Tag: travelling

(Be)Guilin Adventures

Karst – limestone and other soluble rock has dissolved over time to form a pretty landscape

Two weeks ago, we had a funky holiday situation. We had a bank holiday on the Wednesday, but so that we could have Thursday and Friday off, we worked both Sundays either side of it. They were very much not fun and none of us liked working them. But, we did have four days off in a row, and Hannah, the teacher of my KC class invited me to go to Guilin with her. I knew nothing about the place but I did know that I wanted to explore China, so I said yes.

This is going to be another picture dump post, but I will have some paragraphs of writing to explain some stuff, because we did a lot in those four days.

Bear in mind however, that I don’t necessarily know a lot about some of the things we saw, as the package was booked by a Chinese person on a Chinese website, so the tour guide only spoke Chinese and I, despite my best attempts, do not yet speak enough Chinese to understand a single word. This was obviously shown to me yesterday, when, on the train, I made a friend. She wants to improve her English and help me learn Chinese, which, yes please, but she said a sentence to me, and I didn’t get a single word from it. Then she told me what it meant – it was a sentence that I had literally just translated on the Chinese learning app I was using, (the reason she spoke to me was to ask what the app was called) but because she spoke at a normal speed, I didn’t catch it. The app talks much more slowly and clearly – it also tells me that I speak Chinese well, whereas Hannah, and my 6-year-old students drill me in pronunciation because I just can’t get it right.

Anyway, point being, I took pictures but don’t always have context behind them, because despite Hannah’s best efforts, she just doesn’t yet quite speak enough English to explain everything that was going on.

  • Top speed on the high speed train – average was around 250kph
  • These were a lot brighter in the brochure; having been weather faded they were a little disappointing
  • Prince’s Palace – vassal palace of the Ming dynasty. Called Jing Jiang Wang Fu in Chinese
  • Dusty old vase – probably very expensive (Ming Dynasty and all) especially as this photo wasn’t technically allowed
  • 130 year old osmanthus tree
  • Poem etched onto the side of the Solitary Beauty Peak, extolling the beauty of the local area*
  • Taking the primary test**
  • The Silver Caves, absolutely beautiful***
  • Alcohol storage, always important
  • I think this was called the Ice Fall, for obvious reasons
  • Fishies
  • This rock is famous for having a hole in it, I think…
  • Me!
  • I tried being a cormorant fisherwoman
  • The Romance Park, where I saw the most spectacular show****
  • If you look carefully, you will see that the real life rocks are the same as on the money, which makes this a very visited spot in China, and the bit Hannah wanted to see the most
  • What isn’t shown is the depressing amounts of plastic rubbish on the river banks and islands
  • Traditional music in a rural village*****
  • Their traditional garb (and me in mine – I went full gap yah on this day)
  • Traditional weaving, photo very not allowed, but I’m a ninja
  • The Rice Terraces of Longji******
  • Our beautiful hotel room
  • Baby nellies playing in a full river
  • It was chucking it down, but I’m a Brit and a bit of water never bothered me, much to Hannah’s surprise.
  • This is called Elephant mountain due to apparently looking like an elephant’s trunk…I’m not really seeing it to be honest
  • Still raining, still not a trunk

*Lots to say about the Solitary Beauty Peak at the Prince’s Palace; it’s located next to the Li river, and the shape of the mountain amplifies the effect of the wind there (it was pretty windy). Inside the mountain, there is a prayer cave of sorts, with a bunch of Chinese holy men carved into the walls, each one representative of a couple of years, about 80 years apart, starting around 100 years ago, and heading into the future by several years. You pray at the one who represents the year you were born, except that due to my unhelpfully being born before the Chinese New Year occurring in 1993, I had to pray at the 1992 man. The peak is a deeply spiritual place, as Guilin is one of the earliest and longest settled places in the country. Also the mountain symbolises the sun, light and therefore yang, while the river is representative of the moon, dark, and yin. Fun fact: Feng Shui literally means wind water. Make of that what you will.

**Entrance test thing. I can’t remember it exactly as it was explained, but basically, anyone who wanted to, could take these tests and the more you passed – in a sliding scale of difficulty – the higher up in government you could be appointed. They were a kind of intelligence test and in theory, and according to this site, in practice too, allowed anyone, be they farmer’s son, fisherman’s son etc., to become a government official simply by passing these tests. this is especially so since schooling has been mandatory for boys for hundreds of years (sorry girls, just like the West, we weren’t allowed until much later). The palace extolled these exams a being some kind of near perfect system, but I sense a little bit of propaganda at play. of course, I could be bitter since I failed the test, due to the tiny issue of not speaking, reading or writing Chinese.

