The Centre of the Earth Part 3: In the Land of Wookies

28 November 2009

And so we arrive at the promised destination. Early, in fact. You see, I had been excited to visit a place named for the legen-(wait for it)-dary Shangri-La. Some of you younger folk may not know this name, but, in short, Shangri-La is a mythical utopia located somewhere in East Asia. It is supposed to be a place where no one ever leaves, all are happy as can be, and drinks are always free. Anyway, we had planned to go see this small town near Yangshuo, but we put that trip off until the next day and decided on a biking trip for the guys. This led us to the real gem tucked away in the pocket of the Orient.

So, the seven of us lads exited Yangshuo on rented bicycles and began our voyage into the countryside. Only twenty minutes in, we realized what an awesome decision we’d made. We biked off the road and onto single file trails, seeing cultivated fields of vegetables, vast valleys, and towering hills/mountains (the same as you saw in the pictures of the Li River). Those things are monstrous when you’re standing at the foot of them. Some of the ride was pretty rough. At some points, we had to work our way over rocks bigger than a fist. True story. We took our time, stopping here and there to snap pictures and take it all in. We stopped outside one village and bought bottled water from a family. We stayed and chatted for a while, using our incredibly limited Mandarin and speaking English with one of the daughters (?). Apparently, this village we chose to stop at was over/around 900 years old. After having one of them take our picture (below) and playing with the little ones for a few minutes, we pressed on. Our choice of trails took us through a few more small villages where children and old folk greeted us excitedly. We biked out of the farms and villages back to the main road and headed over to a spot called Dragon Bridge. It was kind of a letdown. Such is life. After the bridge, four of us (including me) decided it was time to head back to Yangshuo, which was still twelve kilometers from the bridge. The other three wanted to see Seven Star Hill, which was nine kilometers in the wrong direction. We parted, and the four of us who left made it back without incident. The others, though, weren’t quite so lucky. Stewart, who was with them, cramped up on the ride back and had to start walking. He told the other two to go ahead, and that he’d make it. The other two made it back, met up with us, and then borrowed the renter’s moped to go pick Stewart up. They made it back, intact and relatively unharmed. The total distance was a little over ~33 kilometers for my group, and ~38 for the others (they quit on the way to Seven Star Hill, realizing that their legs might not be up for it). The day was done, our rumps were sore, and we had had one fantastic day.

Wishing everyone a belated Thanksgiving,
Topher

P.S. The area we biked through is actually fairly famous, although pretty anonymously so. It was featured in the George Lucas film Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith. It was the planet Kashyyyk, home of the Wookies (Chewbacca’s race). I found that out after I got back, and it made the day that much better.

The Centre of the Earth, Part 2: Eclipsing Aeneas

5 October 2009

If you will all be so kind as to recall that fellow who followed us around during our day in Guilin, it will save me the trouble of re-introducing him. Okay, go…Got him?...Good. Let’s begin.

Skippy (my name for the Guilin fellow) had overheard us talking about riding a boat down the Li River to Yangshuo (our next destination). Though still employing his façade of a teacher, he mentioned that he happened to have a friend whose boat company was both cheaper and better. Right. After some research, though, we found out he was right about it being cheaper. His friend’s boats were a quarter of the price of the standard tourist boats and were made of bamboo, giving them an extra bit of appeal. We were immediately intrigued. After paying the man up front (yes, a terrible idea), we went on our way to Seven Star Park and put him out of our minds for the next few hours. As the night wore on, we all resigned ourselves to the probability that we had just forked over 160 yuan each that we’d never see again. Regardless, we woke up the next morning for a bus we didn’t expect to come. It was due at seven o’clock, but that came and went. 7:05, 7:10, 7:15 and lo! The van arrives. Collective sigh. We loaded up in the rickety van and were on our bumpy way. We jostled along, moving from paved roads, to gravel, to dirt, and finally to grass that was sort of shorter than that around it. Our suspicions began to build again. We wondered if we might be dropped in a random field with no means for travel, no knowledge of Chinese, and no way of finding anything other than remote villages and Japanese Encephalitis. Finally we saw a boat yard. But we passed it. Uh-oh. We decided to sit tight and have a little faith. Finally, shortly after we had begun plotting our mutiny, the van rattled to a halt and delivered us into the hands of our boat captains. Twelve people (we brought along two Fins from Shanghai University), three boats, one stupendous journey.

Now, I have seen many rivers, some famous, some infamous, and some ambiguous. I have traveled down said rivers in all manner of aquatic craft. I’ve canoed the Harpeth, rafted the Ocoee, kayaked the Hiwassee, cruised the Huangpu, and danced on the Potomac. But this ride on a bamboo boat propelled by a weed whacker was far and away the most beautiful and remarkable. The curious hills that characterize the northern part of Guanxi province spring up gallantly from the surprisingly clear river. The Seussian landscape sports an array of hues centered around green and white. It steals one’s breath right out of the lungs and recasts it as beauty in this vista. The air was cold and fresh; the sky, blue as Justine Moritz’ eyes. This little cruise was the perfect escape after more than a month in smoggy Shanghai. The ride was all too short at just two hours. We hopped off the boat at a concrete ramp and trotted up the hill to wait for the other two boats. We got one in about twenty minutes, but then the other took thirty more on top of that. Once we were all gathered, the driver had become impatient and said he would take boat groups whole or not at all. Our group couldn’t all fit on the bus, so he left the last four to arrive and literally grabbed three Chinese girls and put them on with us. This “bus” was more of an open-sided large golf cart style vehicle. You know, the kind they shuttle groups of Japanese tourists about in at Disneyworld. The road we careened down was a lovely cattle path that was slightly slimmer than our chariot at points and a mite better than the faintly shorter grass I mentioned earlier. Stewart and I passed the time on the trip by trapping suitcases in the stowage cabinet behind us with our heads. We arrived in Xinping and decided that the other four should be along shortly. Being a bit puckish (it was only about 9 am) we sat down in a café to wait with surprisingly delicious crepes and coffee. Now, for those of you wondering why we went to all this trouble instead of taking a forty-five minute bus ride to Yangshuo, the apparently backwater town of Xinping hosts a few little-known attractions. First of all, it is well over 1000 years old, and several of the original buildings still stand. Second, on the back of the twenty RMB bill is printed a placid panorama of those peculiar hills. That exact scene is located at some tucked away spot in Xinping. True story. At last, our companions made it to Xinping and wanted to be onwards and upwards. To Rob, Wayne, and me that meant seeing the sights. To the other nine, that meant hopping the next bus to Yangshuo. It seems we had a misunderstanding. Democracy won out, and we climbed into the bus. Once again, there weren’t enough seats, but the operators made do with 12X6 inch wooden stools. I got to sit on one of those down yet another bumpy road, wedged between an older Chinese couple, two walls, and a younger Chinese woman standing five inches in front of me. I tried to sleep, but instead just worked on my third concussion by having my head smacked against the bus window every four minutes.

