Guilin

On the flight to Guilin, we were handed scratch tickets (this had happened on the way to Shanghai, too). Dad, who had been fighting a cold that he’d probably caught from mom, was sleeping. Mom woke him up over the scratch ticket.

A.: Are you out of your mind? Let him sleep!
Mom: What if he doesn’t know what to do with the ticket?
A.: He’ll figure it out!

Every domestic flight within China included some sort of snack. This one included a full meal, but since it was beef or chicken, I had two rolls and some cucumber. This was plenty, following the big dumpling lunch, but by morning I was quite hungry. We got into Guilin pretty late and got our luggage even later, only to discover that the lock was broken off (again). It’s a requirement in China that checked luggage be locked, but we knew better than to put valuables in it. Still, it was annoying. Mom was going to write a letter (which meant I was going to end up writing a letter). I tried to convince her that the Chinese government had more pressing issues at hand.

The palm trees (neon-lit, no less) outside the airport were the first sign that we’d arrived somewhere different. Guilin, not far from Vietnam, was subtropical and not majority Han. The landscape and streetscape would continue to remind me of Central America.
We were told that Elephant Trunk Hill was the landmark of the city and the sun and moon pagodas to our left were only six years new, compared to Xi’an’s, which are very old. We drove past karaoke bars, discos—neon was all around. Some of you will be interested to know that Orlando, FL is Guilin’s sister city.

On the bus ride from the airport, Kathy and Joe took orders for the Western-style dinner we would have the following evening. The choices were haddock, beef and chicken, which for me, meant haddock. How a simple pre-order for dinner turned into a situation that mom felt she had to micromanage was beyond me, but when they asked for a count of hands for haddock, my mother raised hers, i.e. to make sure that mine would be counted. Except that my hand was already up, and hers was counted, too, and she didn’t want haddock. This was easy to correct, especially since the guides were used to people changing their minds and didn’t want drama, so they had as write names next to our orders. Nonetheless, I couldn’t help but marvel at what had happened.

The hotel in Guilin was the crappiest of the trip. Actually, in my experience it’s boasts the most extreme combination of fancy lobby and restaurant to crappy rooms. The worst part about it was excruciatingly slow elevators and no non-emergency stairs, but it was also just shabby all around. This didn’t bother me, apart from the air conditioning not working (which wouldn’t have bothered me if the window opened). We were at this point very tired. This had been our fourth domestic flight and we were wary, we had to wonder why we were here.

As in the past, by morning we were glad to be there. In this case, all we had to do was look out the hotel window and see the river and surrounding rock formations to see why Guilin was well worth the trip. We decided to go for a walk before we had to meet for the day’s tour.

Mom: You want to have breakfast first??
A.: Yes.
Mom: You’re hungry?
A.: Yes.
Mom rolls her eyes, sighs with disbelief.
A.: I had two rolls and a cucumber, over twelve hours ago.
Mom: Rolls are bad for you anyway.
A.: That doesn’t mean I’m not hungry.

Also at this point in the trip, mom’s shoes were smelling REALLY bad. I started to notice it on the boat, since our cabin was such a confined space. Mom’s response to my complaints was to tell me that I was too sensitive. At one point, I don’t remember whether it was in Guilin or Hong Kong, I opened the door and dad came in and said, “could I have my book? Oh and throw mom’s shoes out the window, will you?”

It was an interesting walk along the river. The street we were staying on was a combination of posh and decrepit. We came to a temple outside of which a group was practicing tai chi—this continued to inspire, even though it had become a familiar sight.

We boarded the bus for an optional tour of a (government-operated) tea plantation and research center. I can’t think of anyone on the trip who wasn’t weary at this point, and many opted to shop around Guilin on their own time, so the bus was unusually empty. On the way to the plantation we rode by a prison. Joe, our Guilin guide, pointed out a prison and told us not to be thrown by the sign out front saying it’s a factory. As prisons go, this one has a better view than most hotels. It’s for corrupt political leaders, he tells us; political dissidents are generally sent to prison in the Gobi desert. The corrupt politicians are often convicted to quite the term, and often end up serving just several years. It was prisoners that partly built the road we’re on, and only recently; it was built specifically for tourist buses dropping off for the Li River cruise.

