Ken and Mel in China, Part 2

Notes for this story:

Nanna is my grandmother, who died shortly before I left for China.

"Russian Pioneers" are the communist version of boy/girl scouts.

At the train station, the reason for the hundreds of people sitting out in front of the station for days at a time is because there is a lottery of unclaimed seats. A few minutes before the train departs, they auction off a certain number of seats for about 1/3 the usual price. It's sort of like flying stand-by.

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September 3 (Mel)

Don't know if Ken described the train experience, but it's something I've never been through. From McDonald's we walked a few blocks to the station. In the vast area in front of the station were hundreds of people, huddled together in groups, just sitting there waiting. At the doors were lines, 3 or 4 of them, trying to squeeze into one line, and the police yelling at them. We were swept into the hysteria, only to find an xray machine inside the door. People were shoving and yelling and throwing things on the xray conveyer belt. I threw off my huge backpack, but forgot about the bottom buckle. People were shoving, my legs were rubbing against the belt of the xray machine, and I was almost sucked in with my backpack! After surviving the xray hysteria, it was time to find the train.

The entire train business is very official; there is no deviating from it. We present our ticket to the lady in the blue uniform, who gives us a color token. We keep that token throughout the trip. When we leave the train (at the end of the trip), we give her the token, she gives us our ticket back, and we give that to the officials at the gate. If we don't give the ticket to the officials, we can't leave the train station.

Okay, back to the train. We were on the "hard sleeper" car. They have 4 types of seats for the train: the soft sleeper (private car with 4 beds, just like in Russia), the hard sleeper (6 beds to an area, with open space), soft seat (cushioned seats), and hard seats (accurately named). We were on the hard sleepers -- 3 tiers of beds, two rows, with a small table in the middle. We hung out with our group, talked a lot with Grant (our guide), and after a while we went in search of food. They have carts that stroll up and down the aisles. There's the hot food cart, the fruit cart, the quick food cart (i.e., noodles, hot chocolate mix, etc.), and the sundries cart (e.g., orange juice and toothpaste). There's also a dining car, and we decided to go in search of it.

We walked through the whole train. We saw all the compartments. The soft sleeper car kept all their doors closed. The second class cars were like ours. There were women doing exercises, men playing cards, some were sleeping, some were eating noodles. The other cars (soft and hard seats) were families eating dinner, a few cards games, babies sleeping in their mothers' arms. One car was empty except for 2 people. We went back to the dining car, sat with Laurel and Anne (from our group). They said the food was overpriced, no one speaks English, and they pointed at other plates to order their food. Since the dining car was empty, then we decided to go back to our car and order from the cart. We got noodles, and used our own chopsticks. The guidebook says that we should bring our own chopsticks, since we don't know how the restaurants or other places wash their chopsticks.

Lights are out at 10pm, so we crawled into our beds, and the train rocked us to sleep.

September 4 (Mel)

Off the train by 7:30am!! We lugged our backpacks off the train, walked to the gate, presented our ticket so that we could leave the train station, then walked to the buses. There were a group of women waiting for us. They pointed to our bus, then a bunch of haggling and yelling went on between our guide, the women, and one Chinese guy who spoke English. We started to get on one bus, then walked off and got on another bus. (Our guide did not want to share a bus with other people, since the bus driver would charge us and let the other people ride for free.) This angered the women and a fight broke out between our guide and 6 women. One old woman hit Jon (from our group) and some of the other guys from our group as we were getting on the bus! The bus is a short bus, holds about 30 people. The drive from Guilin to Yangshou was about 2 hours. We saw well-tended fields of wheat, rice, corn, and vegetables. And only 2 cows. All the fields were done with manual labor. There were no tractors. Old tiny huts would be at the corners of the fields, as would open-air "patios". Some farmers were still plowing with an ox.

The city centers are laid out similarly as in Russia. Kiosks on the corners selling pop and cigarettes. The houses (apartments) were clumped on one side of the city center, and industry on the other side. There were very few cars. It was either bike, bus, motorcycle with sidecar, little trucks pulled by a lawnmower engine, mini-buses, or scooters. The ratio was about 1 vehicle to 25 bikes/scooters. The businesses were on the ground floor of a building, and the apartments on top. Buildings were made of tile, brick, or painted concrete. The common colors were white, pink, blue, and green. The further we drove into the province, the less we saw English.

We finally got to Yangshou around 9:15am. Our hotel is "Lisa's Guesthouse". Lisa learned just enough English to not only get by, but also a few abrasive phrases. She's a kick. She dresses in the stereotype Chinese -- long pigtails, green uniform, red stars. The lobby of the hotel is decorated in the typical Chinese furniture, posters announcing food, and one whole wall devoted to Mao Tse-tung. Red communist books and buttons everywhere. We sat at the table and ordered breakfast.

