Chapter 36 — Traveling Tales

Last month a new saga began for me in China. Tim has returned to America to care for his mother, who will soon be 90 years old. With no definite job waiting for him in the U.S., the children and I remained here, where we are settled and welcome and employed. For the first time in 19 years, I was without my main support and companion, my husband. I knew it would be more difficult caring for the children and keeping the home running smoothly, but I didn't realize my confidence would also be affected. For the first few weeks, simply caring for the children and house was all I felt I could handle. However, I soon found myself able to cope, and realized that I really wanted to travel and see more of China during our summer vacation.

Taalan has long wanted to visit Sichuan Province in southwestern China, so we decided go to the city of Chengdu and then head south through the forests by train. However air tickets to Chengdu were too expensive, and train tickets not available in Xiangtan, so we decided instead to just go to Guiyang, a city in nearby Guizhou Province. With the help of a friend we purchased tickets in Zhuzhou to leave in two days. Tim knew our plans and gave us his blessing. We caught the bus to Zhuzhou Thursday afternoon and picked up the tickets at the station before 6:00 pm. We were traveling light; each of us had two changes of clothes, two books, and some rain gear, stowed in small backpacks. I also carried one bag filled with food and a few other necessities. We boarded the train at midnight and soon were asleep in the hard-sleeper berths. Taalan and Tariqa spent the next day playing cards and Chinese chess with some children a few bunks down from us. Since the family lived in Guiyang, we asked them what we should see there. They suggested a few sights and also a hotel where we could stay. Arriving in Guiyang at 6:00 pm, we caught a local bus to the hotel where we had dinner, played cards, and watched Star Trek! The hotel showed foreign TV programs, the first we had seen since our return to China in February. We were so starved for English-language entertainment that we stayed up late and watched three programs.

In the morning we asked a taxi what it would cost to go to Long Tan Gong Yuan. The driver said 80 yuan — too expensive. We asked another, and he said 250! A local told us we could get a bus at the bus station for 10, so for the rest of our trip, at every city we bought a map with bus routes and used local transportation to get around. We caught the correct bus to Long Tan Gong Yuan (Dragon Lake Park). It was a fairly large lake, dotted with small islands. Each island had a theme and a program for the tourists to watch. Not being interested in stopping at the islands — we had seen similar things before — we spent our time boating around the lake, stopping only at one island with a large drum tower on it. After crossing a Miao-style (one of the ethnic minority groups of China) covered bridge, we climbed up to the tower. It was simply an open tower with spiral stairs leading to the top floor where you could go outside and see the view. Taalan climbed all the way to the top, the last 10 feet up a near vertical flight of stairs. He said it was really scary and really high, about 40 meters in all. On the level below the top you could see where the drums had been; in the old days they were beaten to warn the people of invasion. I don't like heights, so I was happy to stay on the ground with Tariqa, who was too small to go to the top.

It was raining lightly so we went back to Guiyang and had some lunch and then a rest. The children wanted to watch TV, but the English channel had disappeared overnight. We never saw it again; so much for English movies. We consulted and decided that we would visit the famous waterfall at Anzhou the next day and go on to Liuzhou the day after. The next morning we booked train tickets to Liuzhou for mid-afternoon of the following day. When Taalan asked about the waterfall we found out it was located two hours away by bus. We got on the local bus to Anzhou, which took about two hours. However, when we arrived there we had to take another bus to the town nearest the waterfall. That bus took another hour. Arriving at the town we had to take still another bus to the waterfall. It definitely was a local bus, stopping at all the farm stops along the way and filled with farmers, chickens, shoulder poles and bags of purchases. We finally arrived at the waterfall at 5:30 in the afternoon. The conductress asked Taalan if we were going to see the waterfall. Taalan said yes and that we were going to get a hotel. She said it was too late to see the falls. When everyone else got off she, told us to stay on. Taalan found out that she planned to take us back to town and bring us out again the next morning. We insisted on getting off. I had seen a small hotel in a bend of the road down the hill, so we headed that way. People kept stopping us and telling us that the fandian (hotel) was the other way. I stubbornly pursued my original direction and soon we had a three-bed room with a shared bathroom. It was quite satisfactory and only cost 80 yuan.

