of the market with a customer patiently waiting in its decrepit chair. With the wind howling around him and the sound of hacking from the meat market, I was amazed at the peaceful expression on his face. It was the faces that struck me the most about this market, the old people with their few teeth and hollow leathery faces. They must have lived through a lot. Many of the older men still wear the flat cap of Mao, but still, they manage to grin ferociously for my camera.
Back in Yangshuo that evening, after a few drinks had been drunk at the delightful Minnie Mao’s, someone spotted a bottle of snake wine on the counter. It looked a bit like one of those bottles of pickled fauna that adorned the classrooms at school. It contained pieces of various snakes mixed with herbs and insects in a light brown liquid. A large measure was duly ordered and passed around with solemnity, its woody flavours digested and discussed.
Guanxi is noted for its ethnic minorities of Dong, Miao, Zhuang and Yao and so it was to the village of Ping’an, a four hour drive north of Yangshuo, near the town of Longheng on the Guizhou border that I headed next. 800 metres up in the crisp mountain air, the sun made its first appearance in day and began to flood with light the cascading rice paddies that descended to the valley floor. Ping’an is experiencing a boom as a new road connecting the village with the main road at the bottom of the valley has been completed, altering the inhabitants’ lifestyles for ever. This road brings in bus loads of tourists daily and gives the wily Yao and Zhuang women a chance to make a few extra Yuan by peddling trinkets and chilies to these tourists. In the village itself the stepping stone rock pavement which crawls in between the houses seems to be growing as the sound of wood being battered hails the building of guest houses and droves of tourists. At the moment, the place remains quiet, with wood smoke creeping out of chimneys and the old folk sitting outside the few shops, gossiping. Ping’an is a Zhuang village so most of its female inhabitants sport coloured headscarves to denote their social status; yellow and red are worn by the married and the elderly whilst blue is for the unmarried. These towel like headscarves are worn with beautifully embroidered black jackets and trousers that must take an age to make. I am fortunate enough to be accompanied by a Japanese girl who is studying Chinese in Beijing. Her English is frail, but it is the only English spoken here and I am grateful for her company. After a few hours of walking through the rice fields and staring down the valley I am struck by the joy of the car-less world and the lack of people. An escape from the infernal babbling of all ‘civilized’ places. As we walked, the Zhuang workers in the field would hail us from distance confirming that fellowship in rural areas is a must. Many trudge past us on the narrow pathways which line the paddies and greet us heartily despite the excruciating loads on their backs.
That evening, as the sun set, the air became icy. We returned to Ping’an and slid across the stepping stone pavement and past the damp wooden walls into something that was lit like a restaurant. They offered to prepare us a Zhuang speciality which we heartily accepted and when we heard a chicken squawk its last, we at least knew our meat was going to be fresh. Tea was brought followed by a plate of dark red fried pork meat with rice. Finally, the crowning glory was brought, a steaming pot of Zhuang chicken soup with raisins, spring onions and the head and claws of the recently deceased bubbling up every now and then. It was hearty and delicious. After the warmth of the day, the night proved a shock. There was no heating and the icy air crept through the wood chilling us and our hosts to the bone. We sat around a fire with them and sipped tea. With a few nods and smiles we happily leafed through the photos of a recent trip to the city that one of the Zhuang girls had brought to show her friends.
I slept with two duvets and all my clothes and rejoiced when the light of dawn pierced the all too obvious gaps the planks of the room’s walls. My Japanese companion and I leapt to it and got walking towards Long Ji, the nearest Yao village, some two hours away. Somehow, amid the rice paddies and lakes we took a wrong turn and ended up outside a deserted house in a secluded valley feeling quite lost. “Mimoko like getting lost,” she told me but I think we were both relieved when a Yao woman and her husband found us and led the way. The further we walked, the more Yao women we saw. They wear incredible bright pink jackets and aprons with knee length black skirts. However, it is their hair for which they are most celebrated as it is usually grown to reach the feet and is tied up in a huge bun at the front of their heads and covered in an embroidered pink and black scarf. They wear huge hoop earrings to signify that they are married. I could not tell the age of our guide, perhaps 50, but the way she leapt up the hills and over streams carrying a bamboo pole bearing buckets of vegetables suggested she was a lot younger. We puffed behind her as her solid squat frame made light work of what must have been her daily walk home from the fields. The view to the other side of the valley was breathtaking, no wires obstructing the sense of harmony as green stretched away endlessly. Alongside the thin path were many tombs, inscribed with Chinese with sticks of dead incense in front. Some tombs were round, much like Neolithic barrows and all were some way from the village, facing out over the paddies, a clear line drawn between the abode of the living and the houses of the dead. Eventually, Long Ji came into view in the distance. Its black wooden houses perched safely atop a hill. Everything in my field of vision looked so pristine and neat, the pathways kempt, glistening in the distance. Nothing here seemed out of place.
