What an uncomfortable flight. It was an Airbus320, into which I was wedged. The pitch between rows was even less than in domestic US airlines, there wasn't enough room between rows for my legs to face forward. While the seat next to me was empty, it was an airbus, that means the arm between the seats can't be fully raised out of the way.
Fortunately, the flight was only an hour long. We got though immigration and baggage claim quickly, and drove into the city. The Guilin Sheraton is on the Li River, near the center of town. By day, the views were pretty good. On the drive in, we saw elephant hill, which is a hill in the Li with an arch, where the arch looks like an elephant head dipping its trunk into the river.
We checked in at 9:30 PM, and I went for a quick bite at the cafe. Turns out to be a western menu, so I went for a grilled cheese sandwich (although I'd never seen grilled cheese on a French roll before.) It was filling, and all I needed. I slept well.
Today, we went boating on the Li River. The day started with breakfast, the buffet was primarily western, but there were fried noodles and some dim sum along with the sausages, bacon, hash browns, and baked beans. we departed the hotel at 8:15 AM for the drive to Zhu Jiang wharf. It took a while to get there, but we had about a half hour on board before we cast off at 10AM. Guilin is built primarily on limestone. The Li River flowed through a mountain range. We headed into these mountains, that reminded me a bit of Yosemite. I realized these were granite plutons, caused by magma up-welling and solidifying before breaking the surface. As time passed, the more porous limestone eroded away, leaving these rounded domes.
The biggest shame, in my opinion, was the incredible amount of haze and smog covering the formations. At times, the auto-focus would not lock because the laser return was too diffuse. Rock formations that were beautiful in pictures were not visible until we were close.
Li River Pluton |
Li River Pluton |
Despite these handicaps, I did manage to take two rolls of film.
Waterfall to the Li |
Three hours were spent navigating the Li through the plutons. The scenery was breathtaking. At times we'd pass walls of granite hundreds of feet high.
Lunch was box lunches prepared by the Sheraton; fruit, breads, and a bit of meat in sandwiches. The only non-western item was a can of mango juice. Yawn.
After lunch, the scenery changed, and reminded me of the northern approach into Moab along the Colorado River. Although the rocks were still granite, the formations had a bit more space between them and the river was a bit more open.
At about 2:30 PM we alit at Yangshou. This was a little town that had become a tourist haven as a result of the Li cruises.
The cruises themselves had become quite the industry. When we cast off, we cast off as the seventh ship of about thirty to head down river. All the time, we were a part of this convoy of cruise ships. The trip itself was enjoyable, but one couldn't avoid the feeling of being a part of a packaged experience.
We stopped briefly outside Yangshou to see some rice paddies. The Chinese are able to grow rice at about 3 tons per acre. The government owns the land, and the farmer leases the land from the government for payments in the harvest. It struck me as being very Feudal, the way the agricultural economy works.
We drove back to Guilin where we visited Fubo Hill and the Buddha Caves. After that, Tom Lambert and I visited the foot massage center across the street, where they lanced my blister after a very relaxing foot massage. At night, the ground floor of that location had a night club, and there were a couple hostesses outside, wearing purple dresses with slits as high as any I'd seen. Fairly, um, distracting.
Dinner was a Chinese meal in the hotel restaurant. Seafood and corn soup, roast suckling pig, barbecued ribs, spicy shrimp with clouds ears, fried noodles, sauted beef, fish, vegetables, duck with bean curd. Pretty good. It turns out our tour leader, Veronica, studied history, so I chatted with her a bit about the Chinese teachings of history. Their lessons on the Korean War were quite different.
Earlier in the day, we learned a bit about the educational system, and how it is used to encourage Han Chinese to settle in the "border areas." This is a euphemism for the re-population of areas like Tibet with native Chinese. I kept my tongue bit, as this sounds like ethnic cleansing to me.
After dinner we had a demonstration of cormorant fishing. The fishermen used to tie seaweed around the necks of cormorants and then encouraged them to catch fish they then couldn't swallow. The fishermen then extracted the fish from the throats of the cormorants.
Back to the hotel, and off to bed.
I woke fairly early to type a bit of my journal and to get packed. Everything was ready to go when I went to breakfast at 7AM. It was the same buffet, but they used a different rice noodle (flat, like fettucine instead of round like spaghetti) in the fried noodles, and they also had siu mai. I then checked into the business center to see how DBR and my home system were going (and to check for the one postal address I forgot to put in my address book.) Fairly inexpensive, 18 RMB for 40 minutes.
Our first stop of the day was at a Chinese hospital. We were given an introduction to Chinese herbal medicine. The herbal pharmacy did smell good, although I am doubtful of the merits of eating cicada shells to cure childhood influenza, but that's just me. We also saw someone treated with acupuncture for a strained knee.
Last, and what really stretched my credulity (enough that someone in our party commented that my normal "poker face" had a "give me a break" expression) was the "cup" cure. In this, the physician quickly heats the air in a glass so that when it cools, it creates suction on the skin. Within the glass, it looks a bit like blistering as the skin swells up. This is alleged to activate the immunity cells on the surface, but based on what we saw on the back of one of the nurses, it just leaves bruises. (These bruises are apparently different colors based on the illness being treated.)
It was an interesting example of how people live, and since much of healing involves the patient having some belief in recovery, if it has the necessary effects, good for them.
The last stop in Guilin was at the Reed Flute cave. This is on the outskirts of Guilin. The Chinese have done a lot with colored lighting in the caves to make the formations more interesting, but, I guess like touring caves everywhere, they have a tendency to assign names to structures that remind them of topside sights. I personally found the stalactites and stalagmites of enough beauty themselves without needing to assign names.
The main chamber of the cave is huge. The roof was at least 30 feet high with dimensions on the order of 100 feet by 50 feet. The cave had been used as a shelter for centuries, and it looked like a natural fallout shelter.
Being in doors, it lacked the haze, and may have been the most beautiful stop in Guilin.
Now, we went to the airport. CITS arranges all the baggage from hotel to hotel, that means we don't need to touch it or be aware of it at the airports. This is a very strange experience for me, since I am quite accustomed to hauling the luggage on my back, but I could get used to this treatment. My flight was properly in first class this time, and I waited in the first class lounge on some overstuffed chairs for the flight to Shanghai.
All images are © Copyright 1991-2001 James C. Armstrong, Jr.