The First Things in China

The Chinese government doesn't want you to know about my trip, so they block access to the blog. Interestingly it's not actually illegal to circumvent the Internet filters, so a good proportion of young people (and even some businesses) have third-party software to access Facebook and Google. 

We came to China via train from Hanoi to a city called Nanning, which we were told was not used to foreigners at all. We didn't explore very much of the city because we quickly found a same-day train to our destination of Guilin. I recall that we were greeted in the train station by a series of helpful cartoons illustrating highly competent Chinese police officers stopping various bad guys who were hacking computers or hijacking buses. Soon we were off to the much more popular southern city of Guilin, home of scenic mountains and river cruises.

Once there we took a taxi to our hotel, and though the driver got briefly lost we were there before too late. The hotel had nice and soft beds and was actually surprisingly swanky on the whole, considering that we had booked it last minute and in keeping with our bottom-dollar price range. In the morning it was revealed that the hotel complex was right next to several scenic mountains and had a garden of Chinese sculptures. 

Ignoring the advice of everyone to take the river cruise, we instead crammed ourselves and our bags into seats on the bus to Yangshuo, where we would meet our hosts. We sat next to a Spanish couple who seemed bothered by the driver's gentle use of the horn. Clearly they had never been to Vietnam. Auberon described the scenery as reminiscent of some growing communities on the outskirts of San Diego. Every few miles the highway became single-lane due to construction, and there was near-constant building on the sides of the road. Even my Chinese textbook had example dialogues about the fact that the country is growing and changing rapidly, and everyone we talked to was of the same opinion. 

Yangshuo is a tourist destination, but with a decidedly rural twist. The majority of the tourists are Chinese, so little English is spoken. Less English is written, which meant I lamented not practicing more Chinese characters. But the town was less interesting than the scenery. The mountains were unbelievable. Sadly I'm writing this on a borrowed computer, but I'll put a photo of mine in the next post. Auberon was especially enraptured by the sight of the green karst mountains surrounding the rivers and rice fields. The first night, we walked along the river as the heat of the day began to wane and kept bursting into amazed laughter at each new sight. It looked like postcards, or stock photos, or sample images for selling picture frames. I have been to many places and seen wonderful things, but the mountains of Yangshuo may be the most beautiful sight I've seen in my life.