Last Days in China

After Yangshuo, it was time to head back to Guangzhou to pick up our Vietnam visas, and Lindsey. We took a side trip on our way back, though, to the Longsheng Terraces in northwestern Guangxi province, very close to the border with Guizhou, an area we'd spent some time in with Pierce last summer. It was good to be back in this lush green, mountainous region, and while the trip there involved 3 buses and a little more time than expected, the afternoon spent hiking and visiting in the villages scattered on the slopes was worth it. This area is famous for having some of the steepest terracing in the world, reaching about 800m up the hillsides; most of the terracing was first constructed about 500 years ago, and the majority of it is still actively farmed. Here was the view from where we stopped for lunch:

Here is Ben with the grandma of the house we stopped in for lunch... she didn't think she looked pretty enough in this picture, which was really cute.

Here is Ben as we walk down from the mountains.


After leaving the terraces we caught the bus back to Guilin and from there, the overnight train back to Guangzhou, where we are at present. After some complications with train tickets, which we eventually got sorted out, Lindsey arrived (she'd been in Shanghai with Courtney), and we spent a nice evening walking around the city. Today we successfully picked up our Vietnam visas (yay!), and tomorrow we have an early morning train down to Nanning, from where we will hopefully be departing for Hanoi early on the 27th. It feels weird to be leaving China at last, but I'm excited to be moving on, meeting new countries, and moving a little closer to home. Look for us next in Vietnam.

Yangshuo

A short morning bus ride brought us to little Yangshuo, a backpacker-heavy village with a way chilled out atmosphere, and the most beautiful of landscapes. Surrounded by the karst formations which have made the area famous through centuries of Chinese tourism (seriously), we had an amazing 3 days of hiking, biking, bamboo rafting, and swimming.

Our first morning in town we serendipitously ran into Claire and Aaron, the couple we'd met in Guangzhou a few days earlier. They were great travel buddies and sweated right alongside us through all our adventures of the next few days. After Ben and I found ourselves a great deal on a cozy room with AC, we rented some bikes and headed out to Yueliang Shan (Moon Hill), one of the iconic views of the region. A short but steep hike up to the archway yielded beautiful views, and a hike to the very top of the stone arch left us with a panorama of the region.

The next day we took a bus to the small village of Xingping where we floated along the Yu Long River on a "bamboo" raft (PCV pipes), passing water buffalo and picture-perfect landscape. Ben went for a swim alongside for awhile, making the rest of us jealous.

Our last day in town, we rented bikes again, and followed the Li River in the direction of a swimming hole that we'd heard about. This was the hottest day by far, and after several mysterious forks in the road, we definitely needed a rest. Ben and a Dutch guy we were with biked on a ways, looking for this dream spot we'd heard about, while the rest of us cooled off in the river right where we were, being careful to stay on the far side from the wallowing water buffalo. After weathering a small (but dramatic-looking!) thunder-storm, we decided to push on, and after a good local meal, we came around a corner to find this: perfection. Needless to say, we spent the rest of the afternoon there amid great company: swimming, reading, and drinking... Ben talks about it like he found the back way into heaven.

As the light started to fall, we biked home with all the people we'd met at the river, following country lanes. We were treated to views like the one below, and as sunset brought cooling temperatures, we just blissed out all the way back into town.

Guangzhou and Guilin

Hey Hey folks,

It's about time that I (Ben) contribute something meaningful to this blog. As you all know, I've been exceptionally bad with keeping everybody up to speed with my time in China. Hopefully I'll do better now that I have some impetus (named Kristen) to improve on said communication skills. I'm first going to try to briefly give a final wrap on life in Dingxi, then I'll fast-forward to today.


So, the final days in Dingxi were at once stressful, nostalgic, stressful, sad and... great. I was able to say final goodbyes to almost everybody that I had hoped to, and those that I wasn't I at least let them know that I wouldn't be back next year. One of the biggest highlights was a goodbye dinner for all of the English teachers and administration hosted by none other than Angela and myself. Angela deserves a special mention in that she arrived in Dingxi the same time that I did and we've enjoyed the roller-coaster that is Dingxi together. In any case, we were able to treat all 25 Chinese staff to a wonderful hot-pot dinner that included a great deal of sliced meat, fungus, toufu, vegetables, noodles and beer.


