Man Man Zou

I’m sick with a common cold right now, but it’s absolutely wonderful. I’m on the last night of a 3-night cruise down the Yangtzi River from Chongqing to the Three Gorges Dam. We traveled first class on a Chinese-tourist class boat, which means we had our own room with a very nice view of the gorges for a cheap price.

I always said I liked being sick while in the proper place at the proper time (at home in Canada on a rainy weekend for example). But I rarely get sick, and when I do, it’s always during a stressful time (such as exam time). In Taiwan, it sucked being sick because it never felt as comfortable as at home in Canada and I would have lost a lot of money if I took the day off. But for once I am sick at the right time. It lightly rained nonstop for the last three days, so I just set up camp in the room for a lot of the time, while the gorges streamed past my window like a movie.

I should rewind now, to where I left off in my last journal (the village of Zhaoxing).

We spent two nights in Zhaoxing. For our full day there, we took a 40min motortaxi ride up to a very small Dong village called Tang’an. There were some very cool looking old guys hanging out under the drum tower so we sat there for about an hour to observe.

I should define what ‘cool’ means to me: the guys all had long pipes, were very old, and some had beards. I love photographing old people, and they were very easy-going about it (perhaps because we gave them cigarettes).

We don’t smoke, but all of China seems to. And a good way to make friends here is to offer them smokes. For some of the Chinese we’ve met, ‘smoke’ is just about the only English word they know. Maybe some people are against promoting smoking by giving out cigarettes in villages, but in China, I think that trying to get people to quit smoking is about as useless as telling them not to litter or spit. It’s just my own opinion that this is ok.

From Tang’an, we tried to walk back to Zhaoxing through the rice terraces. It was a great, but slippery, downhill hike past farmers and a couple of small villages, but we got very lost in the paddies and it took us more than 3 hours to get back to town.

After Zhaoxing, we took an 8-hour bus to Kaili. There was a bat on the bus with us the entire time. Kaili is a city, but it’s also in the center of all the village action. There are lots of interesting villages nearby. We went to one called Matang, home to the Gejia people. It was about an hour away, and a 2km walk from the main road.

As we were walking into Matang, many female farmers were coming in from the hills, somewhat rushed. They had their sticks balanced across their shoulders with baskets full of corn and rice at each side. I thought I was in heaven, as many of the women were fully dressed in the most elaborate minority clothing I have seen so far.

As we approached the village, I could understand why the women were so rushed on their way in from the fields. It seemed that someone had rung the foreigners-are-coming bell, as there were more than 100 villagers (men, women, and children), fully costumed, in two long lines, singing and playing instruments. Two other foreigners (French) also arrived at the same time with a tour guide, so I’m not sure if the big welcome was because of us or them or was just the right place at the right time.

The greeting was a little overwhelming for just four people, but I’m not complaining! After we walked past all the people we were given cup after cup of rice wine, and then we were escorted up to the village stage and were treated to an hour long show of singing and dancing. I wish I knew more about the songs they sung, but it was impossible since most of the villagers couldn’t speak Chinese.

Matang was an extremely happy and friendly place- a rarity among frequently-touristed villages. There was major pressure to buy things, and normally I wouldn’t have bought anything, but they treated us so well that I felt I had to give something back in return (I would rather have paid for the performance, but that wasn’t an option). The women specialize in batik, something I really like anyway, so I bought a couple things from them.

The village itself was also picture perfect. Most of the villages in Guizhou province still have nice traditional wooden houses. I hardly ever saw brick or aluminum. Outside the houses were strings of corn and chilies hanging across the front, and rice spread on the ground (all to be dried). Some people even invited us into their homes for a look.

The villages of Guizhou province were definitely worth a visit, but thinking of all the other cool things to come in China, I couldn’t help but feel a little antsy for the next step. Right now, I wish I were back there in the villages though. Dang it, I always rush things!

