Fuddland

One of the must-dos in the province of Guǎngxī (广西) is a leisurely cruise down the Lí River (漓江) from Guìlín (桂林) to Yángshuò (阳朔), taking in 83 kilometres worth of the renowned karst scenery. The weather was not totally on our side, presenting us with a rather overcast day, but it was still a lovely way to spend five-or-so hours.

A coach picked us up from our hostel and stopped off at a couple of other nearby hotels to collect the other members of this particular scheduled cruise. Once we were all aboard and on our way to the pier, we were given a brief history of the region by the tour guide, but the most entertaining thing he said was when, since lunch on the boat was part of package, he enquired if there were any vegetarians on board. Several people raised there hands, only to be told:

Okay, can you tell me who you are again when it’s time for lunch? All foreigners look the same to me.

[Aside: this appears to be genuinely true and not an intentionally ironic twist on the racist stereotypes displayed in many a terrible British sitcom from the 1970s; several other Chinese people have told me they have a hard time distinguishing many Western people from each other. Mary explained to me that this is because although people of East Asian descent generally all have straight, black hair and brown eyes, they have a much wider variation in their facial features — the width and positioning of their eyes, the length of their noses, and so on — than Caucasians. So whilst people of European descent are conditioned to use the visual clues of hair and eye colours when recognising others, if those aspects are subconsciously disregarded, there’s a lot less to distinguish one Caucasian from another.]

The journey took us past some imaginatively- and not-so-imaginatively-named rock formations such as Yearning for Husband Rock, the Painted Hill of Nine Horses, and Writing Brush Peak, and there was a sublime moment of comic timing when, just as we were tucking into our lunch below deck, our guide informed us that we were about to glide past the most famous of all the Lí River vistas — the one that appears on the back of the ¥20 note.

The cruise ends at the town of Yángshuò, which these days is entirely given over to tourism: literally every place of business is either a travel agent, restaurant, cafe, bar, hotel, souvenir shop or some such establishment. There were more eating places specialising in Western food than Chinese cuisine, and at night the main streets are garishly lit with ill-thought-out neon, waging war on your eyes while your ears are similarly assaulted by the clash of dance music pumping out of every bar. That’s not to say these places are all dreadful — the Karst Cafe and Drifters Cafe both had good food and wine, and we sampled the Rosewood Cafe’s ice cream menu a couple too many times. My two-years-in-China anniversary on February the 17th was celebrated with Shepherd’s Pie, apple crumble, and a nice bottle of French red — not a particularly Chinese meal but delicious nonetheless. But the real reason to spend any time at all in Yángshuò is to visit the surrounding countryside.

I think most people hire bicycles, but we opted for what we thought would be the easier option of an electric scooter. [For the benefit of any parents who might be reading, let’s all pretend that, yes, of course helmets were provided.] We asked what the best direction to head was, jumped on, and away we went.

Now excuse me while I gush: whizzing along the roads through the undulating countryside — karst after karst towering over small plots of farmland; passing through small villages and townships — with Mary riding pillion, her hands tucked into my coat pockets for warmth, her face pressed against my back as she too admired the scenery, is simply one of my happiest memories of the past thirty-one years. Even though the battery ran out of juice earlier than we estimated because we kept going further and further out and, despite stopping for a late lunch at a roadside noodle place and borrowing their electricity to charge it up for an hour, we ended up having to push the scooter for about 10 kilometres back to Yángshuò, in the dark and the rain, and I was a cranky old so-and-so for most of this time, thinking about that day gives me a goofy little smile that I have no intention of hiding.

#1

Mary | 2008 / 04 / 01 – 16:53

I believe you turned around and said to me “… this is the coolest I have ever been.” That was both flattering and unsurprising.

[Edited by commenter — 16:54]

Commenting on this post is closed. Thanks to all those who left comments. If you'd still like to say something about this entry, feel free to email me.