Day Five- Dazhai to Ping’an

Tuesday 19 January 2010


6:30am Watch sunrise from our mountain-top hotel room
8:00am Begin 4 hour hike from Dazhai village to Ping’an (stealing dog along the way)
1:30pm Catch bus to back to Guilin
4:30pm See Guilin in two hours
7:00pm Bus to Yangshuo
9:00pm Walk around Yangshuo at night, eat super yummy peanut-sesame sweet porridge

Kiersten: Yes, we stole a dog. But we didn’t mean too, really! He came quite of his own accord. He belonged to the hotel we had stayed at and as we started out in the morning on our hike to Ping’an, he followed us down the mountain. We didn’t think much of it, figuring that he wandered around there all the time. But he kept going! As we turned off on the path that left the Dazhai area and went through the mountains and rice terraces towards Ping’an, I began to get a little worried. We tried shooing him and stomping our feet at him. But to no avail. He would disappear for a few minutes, then he would either suddenly shoot past us from behind or pop up on the trail ahead. After we had hiked a couple of hours and passed a couple of villages, I began to throw rocks in his direction, hoping to get him to leave. Nope, didn’t work. We finally lost him maybe a half hour from Ping’an. I felt so horrible, worried that he wouldn’t be able to make it back home. But the last we saw him, he had made friends with another village dog so I can only hope that if nothing else, he was able to assimilate into another village. Thus ended our career as dog-snatchers.

Eric: After a three hour hike across the rice terraces and through the Yao village of Zhongliu, we arrived in the Zhuang minority village of Ping’an. I must admit, I much preferred the area of Dazhai to this new valley of terraces. While Ping’an’s rice terraces were beautiful, the views around Dazhai were much more majestic. Ping’an was also much more touristy, which was a sad change from Dazhai’s empty streets during the day and the happy sounds of children playing in the valley below heard from our hotel after nightfall. However, I still enjoyed this new area, and I learned a lot. As we crossed the top level of terraces, we came across a Yao woman who apparently had accepted the tourist atmosphere of her home and was more than eager to let down her long hair for a price of 5 RMB. It is the tradition of Yao women to grow their hair out long and wrap it into a turban style bundle on the top of their head. The larger the bundle, the more beautiful it is considered.

I admit that a picture with her was definitely part of my consideration, but the prospect of conversing with her about her life was what really made me agree to the fee. I didn’t ask her name, but as she undid the braids holding her hair up, I asked many other questions. She was forty years old and had only cut her hair once during her life. That was when she was eighteen. As her hair came down, she showed us three long strands of hair. One was the hair that was on her head. The second was the two foot strand that came off when she was eighteen. The third strand was not hers but added to make her turban wrap appear larger. I asked if it was painful having so much hair on her head. She responded that it was at first, but she has now been long used to it.

Soon after sunrise, in front of our hotel.

We're on our way! And, yes, that is the dog.

A small sampling of what we saw on our hike:










Four hours later...Ping'an!



We only spent two hours in Guilin, and half that time was spent being lost or being accosted by nice Chinese people wanting to practice their English with us, so not many pictures from there...

Good news!

Eric just heard back from his first grad school today. He's been accepted into UC San Diego's Master of Pacific International Affairs (MPIA) program. We are definitely very excited. All the stress of the last couple months is paying off! We are still waiting to here from other schools but it is sure nice to know that he in at least one place! And at a school that we are very excited about! Yeah!

Side note: Eric proposed to me a year ago today. What a wonderful year its been! :)

Day Four – A Farmer’s Paradise

Monday 18 January 2010


6:42am Train arrives in Guilin
7:30am Begin three hour bus ride bus ride to Longji rice terraces
11:00am Spend five hours hiking through rice terraces and hills trying to find our hotel (but not regretting a single step)
4:00pm Find our hotel (at the top of the rice terraces)
4:30pm Continue hiking and exploring
7:00pm Eat an amazing dinner of “mud chicken” and bamboo tube rice. Amazing!

Kiersten:
As our bus began to leave Guilin and climb into the mountains, I was in awe at how beautiful it was. This was our first time being in rural China countryside and after being in huge cities for months it was amazing to be able to look around and not see a single building. Once we got to the small village of Dazhai, which is as far as the bus goes, we got out and began to hike. We knew our hotel was at the top of a mountain, but exactly where, we weren’t sure. We had our trusty little map so we weren’t too worried. But, of course, we got lost. I’m so glad we did get lost though! We got so far off that it was just us and mountains of rice terraces stretching out all around us. We finally ran into a mother and daughter who were working in the terraces. As they heard us approaching, Eric heard them say, “what, is there someone all the way out here?!’ They offered to be our guide (almost everyone that we met was quite willing to do that, for a small fee of course) but I told Eric I didn’t want one. So off we wandered again. And we did make it to our hotel…eventually.