There wasn’t much to Kaili (that city near many villages), so we took a bus (on the first nice road we had seen in a while) to the city of Guiyang. From Guiyang, we tried to buy train tickets to Chongqing (anything involving lining up in China is always a hellish experience), but everything was full. So we took a bus to another city that we thought might be interesting, called Zunyi.

Zunyi is the city where the Zunyi Conference was once held and Mao made his first great impression on the Communist Party. We figured it would be a cool place to see something about the history of Maoist China.

Boy were we wrong…or maybe we were right. Zunyi was the most miserable place I’ve ever visited. No smiles, no happiness, no generosity, no feelings whatsoever were witnessed by me. All head-to-toe stares and snickers at the sight of us, and nothing more. We found one excellent fresh hand-pulled noodle place that had one man who showed a slight glimmer of light, and some muslims selling a strange cake on the streets (the cake looked happy), but other than that there was no color to the city.

I should be fair, since after a while we figured that this area is one of the poorest in China. Being poor in a big city- what reason would you have to be happy? At least in poor villages there is always a strong sense of community, as well as a life with little pressure. In cities, it would be completely different.

In Zunyi we were stared at so much, with such mean expressions, that it really got to me. There’s not much you can do when someone stares at you. I’ve tried it all. I stared back. When that didn’t work, I pointed at the people for a long time and said things like “Look Mark, look at that person”. For the times when even that didn’t make them flinch, I took their picture. That always worked. At least temporarily. Many never gave up though, until we were well away from them.

We had another hellish time at the Zunyi train station, and were only given standing tickets for the 7-hour train ride to Chongqing. The next day, when boarding the train I witnessed the art of Chinese budging at its absolute maximum level. It was madness. People’s baskets were dumped in all the pushing, I saw people pulling other people back by their bags, only so they could get ahead. The pushing and crammed space was more intense than any mosh pit I’ve been in. I finally got on the train and the buzzer sounded, but Mark still wasn’t on the train. He got on though, and I have no idea about the rest of the people behind us because next thing I knew, I was a sardine in a train can. I stepped to try to get further away from the entrance, and in mid-step, everything got extremely crowded. Like I was frozen in time, I had one arm in front of me, one arm behind, and one foot stuck in mid-air. This lasted for a while, until one wondrous train conductor made his way through the car, found us, and told us to follow him.

The train conductor took us to a special car that had a ticket seller. He told us there was room available in the soft sleepers. Soft sleepers are expensive, but I probably would have paid 5 times that after what I had just been through. I spent the next 7 hours sleeping and being thankful that I wasn’t 15 cars back in the hard seat section.

We got to Chongqing in the early evening and were taken by a tout to a nearby hotel. I bargained them from RMB 270, down to RMB 100. That’s the most we’ve paid for a hotel, but it was fairly nice. And they let us check out late at 5pm the next day, which was necessary for our evening river cruise departure.

Chongqing used to be a part of Sichuan province (also known as Szechuan- that wonderful spicy Chinese food you can get in China town), but now it’s its own province. The city is famous for hot pots, and WOW, they are so good. I can’t describe it well, but I’ll try. There were dozens of chilies floating on the top of the broth. At the bottom were handfuls of whole peppercorns and garlic. It was spicy enough to break out a sweat (and sometimes cry a little), but even Mark, who doesn’t really like spicy food, liked it. It didn’t burn down our throats and in our mouth like most spicy food does, it just burned our lips. So we ate most things with our teeth and we were fine.

We ate at the same place twice. We picked the most crowded place, in a very lively, but run-down neighborhood. For 30 skewers of vegetables, mushrooms, and tofu, a large beer, and two bottles of ice-cold Pepsi, we paid 18Y. Mark misunderstood and was ready to hand over 108Y (still thinking it was a good deal), but was shocked to learn the real price. 18 Yuan is $2-$3. We were stuffed, but wishing we weren’t because we wanted more.