Let's talk about coffee in China. There is none. In Hong Kong they serve coffee. In mainland China, it's Nescafe. I hate Nescafe.

I ordered the American breakfast, and Ken ordered the Chinese. He got steamed dumplings and fruit. I got scrambled eggs (they were more like chop-sticked instead of scrambled), British toast, and fruit. After breakfast we went up to our room to shower.

Our room overlooks the tile rooftops of the town and has a gorgeous view of the limestone mountains. There is a small alley below. I could see into the apartments across from us. I watched a woman make dinner. Our room has 3 single beds, an A/C, and the bathroom has a shower in the middle of the wall. No tub, no shower curtain, just a showerhead and faucets. They provide us with plastic sandals to wear in the bathroom.

Rooftops in Yangshou

After a shower we decided to do the bike trip to Moon Rock. This involves a 2-person bike. Bad idea. Our bike chain kept slipping, so every 15 minutes we had to stop and put the chain back on. We finally made the 4km to Moon Rock (more like 4 miles), then started the hike to the top. There were 812 steps to the top. The entire way a girl asked us if we wanted to buy Coke or water. She does this every day -- several times a day -- up and down the 812 steps. We made it to the top, and could see for miles -- the landscape was dotted with mountains, villages, and mist. Breathtaking.

Ken and Mel at Moonrock

Halfway down we lost our water girl to a group of Dutch tourists. Once she saw them, you could almost see the dollar signs in her eyes!

At the bottom of the mountain we met Richard (our assigned guide), who took us to a small village nearby. While we were busy ascending the mountain, Richard biked to the village and told the farmer wives to start preparing the food. After our hike, we biked to the village, through the narrow alleys, to a house with 2 huge rooms -- a livingroom and a kitchen. On the way to the house, the villagers were pointing at our odd 2-person bike. Two little boys (about 4 and 5 years old) saw us coming, laughed at us, ran after us, and then pushed us down the path!

When we arrived, 3 dishes were waiting for us, and many more were on the way. We had beef dishes, pork dishes, chicken and cashews, green beans and garlic, 3-onion saute, curry, and this one wonderful dish that was rice leaves and another that was rice stalk. The rice was steamed in a pressure cooker. We stuffed ourselves senseless, thanked the cooks personally, and paid 20 yuan ($2.50). It was the best food we ever had. After the lunch, we took a backwoods path back to the city. We stopped at a flat surface of smooth pavement with steps at the end, and a 6" mortar/stone wall on the sides. I asked what this place was, was told it was where they dried the rice. You could see the mountains, ricefields, and trees. The ciccadas were chirping, just like they do at home (Illinois), only the sound is a high pitch. (Sorta like ciccadas on speed.) We eventually made our way back, even though the chain kept falling off our bike every 10 minutes. My butt was sore from the bike and the bumpy backroads. I couldn't sit for a while. We got back to the hotel and took a one-hour nap. We had to meet the group at 7pm for dinner.

Yangshou countryside Trucks in China

Dinner was at the Rosewood Restaurant. We must've had about 4 girls waiting on us. We had everything from beef to chicken to stuffed eggplant to jaozi (potstickers) to fresh fruit to shredded vegetables. Total cost was 23 yuan ($2.90) per person. On the way back to the hotel we stopped at a printshop and bought a Chinese ink drawing of the mountains of Guilin/Yangshou with the mist. We had to get to bed early, because we had to get up early for our boat trip. If we got up too late, then we might be in trouble with the police if we were on the river after 10am...

September 5 (Mel)

I finally figured out why I get the cold showers and Ken gets the hot showers. Apparently it takes awhile for the hot water to get from the first floor to the fifth floor. Duh. But at least I'm awake with a cold shower at 5:30am.

We had to be on the bus by 6:30am to drive 25km to Xinping. We brought our breakfast on the bus -- lemon pancakes for Ken and banana pancakes for me. We drove through the countryside. I finally got to see Chinese cemeteries. They bury people above ground, on the rocky hillsides. They cover the body with red clay dirt, then surround the sides and top with small rocks. The marker is a white rectangular stone with the name written in black or red. The hillsides were dotted with these graves. We passed through villages on a mini-bus on dirt roads. We shared the roads with small transport green truck with those lawnmower engines, a man with a stick and 2 cows, women carrying buckets of produce on a bamboo pole, nicely-dressed girls on bikes, and children dressed in green uniforms with yellow hats and scarves (Chinese version of Russian Pioneers). We drove through Xinping, which is being developed for tourism. They are slowly paving the roads, adding walkways, and there are women selling anything from toothpaste to fried ricecakes on the side of the road.