Eric:
The rice terraces were three hours in the opposite direction of the Guilin’s famed karst mountains, but in the research we had done previous to coming, we knew that it was a place we didn’t want to miss. In fact, we were so impressed by the things we read, that we planned to spend two days and one night in the area. We were not disappointed. All around us were endless hills, large and small, of terraced fields, and in their midst were nestled villages unlike anything I had seen before. For six hours that first day we climbed up and down their stone steps, marveling at what all that was around us. First through Dazhai, then up the back of a mountain, back down the front of it, through Tiantou, up to the highest point where our hotel was waiting, and then back down to see more, we hiked and hiked and hiked. But the hills and villages were too amazing to stop before dark.

What impressed me most that first day, besides the evident work that it took to build the thousands upon thousands levels of terraces, was the work ethic that was still being manifested in the lives of the locals, China’s Yao ethnic minority. We hardly passed one villager that wasn’t either leading a horse or hefting a load of branches. And, judging from Kiersten’s own attempt to lift a similar bundle, it is no easy task. We stopped one villager descending the mountain to ask her what the wood was for. She held her own bundle with one hand on her shoulder as if it weighed nothing. Her answer surprised me, and it made me admire the Yao people even more. The wood was for cooking, and a trip was made into the high parts of the terraces two to three times a day to fetch the wood. I know that there are people all over who are similarly hard-working, but it fascinated me that I was standing among a people who made things happen. It’s hard for me to explain, but I respected these people.
This was on the bus we rode up to Dazhai.



Overlooking the village of Dazhai.

People we met:





But, then...
...we're lost!!!

Having fun being lost:



Looking out from our hotel window. We had an amazing view!

Mud Chicken. Despite it's name, it was amazing!!

The family who ran the hotel eating around their fire.

More pictures:

Day Two and Three: Hong Kong

Day Two – Hong Kong (Kowloon Peninsula) in a day

Saturday 16 January 2010

7:00am Wake up
9:00am Attend session at the temple
12:00pm Temple of Ten Thousand Buddha’s
Afterwards Walk through city, go to Kowloon Park
4:00pm Walk To the waterfront
6:00pm Amazing Turkish dinner
7:00pm Walk of Fame – watch amazing Cantonese singer perform
8:00pm Light Show
8:30pm Return to hotel

At the Temple of Ten Thousand Buddahs.

And where does that name come from?

They are all over the place. I think there was actually over 12,000.




I like this picture. It is in the MTR or the subway. You can see Thomas's head sticking out way above everyone else. Thomas and Jessica are our friends from Flagship who we went with.

One example of how Hong Kong is different from China. This is people campaigning for the Democratic party. You would not see that anywhere else in China.

Walking through the streets:


I really like how the store signs poke out over the road.

This man is hand carving a name stamp.





Day Three – Hong Kong Island in three hours

Sunday 17 January 2010

9:00am Church in Hong Kong
12:30pm Walk around Hong Kong Island
2:00pm Visit Botanical Gardens
5:51pm Catch sleeper train to Guilin (13 hour ride)

Kiersten:
Both Eric and I were surprised by how much we liked Hong Kong. All I had known was that it is a huge city. But it is so different from the other Chinese cities we have been in. Even though it is technically part of China, it definitely looks and feels like a completely different country. Besides being able to go to the temple, my favorite part of our couple days in Hong Kong has to be just all the walking around the city we did. Oh, and our amazing Turkish kebabs that we found. So good! I haven’t had one in years. Yum…

Eric:
Yes, Hong Kong was nothing like I was expecting. I really don’t know how to describe it, and perhaps it wouldn’t startle you as much if you weren’t coming from another Chinese city to visit it. But we were coming from five months in Nanjing, and it took me by surprise. I love China; please don’t mistake me on that point. I love Nanjing. But there are some things that just seem to be holding segments of the culture back. In Hong Kong, all of those things seemed to disappear. They were small things: people waiting to the side of the subway as others exited before they got on, signs in the subway and along the streets advertising symphonies and plays, well-kept botanical gardens, zoos and aviaries where the animals were properly cared for, the workers actually cared about the animals, and the visitors likewise respected the animals and surroundings. It was a China that I had not seen before, and it gave me great hope for what the rest of China can become.

Besides the behavior of the people, though, I loved the city. I can’t say I’m an expert on either city, but to me it reminded me of a mix between New York City and Seattle (with a splash of London in there too – a.ka. look BOTH ways before you cross the street). We definitely hope to go back for a longer visit sometime, because there seems to be endless things to do and see in Hong Kong.

Kiersten:
Oh, that’s right. Eric had a close one our first day in Hong Kong. I got used to cars traffic going the ‘wrong’ way while on my mission but poor Eric kept forgetting. It definitely was stressing me out!

Our friends Jessica and Thomas


This was interesting. On Sunday, we kept seeing women like this sitting in groups, tons of them, just lining the streets. They were just talking, eating, and playing cards. I'm pretty sure these are some of the women who come from the Philippines or Indonesia to work and this is their day off. They don't have any family with them so they sit where they can with their friends.

'Fool Proof' plant? Hmmm... This was at the botanical gardens.

As were these cute guys. They were giving a free concert as we walked by. It was quite funny.


Time to go! Off to catch our night train...

I guess we didn't get a picture of our beds but this is where Eric and I camped ourselves out for the first part of the trip. Fully stocked with cookies, oranges, and a good book.

Guilin here we come!