Ni hao everybody,

back to china, the land in which you can pull throat, empty the contents on the ground no matter where you situated, pull your nose in the subway, take a good look at it before you shoot it away..... kidding?. China the country which keeps surprising me, as you will find out about by reading the following....

my trip starts off in Hong Kong, after a flight during which I of course didn´t sleep, the airplane food sucked, and I am better off in speaking Spanish to a Chinese woman rather than talking in her native language. Once in find myself in the train (30 minutes in the train costs 90 HK$, or 12 US$, I know HK is gonna be an expensive trip already) which will take me to Kowloon I phone Hyun Joo, a friend of my little sister Anna, who will show me a bit around this unknown territory. After two words if her I recognize a truly sincere person, who wants to make me feel at home in HK, starting off with inviting me to come over for dinner where also some of her friends will be. Once the train arrives I found myself already in the first shopping mall right away, the exit is hard to be found, I follow the emergency exit displays to get out of this labyrinth. But the hard part really starts with finding reasonable prized accommodation. So I walk and walk, first for two hours through the high rise dump buildings of Kowloon, everywhere there are building site on the hard to be found left over space, passing by Nathan Road, a street which could be one of the dirtiest, busiest, most lively streets I ever found myself walking on. Cars driving 50 kph with only inches in space for the car in front of them. People on foot are not safe crossing a road even the lights are green. Amsterdam taxi drivers are angels compared to these monsters. The Chunking Mansions fall in the price category for a room, but Hyun Joo tells me I will be better off in Causeway Bay, on Hong Kong Island, where there is more of a party scene, which I actually pretty much need. So I hop on the starferry for a boatride to this part of Hong Kong. Headings towards the familiar-from-pictures skyscraper part of Hong Kong. The tower of the Bank of China, the familiar neon lights, this is HK as you know it if you haven´t been there. In 5 minutes I find myself from the slumps of Kowloon to this brave new world called HK Island.

Once I set foot on HK Island I start walking to the budget guest house area of Causeway Bay. I soon found out that it´s not a city for the creative walker. So not get off from the main paths are you soon find yourselves walking on one of the freeways criss-crossing through the city, one above the other. Underneath them there are te groups of people hanging around, smoking garbage cans and the occasional street fight. While walking I notice that this brave new world has not been so good for everybody staying there. The high business employee in his nice black suit with a tiny little sweat problem (hey, its over 30 degrees Celsius), who´s heading to his office in one of the shiny skyscrapers is passing by a man wearing rags, with a dirty face heading to high rise dump site, like on Kowloon, not noticing the mainly Indian beggards sitting on the ground, who´s actually not giving either of them a hard time or the tourist who is just observing all of this. He is asking for money but not pulling the trousers of your legs. After an hour walking or so, I found a hotel, nothing special but with AC, but it was the cheapest place around (Hotel Lungtin, 280 HK$).

Then its time to meet up with Hyun Joo, a reak adventure to try to find the right building in this labyrinth of high rise. Everything looks the same, finding my way back will be hard, but I refuse to take a taxi on the way there. I give myself an hour, in which I phone her every other 5 minutes to get new directions, passing a dim sum place here and there, shopping malls are abound, but especially mobile phones are passing me, everybody seems to be talking every minute of the day on the mobile, not realizing he or she is walking with a friend or partner. Just before I am crossing a big street I found myself in a group of over a hundred people. Everybody´s waiting. For one man it´s taking too long. He opens up his zipper and starts to urinate…… can you imagine, in the middle of the people, not facing a wall or something, not feeling of shame, nobody actually pays attention to it? And funny thing of it was that he didn’t look like a pauper, instead he was wearing a sit……. Amazing. I´m asking to more than 30 people direction how I should walk, only 5 of them were actually useful. But after more than an hour I found the place. Hyun Joo is a Korean expat who has been living in HK for a while now. After first serving me a four of her friends a great meal she takes me to Lang Kwai Fong, where all expats join together for a drink or two. The streets are completely filled with people drinking like crazy. Spend, spend, spend the money. That´s the motto of HK people, expats and locals. Two much money earning, long working hours, so no time to spend it slowly. So shop till you drop, go out for dinner everyday, walking is for peasants, take a cab even if you need to be around the corner. People are rushing from shopping center to shopping center on a Sunday. Shops of Georgio Armani, Dior and Rolex, every corner´s got one, they are a full with people who lost their brain as soon as they got a job here in HK. While walking, if it happens, they look straight ahead, just thinking about what to buy next, walking in a direct line, if I don’t move away, it will be a clash.

