Guilin

Guilin trip was this last weekend, and it was fairly spectacular:

Left on Thursday (skipping some class - something which I'm getting more and more used to) to take the sleeper train into Guilin. It's a 13 hour train ride, so our group (4 guys, 4 girls, 3 Mandarin speakers) opted to get the sleeper car tickets. There are six beds per compartment, so it was good times bonding with random Chinese people. Quarters were very cramped (I slammed my head into a few things), but comfortable enough to sleep in I suppose.

We arrived in Guilin, and proceded via taxi to our hostel (Back Street Youth Hostel - that's right, a free plug), shoved our stuff into a storage room, then set about exploring Guilin. We saw the Solitary Peak (a governor's palace), the Elephant Cave (a big ol' rock that has a hole in it), and the Reed Flute Cave (which yielded some spectacular pictures - take that dust mote). Then we had a cheap (15 RMB) dinner at a place that in the States would not have been cheap at all, walked around a night market, and went to sleep.

The next day we were up early and on our way (via private boat) up the Li River to the town of Yangshuo. Spectacular scenery the whole way up - between the granite/limestone/whatever cliffs that simply just dominate the landscape and the people of Yangshuo going about their business it's just a shock to someone used to cities. Plus, our boat driver was friendly. That was good.

Upon arriving in Yangshuo, we put down our luggage in the hostel, got lunch, then proceeded to embark on what I truly believe will amount to be one of the most incredible experiences in my life:

We rented bikes (real cheap like too), found a bike trail, and just biked through the countryside. That's it. That's all it had to be too - just the whole experience of doing that seems at this point at least, to be truly once in a lifetime. There was spectacular scenery, good company, and just being able to be so close to what China is mostly like (rural/agricultural/poor) made for a unique experience. At the same time you clearly feel like an outside observer; I really have absolutely zero in common with these people, but then it's not a large stretch of the imagination to think that just a few short generations ago that my family might be living in that exact same way. I know I could never survive a week living the way those people do, but it's easy to romanticize the pastoral - the (alleged) simplicity of life is very tempting.

Words fail me and I think pictures will fail the viewer. It's hard to explain, and I'll definitely take another shot at it, but there was something profound in there.

After biking, it was more dinner/night markets/sleep. Man, anti-climactic there, but hey, it's what happened

Next day we woke up late, got a bizarro western breakfast (a not-quite-omlette), and took a tour to this place called Shangrila park. It was very interesting - they were like...showing off some ethnic Chinese minority group for the tourists. While it provided entertainment and some good pictures, the same recurrng thought that kept running through my head was "Sorry for raping your culture." It just feels like it's been hollowed out, put on display, and repeated for tourist money until it's no longer real. I feel this was about some of the temples in tourist locations as well.

There's an exciting story about dinner/the way back to Guilin/Hong Kong, but my roomie is going to sleep, and I think I also need to go to bed. Plus the story really deserves an entry of it's own.

To do:
-Properly explain the spectacularity of the Yangshuo bike excursion
-Tell the dinner story

Admit it, you're all excited