We walked to the docks and got on our boat. The boat is diesel, with wood and metal. We could climb to the top for an unobstructed view. We putted down the river (it reminded me of scenes from "Apocalypse Now"), surrounded by mist and mountain peaks. Women were washing clothes in the river, water buffalo were swimming, and men in flat wooden rafts were fishing. The water was quiet (except for the sputtering of the boat).

Fishing on the Li River Li River

While riding on the boat, I sat up front with Grant. We talked about his various trips through Southeast Asia, our families, my travels, etc. We eventually got onto the subject of Lisa and her guesthouse.

Even though Lisa owns the guesthouse, her in-laws have control. All money goes through her mother-in-law. Yesterday the husband fired one of the helper girls because he "just didn't like her". There was nothing Lisa could do. In order to build the addition (the fifth floor and roof), it cost her about $100,000USD, because she didn't pay all of the proper officials, and the "unpaid" officials sent a demolition crew to tear down the addition. She had to pay the demo crew to stop the demolition, plus the "proper" officials for the "proper" permits. The week after the addition was completed, the city said she didn't have the correct roof, so she had to pay for a new roof. All the helper girls (about 10 of them) sleep in a room next to ours.

As if it's not bad enough to constantly pay for upkeep and weekly taxes, in addition to her in-laws hanging around barking orders, she was threatened with yet another $50,000USD fine when she got pregnant a second time. She has a 13 year-old son, whom we never saw. She also has a 6 month-old son. The government said that when the son is 1 year old, he must be turned over to her husband's brother, whose wife is unable to bear children. If she keeps the baby, she will have to pay the fine. The mother-in-law controls the baby and Lisa is allowed to breastfeed him, which she does with sadness. In order to prove her "loyalty" to the government, she wears the traditional communist dress (military green shirt and pants), and has displays of Mao.

Lisa in one of 7 daughters, and most of her sisters work at the hotel. Intrepid (the tour company) paid for one of the sisters to study university in England. She had to come home after one semester, because the government didn't want the sister out of the country. Lisa's family was threatened with prison until the sister came home.

Lisa

At the end of our river trip, we had to get off the boat about 0.5km before the dock. It was after 10am, and the boat police would be on the water. The provincial government passed a law two weeks ago which stated that tourists were supposed to be on the big cruise boats, not small river boats. The boat we took was considered illegal. So we got off the boat, walked through a small village, and back to Xinping. In Xinping we stopped at a small cafe for drinks, bought fried tar root and ricecakes from the local women, then got on the bus back to the hotel.

Our boat

We had a free afternoon to do whatever we wanted. Ken went on a bike ride to Puyi, and I stayed at the hotel to do "administrative" stuff (postcards, journal). I wrote up the postcards, then ended up chatting with the helper girls, especially Shi-la. Shi-la is about 20 years old, has glasses, and is very friendly. She shared her bag of frozen grapes with me (the humidity was severe), and explained to me that in China they peel the grapes before eating them. We peeled grapes, talked about our families, I showed her pictures of my family and friends, and the mountains of Washington and the prairielands of Illinois. She was sad to hear that Nanna died, and became utterly amazed from the snow of Mt. Rainier. She asked if she could keep the picture of me and Ken at Mt. Rainier, because she had never seen snow before. I gave her the picture, and we talked and joked some more. Apparently it is a Chinese custom for girls to slap each other on the arm when they are having fun. I got slapped a lot.

Market in Yangshou Kids walking home after school

At 4pm we had our mahjong lesson. We learned mahjong -- true Chinese mahjong -- which is a lot like gin rummy, but with tiles. After mahjong, we learned to make jaozi (potstickers). A shy young girl came out to the dining area with a marble board, rolling pin, dough, pork mixed with garlic, and chopped vegetables. She quietly showed us how to make potstickers. We made 4 batches, she cooked them for us, and we feasted on them. But they were the appetizers! Ken and I went to the market and found a place where 2 women had 8 woks filled with various cooked vegetables and meat. We just had to point to what we wanted, then she gave us the hand signal for how much. I now know how to read Chinese numbers. We paid 4 yuan ($0.50) for 3 dishes and walked through the market street eating the food. We met up with the group for a night boat tour to see the men with the birds which are trained to catch fish and dump them in the basket. After the boat ride, Ken and I went to the Roof Top Bar. Since we were the only people on the roof top, they put in a tape of 80's love songs, served our drinks, then left us alone! We looked at the rooftops of the city, then couldn't take the bad music and headed back to the hotel. Ken went to bed, and I'm here in the diningroom, which opens to the street. Shi-la came up to me, slapped me on the arm, and told me I need to go to bed. As I'm writing this journal, a group from Holland just came in and are hungry. It is 11:30pm. Lisa, Shi-la, and the other girls have a long night ahead of them.

Mel and Shi-la

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Next segment:

eating snake,
the monstrosity of the Three Gorges Dam,
and more...

mkadenko/01.01.02