In ancient China, scenic Guilin was actually a place of exile. Its climate, great for lush hills and the Sweet Osmanthus forests that inspire the city’s name, is, or at least was, disease-friendly. Now it’s one of the ten cleanest cities in China and boasts the lowest crime rate in the country. With “only” 700,000 residents (and 4.3 million farmers in the surroundings), it’s a village by Chinese standards. Only 10% of the city’s 12 million yearly tourists are “big-noses” like us. Joe assures us that the term is merely descriptive and not derogatory. Guilin now has 68 hotels, compared to the one that existed in the early 1970s, and now Chinese are actually permitted to stay in them (in the old days, they were not even allowed entry unless they could prove association with a foreigner). The increase in the number of Chinese who are not only allowed but can afford to stay in hotels was given as the reason that the smell of cigarette smoke permeates even in the non-smoking rooms. Some INSANE proportion of Chinese people smoke. It's cultural (Guanxi, etc.) and economic-- cigarettes are heavily taxed and are a significant source of income for the government.

***
The plantation was up in the mountains. Normally we’d have been given a chance to pick tea leaves, but it started to rain and we were ushered sort-of inside, where we saw a worker massaging tea leaves over a hot stove. It was fascinating and hard to watch—I don’t know how she didn’t burn her hands.

After the demonstration, we took part in a tea ceremony and tasting. We learned that it’s best to brew fermented teas in clay pots and unfermented in ceramic pots; that oolong is the longevity tea; and that brick tea is the best of all worlds. The guide told us something about how Chinese don’t say thank you when tea is poured but instead tap their fingers. The number of fingers and number of taps signifies whether the one doing the thanking is single, married, or anonymous with regard to marital status.

We couldn’t bring ourselves to buy anything from the shop, the prices were absurd. I had wondered this throughout China: what would happen now that Americans, still one of the most common categories of tourists, had less buying power in China? Sure we’d be more willing to turn away from the low quality stuff on the street, but what about the really artistic, beautifully made stuff that was once affordable? How would its vendors, who were in some cases the artists themselves, replace the lost income?

We had bought some artwork on the boat. We could only do it by credit card, which was the boat’s official policy, even though artists implored us and used discounts to try to get us to pay cash so that they could avoid the commission charged by banks and the boat. Kathy had told us that a year or so ago she was really surprised to see a merchant asking her group to hurry up out of his store. She inquired, and he told her that Americans were no longer the best customers—Chinese themselves had become better buyers. He added that Americans overbargained, demanded prices below the actual worth of the product.

We didn’t buy any tea or extortionately priced tea-making materials. Later, at Hong Kong airport, I bought my dad and roommate some nice tinned Oolong (I myself am cut off until I get through the tea I already have). Occasionally our compassion for the sellers would get the better of us and we would buy things we didn’t need, but this was not the case in government-operated factories, or in this case, plantations. Actually, it mostly happened to me on the boat, and it was a combination of compassion and a sense that the artwork was truly worth the price, even though it wasn’t a price I would think I’d be willing to pay. I was less willing to buy things from street vendors, but they managed to tug at mom’s heartstrings and sell her some seriously unnecessary stuff (this was limited largely by my being the one to carry most of the money). During the Li River tour in Guilin, a couple of vendors had attached their raft to the boat to hawk some powdered “jade” and painted “crystal”. I was very much against letting mom buy it, which had the unintended effect of persuading the vendors to lower their asking price to what ended up being $7 for two pieces (from $20 for one). I gave mom the money in the end just so that she would close the window and they would go away. It’s not that I lacked compassion for them, although it was less strong than for those who sold their own, meticulously-crafted art; it’s that you can’t just go buying things because you feel bad for people. The negotiations with these vendors had become such a spectacle—mom’s interest, my refusal, their price-lowering—that people were taking pictures. It was a rainy day, and the crystal bled paint within a few minutes of its purchase. She told me on the phone recently that fake or not, it looks great in her house.

After the plantation tour, we went for a tea lunch to a well-known restaurant where Hillary and Chelsea Clinton had dined while then-President Clinton visited the town. The table at which they sat remained cordoned off in the corner, untouched since their visit (well, probably dusted or something). For some reason, people took pictures. The lunch itself was amazing and beautifully presented, especially the yin-and-yang soup.

