The numbers of Westerners traveling to China has soared over the past decade, so seeing a crazy little white girl bopping around the streets of Zhonguo is not a huge deal anymore. But apparently it is still very strange to most Chinese to see a crazy white girl with an Asian guy. Especially if the Asian guy is Chinese. And much to my surprise, pretty much everyone we meet thinks that Mark is Chinese.
So we get stared at a lot. And the folks we actually get to talk to are always shocked to discover that a.) Mark is my boyfriend, b.) Mark doesn’t speak Chinese, and c.) I do speak Chinese. Our friends from the train as well as the Giggling Tree staff and a group of Chinese guys we met in Yangshuo all told us they had been surprised to see me with a “Chinese” guy. We try to explain that Mark is American and was born in the Philippines, and that he isn’t at all Chinese, but they still sort of expect him to speak Mandarin, and they get a good laugh at my own limited ability to speak the language, especially given that Mark clearly understands even less than I do.
Oddly enough, it doesn’t seem nearly as strange to the Chinese to see a white guy with a Chinese girl….but double-standards are common, I suppose. People will even turn their heads and look back at us as we walk by…multiple times, as if they can’t quite believe what they see. We surprise them. But everyone is always really nice, it’s not like they think we shouldn’t be together, it’s just funny to them. And that’s funny to us.
Every morning, we generally wake up around 5 or 6am, and wait a second, then make our way onto the streets in search of some food. America has no concept of street food (other than say a hotdog cart) so we’ve just been indulging at nearly every opportunity we come across.
Usually we just head out, off of the main street and down a promising hutong (side street). We’ll pass a lot of spots that just seem to be packed with people, all of them hunkering down and grabbing a bowl of steaming soup. But this they serve Chinese breakfast soups naturally and they’re just not nearly as appealing as even regular soup for breakfast. Many of them seem to be of the egg-drop/wonton/hot and sour variety that we have back in the states. So soup is a no go for breakfast here.
We nearly always pass by some vendors selling steamed buns (baozi) and I can never turn those down. So that’s been breakfast for the past few days. Today we also found some steamed rice cakes wrapped in palm leaves (or banana leaves) with beans in them - not so crazy about the beans but the rice part was good.
Leah also tried some of the eggs that we kept seeing everywhere. Apparently what they do is boil the egg, crack the shell, and then soak it in a dark tea so that the egg can soak up the flavor.
On the way back from today’s breakfast excursion, we decided to be fancy and stop at the UpDown 9 restaurant.
It was quite good and a nice middle ground between faux upscale and street. Just a comfortable spot that the locals also eat at where we tourist can go and not worry about being ripped off to shreds because the prices are all printed on the menu.
I even got coffee.
They didn’t have rice made so I had to order a noodle dish. Beef and noodle something - but it was really good. Leah also got a noodle dish and it actually was very similar to a dish that my mom makes from the Philippines called pansit.
Then walk back to our hostel and get ready for the day’s adventures. That’s breakfast nearly every morning - except for the few times we have it prepared at the hostel we’re staying at. Sorry about this VERY photo intensive post. I think that I’m just too excited about having a internet connection that makes it possible.
Whew! Leah here. It’s crazy how a few short days without internet leaves me feeling totally out of touch with the rest of the world. But we’re here in a Guilin until 1:00 today when we leave for the airport to fly to Lijiang by way of Kunming. Hopefully the tickets actually are booked….getting them took way too long! Avoid the China Souther Airlines counters in Yangshuo, people. Head to Robert’s TravelWorld booth instead!
So, Yangshuo has definitely been overrun by tourists, but the villages surrounding the area are full of amazing scenery and very friendly farmer folks who still plow the fields with water buffalo. There is a lot of development going on, though, and it’s starting to encroach on the farmer’s land. One thing I liked about the Giggling Tree was that they employ locals, buy as much food and whatnot from the locals, etc., to support the village as much as possible. The guesthouse has just 20 beds, so it can’t ever get as packed with tourists as the nearby hotels that cater to insanely large groups. Being in Yangshuo was a big wake-up call as to my responsibility as a traveler, because tourists can have such an impact, and definitely not always a positive one, on the places they visit.
Mark has already talked about all the super awesome people we’re met, and I’d just like to second that. Staying in hostels makes it that much easier to meet people, too. The staff members have great suggestions of things to do, they’re so friendly, and the hostel guests are great, as well. At least at the places we’ve been to thus far. I love hearing about people’s lives, where and why they’re traveling, etc.
I’m so glad that Mark is enjoying his first trip abroad, not that I was ever really worried that he wouldn’t. I used to like traveling by myself, but getting to travel with my best friend is even better! Especially since he’s up for whatever. And he has an awesome sense of direction that comes in handy when I get all turned around.
This was a funny restaurant…we sat on little tiny stools at a little tiny table.
Okay, I’m off to wander the streets in search of breakfast. I think I’ll make Mark do all the talking, though. Haha. He needs to practice speaking Mandarin. Tonight- we head to Yunnan province for more adventures!
We stayed at The Giggling Tree Hostel in the very small village of Aishanmen - about 3 km outside of Yangshuo.