Faaaast forward to the day before yesterday. Waking up and saying goodbye to Lindsey and Courtney, Kristen and I left on a jet plane for Guangzhou (aka Canton), Guangdong province. Home of dim sum and an unintelligible dialect, we spent the day checking out the Museum of the Nanyue Kingdom - a fairly well preserved tomb that hadn't been discovered or raided until 1983. We then spent some time in a very nice tea garden where we met Aaron and Claire who you will hear more about shortly.


After an overnight train ride Kristen and I arrived in Guilin, capital of Guanxi province. Very well known in China, this place has been an inspiration for countless artists for it's impressive limestone karst formations, rivers and lakes. While paling in comparison to Yangshuo, it was a decent place to spend a day climbing a rock or two and checking out a city park.


The highlight of the day was seeing a troop of monkeys doing monkey things; eating, scratching themselves, chasing off annoying camera-wielding Chinese tourists...actually their day wasn't that much different from mine. My favorite monkey, however, was one that you certainly didn't want to get too close to. Apart from some impressive canines, this dude carried around a shank. That's right - the monkey had a shard of a mirror that he would alternately check himself out in and then wave around like Michael Jackson in the 'Bad' video.

To finish off the night Kristen and I wandered around town and had some terrific beer fish (local specialty). One great constant while traveling in China has been the terrific food. Below is a picture of Kristen eating breakfast (Guilin noodles and rambutan ). That's all for now - give me some time for this blog thing people, I'll get wittier, I promise, maybe. Obama/Biden in 08!

Home in China one last time: Lanzhou and Chengdu

After Xinjiang, we headed home to Lanzhou one last time, staying in my emptied apartment. We watched the Oympic opening ceremonies in a bar with a few friends, and managed to get a pretty decent cheer going when the US team came out.

After a few days of down time, my friend Lindsey and her sister, Courtney, got into town! They had spent the previous week exploring Beijing and Xi'an, and it was a lot of fun introducing them to my corner of China. We ate at all my favorite restaurants, finally got to the Gansu provincial museum (not too shabby), visited the DVD market twice (making Ben and Lindsey very happy), hiked a Buddhist hill & sipped delicious Eight Treasure tea at the top, and generally enjoyed all that Lanzhou has to offer. Check out Lindsey's great blog. Prize for most exciting part was when Ben found a scorpion... in his pants.

Good times aside, I also had to make some final goodbyes. Some of my co-workers took us out to a great dinner, as they have so many times in the past. There were photos and farewells with the mending lady. Thank yous to the families who run the restaurants and shops in my neighborhood. Hugs and goodlucks for my sitemate. A seeing off by our dear friend, Lu Wei, which left me in tears as we headed for the train station.

After a pretty pleasant, if slighty sticky, train ride to Chengdu, we arrived in time to take care of a little business at the Peace Corps office and enjoy a big Tex-Mex dinner at PCV's perennial favorite, Pete's. The next day we were up EARLY on our way to Leshan , home of the biggest Buddha in the world! It's sheer mass and gravity drew the eyes, and it only became more impressive as we descended the cliff alongside him. Below is the big guy himself.

Getting back to Chengdu was a little arduous as we found ourselves at a park exit in the middle of nowhere, populated entirely by touts, but we made it finally, and were able to share dinner with Beth, a fun and fiesty older volunteer who is Ben's replacement at his PC site in Dingxi.

Still in China: Xinjiang

First stop after we officially closed our Peace Corps service was Xinjiang province, a huge chunk of China stretching North and West to the far edge of the country. Xinjiang is not what you picture when you think of China, guaranteed. The people there are Uyghurs, and are a huge ethnic mix, most with far more Middle Eastern features than Han. The language sounds like Arabic. Even though everywhere in China is officially on Beijing Time, Xinjiang is so far away that the locals mostly live on Xinjiang Time, 2 hours later; you had to be careful when asking "What time?" So yeah, it was very different, and very beautiful, with all the important cities marking oases towns along the Silk Road.

