It’s “Golden Week” in China, which to me means a week’s
vacation, and probably something more patriotic for the Chinese who understand
what we are celebrating. I’m celebrating
surviving yet another beginning to another school year, which is no small
accomplishment.
Many colleagues recommended a holiday to the area around
Guilin, specifically the rice terraces of Ping’An and the stunning karst
landscapes around Yangshou. I read a
guidebook to try to get an understanding of how these remarkable landscapes were
formed, and I read about rain and CO2 and the formation of caves, which
collapsed but are really still growing from the bottom. I read it aloud twice, then closed the book
with a shrug. Don’t care that much, and
it didn’t make sense.
This area is the subject of centuries of Chinese watercolors
with good reason. One day we took a boat
ride up the Li River to view some of the most dramatic scenery, and tomorrow
we’re off on cycles to do the same, then take a bamboo raft down another
river. It’s all beautiful, and
beautifully relaxing, except when we try to see what a million or so Chinese
people want to see, and are willing to be much more uncomfortable in the
process than I am.
Here is what we are seeing:
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My luscious passion fruit going into the cup |
Today we took a 5-hour bike ride to some of the small
ancient towns in the area.
The scenery on our bike ride provided an apt snapshot of
China today, new and old. First I had the unpleasant experience of riding
through the gauntlet of the morning rush-hour traffic in the city of Yangshou,
which was terrorizing when I stopped to think about it, but I didn’t have time
to be reflective, so no problem. I was
too busy trying not to get killed or maimed, or both, if that’s possible. I will never watch the scenes from movies
featuring a busy, chaotic Asian traffic scene again without wanting to
feint. There were motorcycles, ebikes
(stealthy, they make no sound), other lunatics on bicycles, cars, and the ever
present “get-the-hell-out-of-the-way” buses. I felt like I was playing one of
those video games where stuff pops out at you from all directions and you try
to kill it before it kills you. I never
understood why people found those fun, btw.
It was incredibly loud, with several generations of vehicles and several
vehicles that were hybrids of combinations of vehicles, with engines of
tractors (loud tractors) attached to wagons, motorcycles attached to carts, and
all of them loud, slow, and unpredictable.
This part of China is noticeable less advanced than the Eastern coast
where we live, and we saw that in the old beat-up jerry-mandered vehicles.
Anyway, I survived intact and was rewarded with blue skies,
and a bucolic river scene complete with bird calls and not much else, and
stupendous scenery. There are rice crops
in several states of growth to accent the karst formations.
Along the way I saw young Chinese enjoying a day off from
work, motoring along with electric bikes, or groups of the new middle-class,
decked out in identical expensive biking outfits and identical expensive
bikes. I also shared the road with older
Chinese who were decidedly not middle class, but whose bodies showed the
ravages of decades of carrying loads too heavy for their spines to
support. These people’s bodies were
right angles, with their point of intersection at the waist and the top half of
their bodies absolutely parallel to the ground, except for their heads which
were peering up in an effort to guide their steps. It was sad to see, particularly because there
were also many people still carrying those loads, people whose future seemed
sealed to the same angle of repose.
The road was periodically littered with red confetti paper,
the remains of earlier fireworks used to herald the holiday, and as we rode
through ancient villages along the path we saw ancient brick homes decorated
with new door ornaments of red paper on either side of the door sporting
calligraphy of matching couplets to adorn each side. We could have been riding through these
villages a 100 or more years ago and the gardens, the homes, and the
“free-range” ducks, chickens, and small children would have played the same
roles in these people’s lives. Beside
the ubiquitous rice fields there were mini-plots of various vegetables, soy
beans, corn, and even cotton. The
children who saw our white faces as we cycled through yelled a friendly and
excited “Hello” to us, unlike the urban Chinese who are not impressed by our
presence for the most part.
Having spent a week enjoying the scenery the area is justly
famous for, I didn’t know I was going to get a bonus of a relaxed, slower pace
of life (rush-hour traffic aside) and a view into the “real” China, which is
far more a mix of old and new than the very new “China-light” that we live in
at Suzhou Industrial Park, which is only 20 years old in total. I’m sure there are dozens more different
perspectives on China, and I look forward to seeing more before we leave at the
end of next summer. Here's what we saw along the way....
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pommelos ripening on tree |
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still loath and fear them but these were pretty |
And also these....
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Along the Li River bamboo rafts waiting for customers |
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Farmer spreading out rice to dry |
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Loading rafts back onto truck for trip back upriver |
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mysterious code on elementary school wall |
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Rice harvest |
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The road along which we biked |
Love that they still wear the thin bamboo hats. I found the rice shocks interesting.. never knew rice was that big. You saw a wonderful part of China. Looks beautiful
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed viewing the undulating landscapes. The harvest looks like an intense work project. The bamboo rafting would give one a close up on the riverside. Are they strong enough to carry passengers?
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