The bus stopped outside a tunnel on the highway and dropped our Western dozen on the side of the road with only a point toward the outskirts of what we assumed to be Yangshuo. After another run-in with another would-be tour guide who tried to convince us to change to his hotel (we’d already paid for ours) and a crazy piled high golf cart/taxi ride we arrived at the hotel. It was two in the afternoon. We’d had two day’s worth of bewilderment in less than seven hours. A couple of us ended up passing out before sunset and unknowingly resting up for the real adventure to come…

The Centre of the Earth, Part 1: Noah’s Envy

30 October 2009

I’ll sum up the first bit of Guilin quickly. If I did not, someone might accuse me of being verbose, and we just couldn’t have that, could we?

We filled our first (and only) full day in Guilin. We began bright and early with Elephant Trunk Hill. En route, however, we picked up a new friend. Now, when I say “friend” some random fellow on the street who happened to speak English and wanted to be our tour guide. He was not up front about this fact, though, and instead tried to pass himself off as a teacher. We will never know if this is true or not, but from the evidence, he was less than honest about his profession. We met him because one member of our group is a tad too sociable with random Chinese people. This has, from time to time, got us into unfavourable situations. So, this Chinese fellow, who now laid off the rest of his day to show us the best sights in Guilin, led us to the entrance of Elephant Trunk Hill. We snapped a few pictures of the astounding geological feature and explored the rest of the park. There was a quaint, understated Buddhist temple, and a portion where you could actually explore the “trunk” area. John, Stewart and I got asked to be in several pictures, and I believe I was mistaken for Hugh Jackman a few times. I can’t be sure, but I think I heard something like “Wolverine” once or twice amongst the titters, giggles, whispers and stares.

We left Elephant Trunk Hill and were directed along a circuitous route past some astonishing old pagodas toward a so-called Irish pub. My rump. Lunch was fit for a prison in France circa 1789. After that traumatic experience, we trotted over to Seven Star Hill. We parted ways with our impromptu guide. Here was the find of the day. A large Buddhist temple stood beneath a jaw-dropping cliff face. We toured the temple grounds and then proceeded to crawl into the cliff face and survey Guilin from some very dusty old caves that had a slight stinging insect problem. No casualties, though. By this point, the group had split into two factions. I was in the latter half. We took the scenic route while trying to find our lost companions. They mentioned something they had dubbed “Monkey Mountain”. They hadn’t seen any primates, but there were signs (written things on posts; nothing mystical here) indicating that they existed. We made our way to this Monkey Mountain and found no friends, and no monkeys. When we were about to call it quits, we saw a man and his son holding a bag of fruit and tossing bits into the brush. We thought it a tried and failed method of attracting animals. As it turns out, we were wrong in our assumptions. He wasn’t luring one of these little imps to the food. It had come of its own volition and was giddily catching and snacking on the food tossed by the father. Seeing our immediate fascination at a live monkey outside a cage or net, the man kindly offered us stock in his store of monkey comestibles. This soon became a game of “Get the Monkey Close”. That then evolved into “Get the Monkey to Snatch it From My Hand”. In that game, we were the grasshoppers. This went on until we ran out of fruit. Then, the monkey we thought to be the alpha male (turns out there was a bigger one; that’s not my story, though) became aggressive and challenged Ned (a college athlete of burly, Irish build) over some sweet rolls sitting between them. We left, and quickly. We started seeing signs for pandas (pronounced, at least to us, “pander”) and went on an earnest search for them. Nothing could deter us. Nothing, that is, except peacocks. There they were, perched on stilts and daring us to hold them. Being a connoisseur of all things fantsy-pants, I had to. I convinced my friends, and we each paid our 5 yuan (less than a dollar). It was awesome. I felt like a king. Frivolities past, we continued our search for the giant pander. At first we only found the incredibly adorable red raccoon/red panda/xiao xiong mao. After meeting a witty elder British man who gave us a name for the treatment we’d received from the Chinese (Caged Panda), we circled back into the park and saw a real, live, bona fide Da Xiong Mao aka the Giant Panda aka the Giant Pander aka Po aka Great Big Cuddly Thing Nomming on Some Bamboo. Checked that goal off the list.

We left Seven Star Hill to grab some dinner and prepare for another early day. We had no idea what adventures lay in store for us only 12 hours in the future.


-Topher, who looks like a Nazarite


P.S. Secret location coming soon. Please remain in your seats for the remainder of the buildup.