It was nestled deep in the Karst mountains and away from the busy streets - in fact you have to drive on a bumpy dirt road for a while to get there. But it’s worth it, and there is no way I would stay anywhere else when visiting Yangshuo. Except they don’t really have internet there.
The owner has a laptop that he sets up for a few hours as a time - and it’s dial up. So yeah. But if you don’t need the internet - it’s a great getaway.
I wandered a few times and went through the nearby villages, usually I ran into some kids who would walk with me for a little bit.
Again, the Giggling Tree Hostel was great - but the town of Yangshuo I can do without.
I was very happy to be leaving Yangshuo today. It started out quite well with our taxi being about 20 minutes early so there was no need to worry about being late for the bus. The only moment of slight panic was when the bus arrived but our travel agent hadn’t shown up to give us the plane tickets we had purchased the day before - he said he would show up before we got on the bus.
Just before things got really panicky, he zooms up on his scooter and pulls the tickets from his pockets - this guy was amazing. Seriously. After a grueling experience booking our first plane trip from an actual airline counter - that took 1.5 hours - and this was with a computer! We stumbled upon Robert and his little booth of a travel/tourism outfit.
He’s very unassuming and plain looking, but he speaks enough english and he handled everything we needed - without any problems. In fact, any issues or concerns we had were absolutely no problem for Robert. We needed a bus that would take us up to the rice terraces (a 3 hour drive up north) but were we could store our luggage (travel backpacks). Check. Then we also needed that bus to drop us off in Guilin - Check. Oh yeah, and we needed to book plane tickets - and for it to not take 1.5 hours. Done.
At the end of this trip when we gather all of the resources we used - Robert and his outfit is the ONLY place we’ll list for anything in Yangshuo other than the Hostel that we stayed at that was actually outside of town.
I would not want to be with anyone else other than Leah on this trip. She is awesomely the most best and super greater than fiction. (See? She’s so great that my grammar gets all F*cked up.)
FOOD. Today I had wild frog and rice cooked in bamboo. Frog taste like really greasy chicken - and this wasn’t just frog legs, it was the whole thing chopped up. I couldn’t eat the um, hand? I tried to get over the fact that it looks like a tiny little hand… but then when I tried to chew it and I felt each bone… yeah… I spit that back out.
The trip was definitely worth the effort. Looking back, even climbing the literal gazillion steps was worth it. The terraces really are quite amazing and unbelievable. There aren’t just a few, or a couple - there are entire mountain sides that have been cut into. If you have any idea what a regular untouched mountain side can look like, and then to carve out the flat terraces… you can understand how hard it would be to do such a thing without bulldozers and to do it around 500 years ago.
It was difficult to take photos of the terraces - too much mist made it hard to see anything at all… but everything was still really great.
Traveling in the US can be a very lonely act. Traveling anywhere in general can become a lonesome journey where one aims to lose themselves in solitude and to escape the general madness that can stretch from downtown to far borders of any suburb.
I feel that a substantial difference between our trip compared to others is the degree of openness, how much we are seeking others out, and always up for meeting someone we can connect with and possibly be friends. Because although many of us from the US seem to believe that simply flying to some destination, eating the food, buying the goods, and taking pictures constitutes traveling – we’re missing a substantial chunk of the experience. We’re getting the postcard fed to us by the chamber of commerce and nothing more.
Chances are good that we won’t ever see or hear from some of these people again – but because the initial connection was made, because that wall which separates strangers is no longer there with these people we now consider friends, everything changes – and we experience China as it really is and not what is reported on the news.
Because although the media is partially correct in their delivery of facts, they are unable to convey what it is like to meet these people. To know them and find that common denominator that we share, even though we live on other sides of the planet.
We have handed out roughly 20 friend cards – and hopefully we’ll hear back from everyone – some have already been writing and we still have so much time, and fortunately, many more cards to hand out.
So tonight we’re here in Guilin, just north of Yangshuo and a day before we fly out for the next city - even though we experienced something different, something less pleasant and hopefully forgettable in the town of Yangshuo - everything else about this portion of the trip was worth the trouble.
We’ve met many other travelers from other parts of the globe. While there are obviously many obnoxious people that I am happy to never meet, the ones who have somehow broken past my own barriers have been quite excellent. Just because we’re traveling doesn’t mean that we haven’t run into an A$$hole every now and then - so we keep away and turn to the other people that we’d rather meet. All of the people in these pictures.
So aside from eating our way through China, it would be accurate to say that we’re… friending our way through China because that’s also what we’re doing. And the diversity that we’ve come across has been quite awesome.
Ireland, England, Australia, Nanning(China), and people from nearly every region of China - and then of course Alonzo Davis, an artist from Baltimore back in the ‘States.
It’s always good to have friends in far off lands and while it’s been very convenient to meet people over the screen and through the internet, it’s always better to have that face to face connection, when things seem to be effortless and the distance doesn’t seem so great. When the distance between each of us seems as though it could be the reason we actually keep in touch.
But Leah makes it easy when she can turn anyone into a friend - even the vendors trying to sell us their wares… here’s a good clip of both her Mandarin speaking skills, and her ability at haggling and friending the vendors. Have a great night.
