Bryan's China Part 2

Yes, yes, yes, I know, Fenghuang, is a tourist town and at night you can hear the music thumping from the bars...not quite as much thump in winter as in summer though. Many of those bars were looking quite empty on most nights.
That image above, incidentally,was what I looked out on from my hotel room balcony. In the evening it was ablaze of lights, which I could look at as I sat on my bed gazing out of the window. I wasn't complaining!!!

Touristy it might be, but Fenghunag is utterly atmospheric and beautiful. There are so many vantage points along the old town walls snaking above the river where you can look out over the rooftops and view the old houses built on stilts on the water's edge. Fenghuang had great shops, really interesting food and a maze of old cobbled lanes that we never tired of wandering around. One tour we did do, and there were many that we didn't, was out to a 1000 year old Miao village. It was constructed mainly of stone and mud brick. It was near an area where bandits had terrorised people for many years and we had a walk along the cliff tops where they lived in caves, in pre-revolutionary times.

After the charms of Fenghuang, which means Phoenix City by the way, it was back into solo travel and my first stuff-up was to underestimate the travel time to Huaihua and my rail connection onto Sanjiang in Guangxi province. Hence the snap of me on the sleeper bus to Lonsheng which was the easiest connection I could figure out after I had well and truly missed the train. Consequently, I found myself in Longsheng sitting under a lampost at 5.00am in the morning wondering where I was going to go. One sleeper bus was definately enough of a taste for this type of travel. Don't do it.Thankfully I had lugged Jordan's U-shaped travel pillow around for the past two weeks, periodically cursing it as a useless piece of unnecessary junk, but on that sleeper bus to Longsheng, it saved my neck, literally!!

So there I was under the lampost at 5.00am, waiting for the town to wake up and debating what to do, whether to continue to head (now back) to Sanjiang or forget it and keep going to the Dragon's Backbone Rice terraces. I actually found I had inadvertently deposited myself outside a rather unrecognisable bus station, with buses to Sanjiang. So decision made, that was where I was going. Fortunate decision too, for sitting quietly up the back of the bus happened to be a Canadian girl who had just been to the Rice Terraces and who had seen nothing as they were shrouded in mist. Having seen rice terraces shrouded in mist before I was thankful I had decided to head 14 km past Sanjiang to Chenyang to see the wind and rain bridges in series of Dhong villages near the Guizhou border. Chengyang was also a delight, a stunning place to spend a few days walking in the hills from village to village, which is excactly what I did.

The bridges are constructed with joinery techniques and without the use of nails. They and the surrounding country side were outstanding and I am ever grateful I accidently chanced upon the bus to Sanjing, as it was well worth it.

The hostel I stayed in had no heating but a snuggly electric blanket on the bed did the job perfectly. My room had not one but two balconies facing out to the bridge and surrounding countryside. The owners were super friendly too. On my first night I met a group of retired Tiwanese teachers touring through and on my second two young American-Swedes, the only other westerners I had come across for the past two and a half weeks.

After ChengYang, it was skip the rice terraces and onto to Yangshuo where I stayed at the Yangshuo Culture House for 5 nights and did some great walks and a ride along the Li and Yulong Rivers. I also watched a few Chinese meals being prepared at my hostel in the evenings. The food was very good. Each night they would come up with 6 - 8 dishes, which were included in the price of the accomodation. Not crap food either - good quality dishes, all fresh produce. The house was also way out of the tourist centre of 'Foreigner street' which, as far as I was concerned was a bonus, as after the amazing places I had seen in Hunnan I was a little underwhelmed by Yangshuo. Enough said!

As it was winter it was also citrus season. The citrus was plentiful, cheap and excellent quality. Those orangey discs you can see in the two baskets are actually peeled, dried persimmons. They are a little hard to describe but have the texture of something like a dried fig without all the little seeds. Not to everone's tast but I found them very 'haochi' (lit: good eating)!

After Yangshuo I headed to Dinghu Shan, a park in Guandong Province with the plan of doing a couple of days walking before arriving back in Guangzhou, but the hostel was so crappy that I did all the walking on the first day, complained about the 'no heating', 'no hot water' expensive price in the afternnon, got a 50 % discount and left promptly at 7.30 the next morning. This was definately the worst place I stayed in - the mattress was a board.

As I wrote previously, I was thinking I would be marking time back in Guangzhou waiting for my plane but in these two days I headed out into other areas of the city and saw a bit of the local life. It was actually quite engaging. I met a Korean guy and we went into town on Xmas eve and headed into 'People's Park' where we watched 100's of Chinese ballroom dancing and doing other leisurely pursuits. It was fun.

How's this for a way of organising the letter boxes at the front door of the apartment?!? You wouldn't see this in Singapore!!!

In the streets of the neighbourhoods, there is exercise equipment of all descriptions and people, old & young, using it day and night. My Korean buddy & I had a go at a few things as you can see here. Kooky stuff, but the idea of people unabashedly exercising in public spaces in China and also here Singapore, is something I find quite refreshing.


OK. So that was My China. Hope you all had a great Xmas & New Year & best wishes for 2010.