After being in China for a couple of weeks, we’ve learned the local prices for things. We still get ripped off here and there, but as long as it’s just an extra yuan or so, it doesn’t matter much. Once in a while when paying the local price, I can’t help but gasp at how cheap it is. Take steamed buns, for example. The good green-onion ones are 4 for 1Y. If there are 7Y in a dollar, then that means you could buy 28 steamed buns for a dollar. I haven’t tried that yet though. The unflavored steamed buns are 5 for 1Y.

While I was showering that night at our hotel in Chongqing, Mark got a phone call from a man asking if he needed a visit from a hooker to his room.

The next morning was bargain time. I had to find the best deal for our cruise down the Yangtzi River. We headed for the docks and went to the various ticket sellers asking how much for a first class ticket down the river. The Lonely Planet lists prices at 1500Y per person for first class, but the book has been wrong about just about everything so far, so I wasn’t surprised to see that prices started at 1022Y. After getting seller after seller to undercut each other, Mark was getting restless (he can’t bargain), so I settled on 680Y per person.

I was very happy with that price. We wanted to go first class, because after camping and hostelling in Taiwan, I learned that in close quarters, cultures clash between Western and Chinese people and I didn’t want to share a room.

We boarded the boat at 6pm and the boat took off two hours later. Our room was quite large, and it had a bathroom, TV, and A/C. I was disappointed that there was no deck off our room (they could have easily made our room smaller and had a deck off it instead), but our window was large with a good view (we were on the top floor) and it rained the whole time so that was ok. Only the luxury cruise ships (packed full of foreigners) had balconies off their rooms. We were on the Chinese-class boat.

It rained the whole time, I was sick the whole time, but the whole time was totally worth it and I’d do it again. On our first full day, the boat went through some decent scenery, and stopped at a couple of lame touristy temples. So far I’ve been totally unimpressed by the temples we’ve visited in China, but I’m sure this is because I’m so used to seeing the real (and much better) thing in Taiwan.

One potentially interesting place we stopped at was Qu Yuan’s hometown. The story of Qu Yuan is one that I’ve taught to my students in the past. Qu Yuan is the reason that we have the Dragon Boat festival– he was alive 2000 years ago and killed himself by drowning in a river because the king wouldn’t listen to his advice. The villagers didn’t want the fish in the river to eat his body, so they threw rice dumplings into the river so the fish would eat those instead. And that’s how we have Dragon Boat Festival. I would have liked to have visited here, but it cost 60Y for admission- a bit pricey for a tourist trap.

Today (our second full day) we entered the gorges in the early morning, and we took smaller boats to see the Lesser Three Gorges. It actually stopped raining just for those couple of hours, and then started again once we got back on the big boat. The gorges were misty and scenic, but not as nice as I thought they’d be. The Chinese say that the gorges are only 50% as beautiful now (that’s not the first time I’ve heard a non-quantifier be quantified by the Chinese), since the water levels are rising from the big crazy dam being built downstream.

Since I was sick, as I said before, I watched a lot of the scenery from the window at my bed. We also watched a lot of shows I have on my laptop (Family Guy, Malcolm in the Middle). When I ventured out, it was to play cards in the Karaoke room with the other foreigners on the boat. Apparently, there is a foreigner from almost every major country in the EU on our boat. I think we are missing Ireland and Italy. We are the only North Americans.

And now we are on our last night. We opted not to go on a tour of the Three Gorges Dam, because it’s in the evening (no good for photos), and we want to stay on the boat to go through the locks- I find things like that exciting. The people on the Dam tour will meet us on the other side and miss it all.

Next stop, Yichang, then Xian.

Update:
Days: 18
Provinces: 6 (though we really only spent time in 3 of them)
Photos taken: 16.8 GB
Money withdrawn from ATM: RMB 10000 (gotta stock up for the rural areas- this is for both of us, btw)
Souvenirs bought: 3 (couldn’t resist the villagers of Matang)
Items lost: 2 (my head scarf thing from Japan)- waaaaaah! :(