The climb into the village took the breath out of me and I wearily nodded to the inhabitants and listened to the oink oink of the pigs kept below each house. There was rubbish everywhere, all rubbish of modernity; plastic, cans, brightly coloured nonsense alongside the main walkway. It seemed that the Yao had not yet found a suitable mode of disposal or simply weren’t interested. Our guide led us into her house, which was still being built. It was a huge room built on stilts under which livestock was kept. There was plastic in some of the windows and in others, small wooden shutters. A Buddhist shrine surrounded by garish Chinese calligraphy adorned one wall, looking oddly out of place. We were led to the kitchen area, a sandpit surrounded by countless pots and pans and the occasional jogging chicken. We were brought tea and were soon surrounded by snotty-nosed inquisitive children.
With no gas or electricity, a wood fire was lit and we were informed that lunch was to be prepared for us. In a precise and orderly manner food was slowly prepared. The woman’s daughter cooked, as she did everyday. She wore western style clothing and had her shoulder length hair tied neatly in a ponytail. She wasn’t surprised to see us and responded to our Mimoko-led inquisition well. She told us that there were 100 houses in the village and when she was older she wanted to marry a Yao man from a town in the valley. She didn’t want to stay in the village and miss out on the bountiful benefits of rapid change which are affecting China . She rejects the traditional clothing and hair of her mother’s generation with ambitions of TV and electricity. More than once she mentioned her misery at life without TV whilst her mother looked a little ashamed.
Dinner was served after an hour. It had been painstakingly produced over fire and we ate egg soup, noodles, rice and vegetables with garlic. With more than a little humour the mother brought over two freshly heated beakers of rice wine and informed us that we must drink them for our future friendship, they laughed deeply as we coughed and spluttered the potent brew down. With a warm farewell and many grin, my Japanese companion and I giddily stepped down the steps out of the village and back towards Ping’an.
That evening, back in Yangshuo, after 3 bus trips and with a veneer of flu, I slunk into a restaurant and hummed happily to Kylie as I bit heartily into a cheeseburger. I said goodbye to Mimoko as she was going to penetrate Guizhou province in search of more villages.
With 100 million people on the move over the spring festival, it is no wonder that I managed to get stuck in Nanning, the capital of Guangxi province, for longer than expected. After a day lingering in Yangshuo, I had decided that it was time to leave, guilty that I was missing out on ‘real’ China. As my bus pulled into the city I was again struck by the effort that the Chinese seemed to make to care for their urban greenery. The grass verges were beautifully designed and clipped to a length Wembley’s grounds man would be proud. As we entered the city proper I took a deep breath and flexed my finger muscles in preparation for the pointing that would be needed to get me to my hotel of choice. I was a little concerned that the hotel would be full given the time of year but was relieved to find that it was a 240 room beast named The Nanning Railway Station Hotel. My tenth floor room commanded an ungracious view over the city, an endless vista of squat tower blocks stretching to the hazy horizon.
A cup of green tea set me up for an exploratory wander. There were no tourists to be seen and on my mission to find the city’s Muslim restaurant, I discovered that no-one that I spoke to could speak more than a few words of English. The Muslim restaurant was nowhere to be seen and many places were shut. It was, after all, New Year’s Eve. This was suitable oblivion for me, enough incomprehension for me to have fun with. Many people regarded me with a semblance of curiosity and a few said ‘Hello’, but mostly I was left to wander quietly, something quite unusual in other Asian countries.