Well, I am just a tourist, so I take the metro or I walk. In the morning also a lot of business people take it, otherwise taking a cab would not bring them on time to the office as the main road on HK Island is one big traffic jam. In the subway it´s almost a fight to get in in the morning peak hour. And then the Powerpuff Girls are asking the people to ‘take care of the elderly?and of course ´mind the gap? as a London legacy of a honorable past. Together with Hyun Joo I am going to peak hill, where I am offered a view of all of the maze of skyscrapers on HK Island and beyond, the bay and the neighbourhood Kowloon. Then I recognize the actual city borders, a high mountain range, which limits the city of growing any further, it´s a been build. So the only option is to reclaim land from the bay. Relative low building, 10 storeys, have to been pulled down to make place for real high rises. On the slopes op peak hill some solitary houses are built, for the really really very rich. Hyun Joo tells me these people are so rich the have a couple of maitresses in mainland China which they pay for the education of her children, just to give themselves a good feeling.

After arranging a train ticket to Guangzhou or Kanton it´s getting dark. Walking back from the trainstation which is located in Kowloon, I see all the neonlights of the skyscrapers on HK Island glowing. The tower of the Bank of China has done the most beautiful job, by setting a slowly colourchanging pattern all over this skyscraper. Amazing.

Dim Sum time! The main specialty of HK. Waitresses are pulling there cars throughout the restaurant, you just take what looks nice, me and Hyun Joo are able to finish just under ten dishes. But the locals?. pigs……. The whole is full with dishes, eating like swines, the occasion spit, of course on the restaurants rug. Everybody is screaming, where is this and where is that. More of that. More tea. They just sit their for hours, eating like its this weeks only meal. It’s a great meal, I hope my stomach will accept all the new foodvibes.

On Sunday Hyun Joo could´n join me, she felt so guilty that she ´arranged' a friend, Chinese marketing executive at Lucky Strike, to be my guide. Meeting place: Sogo department store (where else?). After one minute over time the sweetest voice asks me ´´ are you Edwin?´´. Easy one: I was the only non-Chinese hanging around there. As with Hyun Joo very sweet girl, but earning too much. We went out for dinner, she just didn´t want me to pay. Can I please buy you beer, which she could live with. Of course to Lang Kwai Fong, where it seemed to be possible to meet the same people again from last nights ball, it’s a small world after all.

After three days in Hong Kong, strolling around and mainly eating everything possible, and wearing off my jet lag, I went to Guangzhou, the first stopover for paradise. All of the two hour train ride there has not been one single spot where people do not live. Once this used to be a green jungle in tropical south east asia, well its still a jungle out there. Arriving in Guanghzou I am hungry. My phrasebook is somewhere deep down in my backpack, so body language will have to bring me to some foodjoint, which the locals find very amusing. Welcome back to the real China, I feel at home already.

Feeling at home somewhere is apparently easy, but once you loose that feeling its hard to get it back.

I took a taxi from the Kanton´s East railway station to the long distance bus station, hoping I could go on to Guilin on the same day. I was lucky, I didn’t have to stay in this smelly city. I was really back in China. People screaming to each other, while only standing two foot apart from eachother, you don’t have to avoid dogshit on the street, but in stead big heaps of human spit which fall down inches away from my shoes. A woman starts screaming all the sudden if a bell boy wants to take her luggage on to the departure hall, which was only 50 meters away from her, for a small fee. A old man puts up all of his weight against a suit man, because the suit man doesn’t want to walk around the old man, only keeping a straight pace, but the old man doesn’t want to step with his flipflops in pile of water and other ?. things. Little boys are pushing heavy carriages along the main road, not overlooking that they might hit somebody´s heels. Au, that’s gonna hurt. Plus every 5 minutes an airplane passes by, so low that can see its wheels beijng pulled in from below. So loud, that you cant listed to what it is said anymore. But people are trying by screaming louder than the noise of the plane, so you can image what a peaceful place this must be. Just before the bus left for Guilin, I had my first dish I definitely didn’t want. I orderer fried noodles with meat. I tasted to meat it was kinda mushy, so not fried but more like boiled. I asked what kind of meat it was by pointing at some characters meaning: Beef, chicken, dog, sheep and so on?. the line stopped at snake!

Then on to Guilin. On the bus I met two Aussies. Suddenly they got out of the bus in the middle of te night, 4.00 am. I had no clue where we were until I looked up and so big sillouets of those famous limestone rocks. I then knew; I was in Yangshuo, paradise?. according to many stories from other travelers. We walked to West Street where all the guest houses are located, rather than taking a cabthing with price fall from 10 Yuan to 5 Yuan. Hmmm, for that kind of money, it couldn´t be far. it took maybe three minutes before we got there. There was only place where there was still a light on. We crashed down there and and had a beer or six. And a the magic time of 6.06 am we walked a bit drunken to the banks of the Li river, to see some sunrise. Well, it never became a sunrise, it was just all the sudden light, no sun to be seen. But the mountains are amazingly given its shapes. This places resembles Krabi in Thailand or Nong Khiaew in Laos bit, but then much more impressive. I headed for Lisa´s a nice guest houses with hot shower inside the room, a traveller´s delight, for only 20% of the price I was paying for in HK.