***The Silver Caves – my pictures are not great, due to my not being a professional photographer and the flash/not flash choice presented their unique difficulties. However, the caves are some of the most spectacular places I’ve ever seen, expertly lit up in a rainbow of colours that emphasise their beauty. I’ve never had my jaw literally drop open before I entered one of the main caves in the system (of which most is naturally formed, but to create a better tourist site, connecting tunnels have been excavated, and as such we were underground for around two and a half hours walking through the caves); I thought it was a literary trope, but here, my jaw fell. Words failed me, except the non-word “Cathedralic.” I felt the awe I feel when entering a Gothic cathedral and was stunned by the sheer natural beauty of these rock formations, made over hundreds of thousands of years. Any camera could not do these caves justice, although I certainly tried, in my limited way, having take over a hundred photos. Those here are the best of them, and even they aren’t all that good.

****The show. First of all, apparently, it’s okay to take pictures and record during the performance so initially I was distracted by all the screens, but I personal chose not to take any pictures, so as to enjoy the show to the fullest, and I am so glad I did, as I got to fully live the experience, rather than through a screen. The show was amazing. I didn’t understand much of it, but I didn’t need to, the story was acted through the performances, and there was some English subtitles at times. Throughout, I had goose-bumps. I cried at a woman’s athleticism, as she stood on pointe on a man’s head, while a platform moved up and down below them. Although this was for me the highlight, along with men running along walls, the rest of the dancers and performers were also exemplary. The visual effects were stunning and there was a full waterfall on the stage for part of it, with water effects in the audience as well. The costumes were beautiful and reflective of many aspects of the local minorities’ cultures as well as Chinese traditions, and I feel truly privileged to have experienced it.

*****We stopped at a rural village that seems to have been preserved to be a tourist spot, but apparently, it is also a minority ethnicity in China and the inhabitants still live and work there according to their traditions. They are historically silversmiths and their (presumably, although it could potentially be daily) ceremonial garb reflects this, being heavily draped in silver. They also showed us some traditional music, a use for their silver combs that is not combing their hair, but rubbing the back of it, along with oil into the back and neck. Supposedly, it’s good but it looked like it left bruises as well. We sampled their tea; I liked it, but Hannah didn’t, finding it too bitter. My biggest complaint of China being that everything is too sweet, perhaps this is understandable. This is one of the occasions were I probably missed a loaf of context, because “wo bu shuo zhongwen.”

*******The rice terraces are silver in the spring, green in the summer, golden in the autumn, and under snow in the winter (we were at a pretty high altitude). However, the true silver is only achieved when the sun shines on the waterlogged paddy fields. We were there while it was cloudy and overcast, so while some of them were silvery, the majority just looked muddy brown.

These are just a few of the ~800 photos that I actually took over the 4 days of holiday (I blame my parents since I got the photo taking thing from them), so no doubt I have missed some stuff out, but it does cover the main attractions we went to, and I am sure that of those 800, there are many many duplicates, that I just haven’t yet got around to sorting through any more than picking these out.

I am a bad millennial as well, since while I tried all the local delicacies, I didn’t take any pictures of them, except for the snails on my phone, and since said phone has had a system update, I cannot find the photos on there to lift them off and onto my laptop. So I’ll describe it here. I ate snails (French are better since they are drowned in garlic rather than chilli flakes), rice noodles (noodles made from rice), bear fish (very tasty but goddamn bones), and bamboo rice (nice, but does taste quite woody).

Guilin was such an amazing trip, even though it was only four days long, there were so many things to see and do, you could easily spend at least a week there. I had a great time, despite spending the majority of it somewhat clueless and I had some excellent experiences, which after all, was one of my reasons for coming to China: to have an adventure.

Just China Get Along

So recently, I’ve been feeling a little bit down. Not depressed as such; I just had a touch of melancholy. After some soul searching, I figured out that I was feeling somewhat homesick. This was a surprise for me, as I’ve lived abroad before (somewhere in the depths of the internet is a failed blog that I began of that year, unless several years of inactivity causes it to be deleted), so surely I couldn’t be homesick, if I hadn’t been while living in France?

But I realised that living in France is vastly different to living in China. There are multiple differences, some big and some small that built up for me to then genuinely feel like I was missing home, in a way that I have never felt before, in all my travels and adventuring around the globe.

The major difference that I have felt is in fact the time difference. When I was in France, it was easy to speak to anyone in the UK, as I was only one hour ahead. In the UK, it’s even easier. Here, there is a seven/eight hour time difference – China doesn’t have a Daylight Savings Time/China Summer Time clock change like Western countries do, so now Britain is in its Summer Time zone, I’m only seven hours ahead – which means that if I want to talk to anyone in the UK, it has to be at the weekend, and is normally quite late in the day for me. While that doesn’t generally seem like an issue, it can be wearing to try to schedule a time when both parties are available to talk. It can be difficult enough when you’re in the same time zone nowadays with how busy we all are, so factoring in a time difference of this magnitude just makes it that bit harder. And it’s not just for phone calls and video calls. it’s when I message someone in the morning for me, they’re asleep, so I’m not going to get a reply until about 3-4pm, when my day is well underway. And that’s if they get up early. I’m writing this now at nearly ten at night, and my laptop is telling me it’s only three in the afternoon in England. I’ve been home from work for several hours, and you still have a significant portion of the day left to experience.