We decided to see the falls since it was still well before sunset, so we bought tickets and walked up the hill. It was a beautiful area, with lots of trees and the rumble of the falls in the background. Thirty minutes of walking brought us to a swinging bridge over the river, and soon we were at the foot of the falls. They were quite impressive, especially since there had been a lot of rain the past several days and the water level was very high. Many of the boulders were underwater. The spray was refreshing, though it soon drenched our clothes. On the way back, Taalan was ahead of us. At a crossroads I realized he had taken the wrong turn. I tried calling, but he was out of sight and couldn't hear us over the roar of the water. By the time we caught up with him we were almost back at the falls, this time on a path halfway up the cliff face. This path took us behind the falls through a long natural cave, then back down to the stream we had left an hour earlier. We ended up going around the valley one and a half times, 9 km in all. We finally reached the intersection again, only to have Tariqa go the wrong way at the next crossroad. A helpful person had told her the fandian was to the left. However, our hotel was to the right, near the park gate. Tariqa finally heard my shouts and returned, so we made our way back to dinner and then the hotel. We found out later that the fandian was newly built and cost foreigners 1200 yuan a night! The next day we made the long return trip to Guiyang , arriving with enough extra time to visit the local market. Both my older children in America are expecting babies this month so I wanted to buy two baby carriers like the ones all the local minority people carry their babies in. These are beautifully embroidered with flowers and birds and allow the baby to be carried in comfort on the mother's back while the mother's hands are free. I saw children carried in them from birth up to 3 years of age. We drew quite a crowd buying two of these at the local market.

One of the nice things about traveling at night on a train is that you don't need to pay for a hotel room. Hotels can be very expensive. When we arrived in Liuzhou we found that we were only allowed to stay at special hotels in the city. We looked at some brochures; the going rates ranged from 350 to 1000 yuan per night. We were in trouble. We finally found one for 138 yuan and felt lucky. When we found an inexpensive restaurant nearby that served vegetarian jaozi (stuffed dumplings), we felt very lucky indeed. In Hunan all the jaozi have meat, which we don't eat, so we were happy. Luizhou ended up being my favorite place of the trip, with its many small parks scattered throughout. We visited one park with a little lake in the middle, named Yu Feng Gong Yuan, or Fish Peak Park. Originally it was the place that one of the four most beautiful women in ancient China visited often or perhaps lived at. A statue of the woman stood on the mountain peak, which is said to look like a carp jumping out of the water — the peak, not the woman — and another statue is in the pond in the middle of the park. We could walk all the way around the park in 15 minutes; nevertheless, it was a beautiful place. The water level was 10 feet higher than in the picture on the brochure. We enjoyed paddling around the little lake and feeding the carp, which were so numerous that the water seemed to boil in orange and red when people fed them. Occasionally we saw a white or black carp or some smaller fish. Half an hour went very quickly, watching the fish eat the pellets that were sold for 1 yuan. Along the shore of the park, the trees grew dense and provided a lovely cool, shady spot to relax. However most of the area was occupied by mahjong tables filled with elderly Chinese. All were playing intently, gambling away their money on the outcome of the tiles. I was amazed at how many people were there: four to a table, with probably several hundred tables ranging alongside the pond. We also took a cable car about 15 minutes to the top of a nearby peak. We had a nice view of the city, but it hardly seemed worth the cost of the ticket.

The next day Tariqa and I went to a small park in town, named Liu Hou Park. Taalan stayed at the hotel, reading and resting as he hadn't slept well. This small park was focused on family and children, with many rides and a zoo. We had a lot of fun, especially at the crazy mirrors that distorted our shapes. We went into a scary house full of dinosaurs and illuminated with black lights. If we stepped on a certain place, the dinosaur would roar and lunge at us. We thought it was funny and not very scary at all, but a college-aged Chinese girl was screaming in terror and clutching her boyfriend. Tariqa went with me on the bumper cars for the first time and loved it. I let her do the driving; her favorite maneuver was to spin backwards until we crashed into another car. We both laughed until our sides hurt. There were four statues in the park depicting the end of slavery, education for the masses, digging wells, and planting willow and cherry trees. Apparently Liu Hou was a city official who implemented many reforms in the area, including the four memorialized in stone. The park was named after him because he often went there to meditate or take a walk and relax. In another part of the park there were four separate wedding parties taking pictures. Each consisted of several camera people and the bride and groom, in full wedding dress or tuxedo or suit. It was obviously a very popular place for young couples to get photographed. The camera crew would carefully pose the bride and groom, leaning against a tree together or with their arms around each other in front of a pond, and flash away. When moving to a new location, the bride would hoist up her skirt to her knees so the dress wouldn't drag on the ground. Tariqa and I were tickled when we noticed one bride wearing flip-flops under her expensive gown. On the way back to the hotel, we stopped at the train station and reserved three soft seats to Guilin for the next afternoon.