We arrived in the provincial capital, Urumqi, dug into some pilaf and mutton, and spent the day getting our bearings. Tidbit: Urumqi is roughly the farthest place on earth from any ocean. While in Urumqi we visited some nice parks, ate some great night market food, and went to the museum, which I was REALLY excited about because of the silk road mummies. Mummy exhibit was closed when we arrived. To be fair, we'd only gotten in that day because we looked like we belonged to a tour group. After Urumqi we went to Turpan, 2nd lowest place on earth and hottest spot in China. Day 1 was HOT and we mostly spent the day being miserable because there really isn't any way to get around without hiring cars from the touts who were, as they are wont to be, pushy, and therefore bottom of the list of people I want to give money to. We ran into some fun folks that night, however. Two of them were the stingiest people I have ever met: they snuck into every attraction they went to, and if they couldn't sneak in, didn't go. The guy was, appropriately, a top-notch bargainer and got an extremely cheap van for all 10 of us who were milling around at the time.

The van took us to Tuyoq village and the Jiaohe ruins. The whole region is extremely famous for it's grapes and melons, and Tuyoq was a traditional grape-growing Uyghur village. Despite the entrance fee, collected, along with our passport numbers, at the gate by Han Chinese military, most of the villagers were extremely friendly, gifting us with bags of grapes, and inviting us in for tea and bread. While I wandered around, Ben sat with a man who was cleaning out the innards of a goat, chatting and learning about the village. Because Mandarin is the 2nd language for the Uyghur people as well as for us, it was actually easier to communicate that we'd thought it might be.

The Jiaohe ruins were set on a loess plateau that sat far above criss-crossing stream valleys in the shape of an arrowhead, and date back to 100BC. While the remains of the town were rarely more than earthen walls, they stretched out far beyond the official observation point where the tour groups stopped, and we had practically the whole of the plateau to ourselves for the time we spent there.

Next stop was Kashgar, a legendary silk road oasis town, and just a few hours from borders with Pakistan, Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, etc. A much smaller town than Urumqi, Kashgar is famous for its markets and is a jumping off point for camel treks, border crossings, and trips up the Karakoram highway. Unfortunately for us, because of Olympic security measures, a new permit process had just been put into place, making any of those trips more hassle than we'd anticipated. Having done a desert overnight with camels in Dunhuang last year, we got together with two other couples and hired a van to take us up to Lake Karakul, serenely located at the foot of snow-capped mountains, and sitting a few hours up the Karakoram highway. The trip there was gorgeous, and we spent the afternoon hiking halfway around the lake, cooling off with an icy dip, and then hurrying back to the warmth of a Kyrgyz yurt where we spent the night. Our Kyrgyz family wasn't the friendliest, but we did our best to share what we had, and enjoyed the company of the others we had made the trip with.

After returning to Kashgar, Ben got sick. Really really sick. He left the bathroom long enough for us to switch rooms in search of air-conditioning. With Ben tied to the toilet, I went out to the Sunday morning animal market. While there sometimes felt like there were as many tourists as locals there, it was still one of the coolest markets I've ever been to -- the donkey carts and sheep with bustles on their behinds and intense negotiations were the highlights. That afternoon I also swung by the famous Sunday Market, but wasn't overly impressed. I think it's considered a big hit because it sells a lot of normal stuff, daily supplies, things locals are buying, as well as some of the usual touristy stuff; I've seen most of it before. The size was impressive though, and there was great people watching.

The morning that we were catching the train back to Urumqi, there was an attack on the police station down the road -- grenades and knives wielded by two Uygher men left 16 men dead, and 16 wounded.

After a much delayed train, we arrived in Urumqi 12 hours late, and after getting to an internet cafe to let moms know we were fine, we crashed. Both feeling slightly ill at this point, we spent the day arranging tickets out, catching those mummies at last, resting.

For photos: go HERE.