The first day I just slept after 24 hours traveling. Watched some tv, it hasn’t changed its function as a mass propaganda medium. There is an army channel, where a female in green army clothings is introducing all the heroes of the people republic of china´s army. A Mao channel, with hours of historical images of all the wonderful things Mao has done. An Olympic channel, Beijing 2008?, with hours of the gold medals winners of China in the past, including a mistake Pieter van den Hoogenband was edited on the tapes as well. A Tibet channel, where all the wonderful nature of Tibet is shown, presented by a Han Chinese woman, obviously she wasn’t a proper Tibetan woman, but dressed in Tibet clothings.

The next day I got up at 6.00 am to catch a bus to Qingping, a small village an hour away from the big city. From there on I took a local boat for a trip on the Li-River. If paradise is half as nice? This is definitely the most impressive boatride ever. I decided to sit on the deck of the boat, despite the cold. I was really freezing my ears of there. But it was worth it. Beautiful lime stone rocks, in every possible shape you can think of. The Chinese like to give everything a name, so I was passing by a.o. the rocks of the nine staggering horses? Well I could see 6, so the other 3 were probably butchered. Together with a French woman and a Chinese tourist we tried to figure out the other rocks, but could hardly see the given names. The water is easy, thank god, and low, so the boat has to change its course a couple of times so it doesn’t get stuck on the bottom of the river. Every know and then a little bamboo houses is located on the banks of the river, where the people are making the own canoe like boats. By means of punting the boats are given direction across the river. A nice site if the canoe gets into a small rapid. The delight of watching these strange rocks continues for 2,5 hours. The mind has no chance of thinking about other things than only the sheer beauty. Rising straight from the river until a height of a couple of hundred meters. Amazing. On the way back the sun wakes up, or it shows itself, colouring the mountains and its slopes all green, the rocks suddenly get a shadow in the river. People are waving to me from their boats. I wave back. And I know I am long way from home, but then again also not!

Back in Qingping the town is one big hustle and bustle: its market day…… Dogs, chickens, its just born children, pigs in way too small carriages: it’s a for sale. People are arguing which tiny chicken to take home and fry for a nice dinner. A row haircutters in one big row in an open space, medicine practice by herbal ways. This is definitely a different way of life than HK. People are showing by the way they dress in rugs, the lines on the faces of the elderly, the pureness of the kids staring and after a second smiling or crying after a Taz-imitation, the hard life of people carrying goods of a weight more than their own around the market.

The next day and the day after that I rented a bike, for a journey right through the country side where all the big ones, limestone rocks are located. Riding between is like feeling in a big canyon, the limestones are towering hundreds of meters above and dropping literally straight down right at my feet. On my way for a climb of Moon Hill, a woman approaches me; you want a beer? She doesn’t stop bothering me, during all of the climb which took about an hour. Moon hill is given its name because of its shape. Its of course a lime stones rocks with an arch on top of it. The circle in the middle is shapes like the moon, but it good just be the sun? whatever.

The view from the top is place right in my top 10 personal favourite sites ever seen. Hundred and hundred of limestone babies are down there, like a tablecloth filled with glasses, with the Li-river crawling through it like a snake. Amazing. People come up and go down as times passed by, just enjoying this view for a short moment. I think I was up there for more than 1,5 hours. Amazed by the view I will never forget.

During my days in Yangshuo I was besides boatrides and bike trips mainly busy with enjoying the food, the beer, the liveliness of the town which becomes a circus as the tourgroups arrive. Follow the flag everybody!

I took a flight to Beijing instead of experiencing a new record of longest train ride ever. On the airport I meet Ron, old buddy old pal. Beijing is freeeeeeezing, subzero temperatures. A Mongolian wind seems to be a true nightmare for the inhabitants of the city, everybody is already dressed in their winterclothing. Hmm, I didn’t expect this and wasn’t prepared for it as well?.

But know its time for something to go wrong? As always. My good old mobile which I took with me for communicating with Hyun Joo and Ron more easily decided to go on a trip of its own, prutser!. She wanted to go back to the south of china, the city of Shenzhen, so she did. I am expecting her back today or otherwise Wednesday. But apparently she turned herself off, so nobody can make advantage of her.

On my first day in Beijing I spent time walking and bussing through the city looking for something familiar. But that’s hard. Tiananmen Square seemed to have shrunken. Then to make things even worse my camera wanted to lie down for a while, tired as it was after only 4 rolls of films. She will never accompany again during my travels.

So with an instant camera I went to Tiantan park, in which the most perfect temple, Temple of Heaven, is placed. I tried to make it to the hills at Badachu, but after one hour of bussing I was still in the town, so I decided to go back in order to be back on time to meet Ron at his office.

Alright, for know.

Tsai Chen

Edwin

Beijing,People's Republic of China, October 29, 2002