In the morning we went to LongTan Park (it seems every area has a Dragon Lake Park). This was my favorite place in Liuzhou. It was a very large park; we only saw about half of it. Each area of the park was organized by an ethnic group, each with its own activities. Unfortunately we were only able to visit one of the ethnic areas. It had a cross-bow range where you shoot arrows, six arrows for 10 yuan. Both kids shot arrows twice and loved it. There was also a maze made of four-foot-high picket fences. Taalan told us it was based on the battle plans of some famous general during the three-kingdoms period. The maze itself was immense; there were 8 different spots that you were supposed to reach, in order. Some boys took 25 minutes just to find the way from the seventh spot to the exit. Taalan and Tariqa were in the maze for 45 minutes before Taalan found his way through. He had to go back in to rescue Tariqa, who had gotten herself into a corner and couldn't find the way out. Nearby there was also an obstacle course that was really challenging, with swinging logs to cross and ropes to climb. There had been a giant Chinese-chess board made of cement in the lawn with the chess pieces painted on tires. Unfortunately it wasn't usable any more. In another area we went on bumper boats and bumper cars. There was a neat pool to swim in; the water was clear but cold, obviously fed from a spring in the area. Several lakes had arched or covered bridges, and pagodas occupied the hilltops. It was pretty and quiet and uncrowded. We ran out of time and had to take a taxi back to the station. The train was already in the boarding process when we arrived. Taalan spent the four hours to Guilin playing Chinese chess with any person who would play him. Often several people consulted together when playing against him, and there was always a crowd of people watching. Tariqa and I taught two ladies how to play Uno and Crazy Eights, and we played for most of the train ride.

When we arrived in Guilin we decided to go straight to Yangshou, as hotels were so expensive in Guilin. Taalan and Tariqa had been to Guilin (and Yangshou) about two years ago with Tim, when I was sick with pneumonia. The Guilin area is well known for its unique scenery of thousands of steep rocky hills jutting up from the agricultural landscape. When foreigners come to China on a package tour, Guilin is one of the standard destinations.

After traveling the hinterlands of China on train and bus, Yangshou seemed like an entirely different reality. It is an international community. Many Chinese who had gone abroad have returned to Yangshou and set up foreign enterprises, especially restaurants. The food is expensive; the prices are comparable to the same food in the U.S., but who cares when you can actually get a real pizza, a crepe-like pancake, and real granola with yoghurt. The hotels though, including several youth hostels, are very cheap in comparison. We stayed in a little inn, with a shared bathroom and two beds, one queen-size, for 20 yuan per bed per night — not bad at all. There were also an incredible number of small shops selling knickknacks, ethnic clothes, batiks, and old Chinese items like Buddhas, chopsticks, and Chinese-opera masks. We purchased a few mementos of the trip. Taalan got yet another Chinese-chess set, this one with molded pieces of horses, elephants, and a king on horseback, like international chess. A normal set uses round, flat pieces painted with Chinese characters. Tariqa got a little lizard made of folded ribbon, a T-shirt and wrap-around skirt, and a wooden doll. I got a pair of silk pants, a skirt, and a blouse; I finally found clothes that fit me. The remainder of the shops gave guided tours, made reservations, or rented bicycles.

We asked one shopkeeper about the Silver Cave. He informed us that it was a long trip and that the local buses only stopped at the road, leaving a 3 kilometer walk to the cave. He offered to arrange a private minibus for only 150 yuan; it would wait for us at the gate while we toured the cave. We would still have to cover the entry fee to the cave ourselves, he said. We shook our heads in disgust and said, "Tai gui la," too expensive. We asked at another shop and found there was a local bus only a 5-minute walk away. In the morning we went to the bus station and got on the local bus for three yuan each. Half an hour later, we were at the cave and paid a local person 2 yuan to drive us from the road to the park in her little motorcycle car.