I’m in the south-east part of China, not too far from Hong Kong, and the climate is sub-tropical (supra-tropical? I am technically still in the northern hemisphere so I’m above the tropics, right?), with banana plants and palm trees and humidity. Dear gods the humidity. I like heat. Heat is my jam. Humidity, not so much. I am constantly sweaty and constantly wishing to be in a swimming pool, not being pawed at by equally sticky children.

There are so many small cultural differences here, that all in themselves are small and not too difficult, but when all added together, can make China seem like an alien planet. For example, and I’ll admit it’s the difference that I’m struggling with the most at the moment, is that the bread is preserved with sugar. Not salt. No big deal, I would seem, but the bread is sweet and it doesn’t taste like bread and all I’ve been craving for the past six weeks is marmite on toast, or a ham and cheese sandwich. I mean, that’s not the only thing; bacon is pretty high up there, as is gravy, but because I’m eating bread of some sort daily and it is wrong, my fantasies have consisted of these most simple of fares. These are the ones that are the most difficult to find as well. If I want a burger, there are a number of Western joints that will sell you one; Pizza Marzano is China’s name for Pizza Express and I know a place that does a really nice Mac’n’Cheese. Therefore, while I miss cheese, I don’t miss it with the fervour that I do bread that is preserved with salt. My parents like to rub this in by eating a bacon sandwich when we are on the phone together… (just kidding Mother, I love you!)

The language barrier is a huge issue. While I am trying to learn Chinese, and am progressing slowly but surely, as soon as I’m with an actual Chinese person, I understand literally nothing they say. I also do not get understood when I try to speak Chinese, because my language learning app (HelloChinese for no-one who’s interested) lies to me when it tells me that I’m getting the tones right and I’m actually getting them all wrong (as confirmed by a real life Chinese person, and real life Chinese children who laugh at me when I try to speak to them in Chinese). I may have insulted many people while trying to tell them that I’m English and that I have three cats, but I don’t know because I haven’t moved onto the Chinese swearwords portion of the language learning process yet. So I don’t understand them, and they don’t have enough English to understand me either. Inability to communicate is a thing that can cause problems, and when combined with a cultural difference of opinion as well, issues can absolutely arise. They have a little sometimes. Not enough to cause an argument, but enough to have gripes with folks that’s normally worked through with a bit of good-hearted venting. And it’s not just that. The folks that I live with are introverts like me, so while they’re perfectly nice, we sometimes end up being a little like ships in the night, and I then realise that I haven’t had a conversation with an adult in a number of days.

This paragraph is going to be a list of other teeny tiny cultural differences that build up to wanting to be back in the UK: the phenomenon I like to call the “Squatty Potty”, a.k.a. the hole in the ground. There’s no such thing as cold water in the school. They get confused when I fill my bottle at the lukewarm water option. Hot water is seen to be a much healthier option for you, and as the tap water isn’t always safe, I can see the logic behind it, but sometimes, when the temperature feels like 37°C, all I want is an ice-cold water. The hawk/spit – the Chinese see spitting as similar to peeing/pooing; it’s a way to get rid of bad stuff that the body doesn’t need. You get used to it after a while, but the first few times you hear the well-known “hwaaaawk” noise, you still cringe a little. The lack of forks. I have seen exactly zero proper forks since I have moved to China. I am a pro at chopsticks now though, until I have to pick something slippery up, and then I’m as dextrous as a three-fingered monkey. I will admit that I have seen little plastic forks that come with my instant noodles, but they’re not real. The Chinese are direct. They don’t have the social courtesies and formalities that we do to avoid hurting/insulting/discommoding them. They tell you the thing directly. There is no, “please may I have…” in Chinese; it’s “I want…”. They are not prone to giving you compliments. They tell you what you need to improve.

That’s all I can think of for now, but I’m sure that there are more. These are also just things that I have noticed, in my own narrow view of the world. There are probably other cultural differences with further reaching cultural consequences, but I am writing this blog to share my perspective and I am the first to admit that it is flawed and not a complete view of the world. I hope that you can see that with all these things combined, along with the fact that I am in a this foreign country by myself, could cause someone to feel homesick for the first time. Yes, there are other English folks here, and that helps, but two and a half months ago, they were strangers to me. I had no idea who they were and knew nothing about them. Now I know a bit more and that’s good, but it’s not the same as the friends that I’ve had for years and that know everything about me.

I wish I could tell you how I got through the homesickness, as far as I can tell. All I know is that a few days break from the school routine, some nice deep conversations with the English folks, and a couple of long helpful chats from my parents at the scheduled time, and I’m feeling better. It may be temporary but I’m leaning towards the homesickness being more temporary than this improved outlook. That’s what I’m hoping for anyway.