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…