That night, I put on my fleece and stepped outside the hotel, but was pleasantly surprised by the increase in temperature. The evening had a celebratory air and as I strolled into the centre, with its Uyghur raisin sellers from far-flung Xinjiang, McDonald’s and hive-like shopping malls, the crowds thickened. It seemed that no-one was actually doing anything, just walking and eating kebabs or crystallized strawberries, avoiding being run over by motorbikes. Turning away from the main commercial street I wandered blindly into a colourful shopping district where young and old were having portraits painted, buying balloons, having their shoes shined or their signatures analysed by wizened fortune tellers. Everyone was content to stand back and watch everyone else. Around each activity was a crowd. It seems that the Chinese love to watch and the crowds were a fine cross section of local society, from teenage girls in trendy knee-high leather boots and brightly painted faces, to old men in drab coloured suits with dark, leathery skin, they would all watch passively in an almost zen-like state with hands clasped firmly behind their backs. The two streets in this district were almost Eastern European, coloured with beautiful pastel shades and art-nouveau in design. It could have been Prague or Budapest if it hadn’t been for the red lanterns and hundreds of dark suits. The Chinese men have a serious penchant for western style suits and one sees more suits in China at any time of day than in the city in London. During the cultural revolution, such suits were forbidden and men secretly longed to wear them, this desire has yet to pass, hence their popularity in modern times.
After demolishing a plate of New Year’s dumplings, I decided it was time to find a bar. Trudging through the streets it seemed that all I could find was squid kebabs and pickled vegetables. Frustration began to tickle my nerves until I noticed a glowing beer sign in the distance, a beacon of hope! It seemed that i had stumbled across a nightclub. Four beautiful hostesses with porcelain faces, jet black hair and white fur coats were leading people inside. I looked down at my tawdry clothes. There was no way iI was getting in there and even if I could, I doubted that I had enough cash on me to get much in the way refreshment. I decided I had to continue my search. Fortunately, this took a matter of seconds. I supposed that I had stumbled into the beer district, as over the road was a small park where a couple of guys had set up some tables and chairs so small that a Barbie doll would have some difficulty getting comfortable. These guys were selling bottles of the local beer and so I contorted myself into a chair and was soon joined by one of these guys. He spoke no English and I spoke no Chinese. He wore a dark brown suit and had a slightly nervous look about him. I tried to communicate and we said ‘Gong Xi Fa Chai’ (‘Happy New Year’) several times. I tried David Beckham, which oddly had no resonance, and so resulted to teaching the guy ‘cheers!’. He invited me to join his friends and after a bit of nervous smiling a round of crispy chicken feet were proffered. I politely declined but remember the crunch well. After finishing my beer I said goodbye and headed off to a busier street stall and people gazed. The young folk were out for a good time, guzzling back beers and shouting into their phones. There always seems to be an explosive atmosphere around drinking Chinese, bottles seem to hit the ground frequently and one can’t tell if the raised voices are going to lead somewhere.
I stumbled back just before midnight and from the glorious vista of my bedroom window watched the Year of the Monkey arrive with a blast as the horizon was lit up by hundreds of fireworks and I lay on my bed and fell into a fine sleep.
New Year’s day was crowded, hectic and fun. Crossing over bridges, dodging plastic windmill sellers and grubby beggars, I entered the park. It was full of people packed tightly together; once again, they were all watching, a nation of voyeurs. A boy next to me, resplendent in a bright red suit with Chinese symbols stared deep into my eyes and bit heartily into a chicken claw. In one corner there was a mass of people furiously scratching at lottery cards, hoping their number had come up whilst beyond them, was a group of line dancers who were being regarded by hundreds of balloon wielding locals who were regarding them with a suspicious curiosity. It was glorious to feel so happily detached, where a smile or gesture could take the place of a stream of words.
It started to rain so I headed into a mall full of TVs, clothes and a medicinal hall selling various roots, animals’ penises and dried snakes. The mall was crammed with people, steam rising from their damp clothes to the ceiling as they happily chewed, hawked and gazed. The infernal babble started to drive me insane so I left and wandered the streets. I heard the rhythmic clang of symbols and drums and saw the silver heads of three lions intermittently poking though a crowd. The men and women inside were performing minor acrobatic miracles, leaping all over each other in towers, jumping on thighs and swinging one another by the knees to get the beasts moving. They really did move, dancing side to side, high in the air and aggressively poking into shops to bring blessings for the new year.
One of the things I appreciated most about my short time in China was the way that the Chinese adore their own culture. They love their food, their music and their dance, their myths and stories creating a wonderland out of this vast land. It is a society that takes what it needs from western culture but little more. Fireworks are cracking as the night arrives and I fell asleep early, planning the next day’s assault on Vietnam.