Silver Cave was incredible, with beautiful stalactites and stalagmites. There were curtains of rock, pinnacles growing up and down, and one that shimmered pure white with sparkles throughout, hence the name of the cave. It was well worth seeing. We also visited a butterfly cave, not the original which is in Yunnan province, we were told. It was small but very nice, with a little park and a small stream and an enclosed butterfly garden. We took a short tour on a raft on the local river to view the 1000-year-old banyan tree. When I expressed surprise that it had survived the Great Leap Forward, and not been cut down for the backyard forges, the guide said that at the end of the movement it actually had been cut down. According to his story, because the tree was very famous, officials ordered the tree to be restored. Workers levered it back onto its trunk and bound it tightly with rope. Gradually it healed and is now it's as good as new. Believe it or not...

We stopped at a small crossing over the stream and admired the banyan. There a man with two monkeys was charging people five yuan to take pictures of themselves with the monkeys. All during our trip people had stared at us, said hello to us in overly loud voices, asked to take our pictures, commented on how well the children spoke Chinese, followed us around, and generally treated us like zoo specimens. In Guilin and Yangshou, however, we ran into large numbers of Chinese tourists who treated us like we were simply an added bonus item on their tour. When a young woman, after paying and taking a picture of the monkeys, turned and in the next breath asked me if she could take Tariqa's picture, I let instinct take over. "Five yuan," I said. She looked shocked and left. That became my standard answer to requests, unless the person had actually gotten to know us first and treated us like human beings. No one ever paid us 5 yuan for a photo, so I guess they just wanted something for nothing. I felt like saying, "Where is your consideration? This is my child, not an animal, and we are not deaf, so you don't need to yell at us." Our students often say that China has too many people; we think there are too many people in China who parrot hello at us from all sides. I know we shouldn't let it bother us, but sometimes it does.

The only discord on our trip was one morning around 6:45 when I was woken up by a gunshot. I had never heard a gunshot at close range before, but there was no mistaking it. As I lay wondering if I had imagined it, because I had been dreaming about a gun at that very moment, I heard another, and another, until I had heard 11 in all; 8 from one gun, and the last 3 definitely from a different, more powerful gun. The shots were in the street outside our hotel. Later the lady who owned the hotel told us that a bike renter had gotten into a disagreement with someone who picked up plastic bottles, and a skirmish had developed. The police had been called in and taken care of everything. Very few people had heard it because most stayed up until the wee hours of the morn and were still sound asleep. Naturally, the owner assured me that such occurrences were rare.

Having seen the interesting places in Yangshou, we headed into Guilin for the last two days of our vacation. Taalan really wanted me to see Reed Flute Cave and Elephant Hill. First we got our train tickets to return to Xiangtan two days later. We bought two soft-sleeper berths, because there were no hard sleepers available. We didn't want to sit up on hard seats for 10 hours overnight. We paid six yuan to stash our bags for the day and went out to Reed Flute Cave. I can see why it is Taalan's favorite. It is a magnificent place. We entered with a large group of Chinese tourists but found ourselves following a small English-speaking group, so we slipped ahead and joined them instead. The cave cannot be described; it must be seen to do it justice. It has spectacular forms, and the lighting is beautifully done. Outside the cave we bought some small bamboo whistles. They have a slider inside, so you can change the pitch as you blow by moving the slider. The day before, I had bought one for each child. They were five yuan each — too much but, what the heck. Tariqa already had lost hers, so today I bought another. This time it cost one yuan; we were getting better. As we walked away, some women offered us five for one yuan. We couldn't pass that up, so we bought some small ones and some big ones to give to the kids' friends at school.