That afternoon we go for another demonstration of Traditional Chinese Medicine, hear once again about how the body is an integrated whole. We also witness cupping for the second time, and it’s not a pretty sight.

Dinner was amazing, although afterward my mother told me I talked to much and dad said I gesticulated too much, both comments in the interest of making me a better person. At lunch we had sat at separate tables; at my parents’, Janet had apparently told them that I was a wonderful person. Mom asked me how I managed to hoodwink everyone.

We took a brief stroll through Guilin at night. It was bustling and—I can’t help it—very Central American. I enjoyed the walk, in spite of nearly getting hit by a motorcycle and experiencing increasingly intense allergies. I’d also broken out in hives a few days before, and was itching like mad. Mom wanted to keep walking, rarely one to empathize with others’ conditions (at least on a practical level; she expressed empathy and offered me an array of herbal medicines, but didn’t respect my wishes to go back to the hotel and go to sleep). The other issue was that we had to catch up with Terry, who had the same video camera as mom and thus the same charging apparatus (which she had forgotten), and coincidentally, whose AA charger had broken, leaving him dependent on mine. It was getting late, and this was something mom needed, not I. Nonetheless, it was a fight to get her back to the hotel. As soon as we exchanged batteries, I got ready for bed.

Mom: Your stomach is enormous.

What can I say? When I eat, my stomach expands.

It was a beautiful cruise along the Li, even when it started to rain, and even as my nose ran and eyes teared for hours on end. An enormous lunch was served on board, and in what must have been the worst business strategy ever, vendors sold supplemental food. A plate of fried shrimp was taken around at first for $20, then $15, and so on. Someone at our table finally bought one at $3. I felt worse for the vendor of the shrimp than those of the fake goods, but like I said, you can’t go around buying everything out of sympathy.

We saw fishing cormorants with nets in their mouths. They’re fed only at midnight and made unable by the nets to swallow the fish that they catch.

We have twenty minutes in a Yangshou, now a market town but long a destination for all sorts of outdoor sports—the Chinese Queenstown, if you will. I would LOVE to cycle, kayak there. Since the town attracts foreigners, many Chinese students flock there to practice their English with them. It’s vendor madness. Dad sees a book he likes for the equivalent of $3.

Mom: Don’t! You don’t know that the DVD in there will work at home.
Dad: So, it still has good pictures.
Mom: We’re running out of Chinese money.
A.: We have less than three hours to use that Chinese money.
Mom: No! Don’t buy the book!
Dad: No one keeps you from buying all sorts of crap.

This is true. Mom’s fake jade and crystal were purchased with my postcard-mailing money (I managed to buy a handful of postcards on the boat in Guilin, hours before leaving for Hong Kong. I had to buy two of each so my mom would let me send some. I would ask Kathy to send them when she returned to China, and now I would have to give her Hong Kong dollars to do it). Anyway, at the market, mom bought some jewelry in dollars, of which we were also running out, and I used all but the last of our Chinese money on two fake pasminas. I had charged a real one at a shop in Xi’an, and the difference in feel was obvious, but I felt more free to wear a fake one without worrying about it getting dirty or scuffed. My fleece was disgusting and I wasn’t about to wash it again, and I needed a lightweight extra layer. Besides, I thought, as we took rickshaw-like carriages from the ferry terminal to the buses and the beautiful fragrance of jasmine in the air made my nose and eyes run furiously: at $5 each, the way my allergies were going, the pasminas would make good snot rags of last resort.

Thankfully, it didn’t come to that. We’d learned to bring our own toilet paper, and over the last few days I was especially efficient at finding clean napkins. Restaurants with cloth napkins were a bane. It was actually on the bus ride back to Guilin that I either ran out or couldn’t find them. I knew Mom had some.

A.: Could I have a tissue, please?
Mom: What tissue?
A.: Any [m-f] tissue!

She does this all the time. It goes hand-in-hand with asking for directions without thinking about it herself—she asks for clarification when the answer is obvious. Toward the end of the trip, especially, I increasingly found myself getting frustrated at mom’s “who”s, “which one”s, etc.

As we head back to the city we hear more about the process of rice cultivation, harvesting. You can’t blame farmers for switching to less labor- and water-intensive crops. You can blame restaurants for serving enormous amounts of rice that will never be finished, and then discarding it.