We found a hotel for 150 yuan, so we decided to stay over in Guilin rather than take the bus back and forth to Yangshou. We took the elevator up to the dining area on the seventh floor. Two men in the elevator told Taalan they knew a cheaper place to eat with better food. They offered to take us there, so we went back down, walked one block, and found a lot of small restaurants where a typical vegetable dish costs 3 to 6 yuan. We thanked them warmly and sat down to dinner. The next day while eating fried rice for breakfast, we found out that they could make us vegetable jaozi, so we arranged to have them make 60 for us for breakfast the next morning. After breakfast we had a lovely day visiting Elephant Hill Park and Seven Star Park. Our favorite part was the exhibition of rocks and crystals. The children really liked some petrified amber with a bee inside. They asked, and were told the price was 15. We were running out of money, and I said no. After watching the children plead with me, the shopkeeper said the 15-each price was in dollars, and he would give us a special price — both for 260 yuan. It was pretty sneaky figuring, because he actually had raised the price when he converted it to Chinese currency. Exhausted after another day sightseeing we settled onto our very hard hotel beds in the evening, played some cards, and watched TV.

For the final day of our trip we got up early, packed, had showers, and went off to the little restaurant to eat our jaozi for breakfast. It was a great way to start the day, though we certainly left them with a mess. The jaozi were served in warm water, so they were extremely slippery and broke very easily, especially using chopsticks. The table and floor were soaked by the time we were finished, not to mention our clothes. Afterwards we checked out of the hotel, headed to the train station, and dropped our bags off for the day, because our train didn't leave until 11 pm. We took the bus into the center of town where there were two towers in the middle of the river. We spent the morning walking along the river, eating ice cream, and playing cards. The weather was hot, only the second really hot day since we started; the rest had been misty and overcast.

While walking around we got into a conversation with a young man who worked as an instructor at the local art college nearby. He took us to a small gallery filled with paintings done by the teachers of his college. He said the big shops often bought their paintings and then sold them in the bigger tourist shops for 50 to 100 times the original price. He then took us to a small shop that served delicious sherbert-type ice cream. The mango and lemon flavors were wonderful. We treated him to an ice cream, and then he continued on his way. We ended up at a small park at the local university and wandered into an art gallery. Water color paintings began selling for 400 yuan. One picture of two fish in the shape of a yin/yang sign, painted with no more than ten strokes of the brush, cost 4000 yuan. I said, tongue in cheek, that every painting should have a zero or two taken off the price; then it would be closer to the true value. In a second room the really expensive paintings were exhibited. One looked like it was painted by a young child; it showed a couple pieces of fruit and a very crooked vase, painted with dark outlines and nothing much else. To my eye, Tariqa could have painted it. We looked at the price and nearly fainted — 260,000 yuan! Ah, but it is painted by a very famous artist, we were assured. We knew that we had found one of the shops our friend had mentioned. After that it became a contest to see who could find the most ridiculously priced painting. We concluded that there were only about five paintings in the whole place that we even liked. Fortunately neither child knocked a precious item onto the floor by accident, so we were allowed to leave without buying anything.

Around five o'clock we headed back to the train station to wait and rest. We talked to some of the local people who had remembered us from the morning. Soon Taalan had a game of Chinese chess in progress, I was reading, and Tariqa was playing with a little boy. The boy's parents asked if they could take Tariqa's picture. I told them to ask her, and she agreed. They led her a small distance away and I went back to my reading. When I looked up a few moments later, she was gone; so was the family. I jumped up to search for her. She was nowhere in the small terminal. I asked one of the guards if they had seen a little wai gou ren hai zi (foreign child). He nodded and pointed outside the building. Just then she appeared with her little friend. They had decided to take the photo outside where there were many colored lights, without telling me what they were doing. I kept Tariqa close by until the train finally arrived. We found our soft-sleeper compartment. We had two bunks, some other man had a bunk, and the fourth bunk was empty. It was already near midnight, and there was little talk as we got ready for sleep. Taalan climbed into the top bunk; Tariqa and I shared the bottom one, with a head at each end. In the middle of the night Tariqa started kicking me in her sleep, so I slipped out of bed and climbed into the vacant top bunk and slept there. We arrived in Zhuzhou around 9 in the morning, caught the bus to Xiangtan, took a taxi home, and collapsed on the couch. We chatted with our friend Jeffery, who had been house and turtle sitting while we were away. After awhile he left and we had the place to ourselves. It was a fun trip and we saw a lot of neat places, but it was great to be back home.