China - Autumn 1996

19 Oct

I had to leave early - at about 5 am to get to Arlanda in good time for the 8 am plane to London. I checked my backpack through to Xiamen and myself to London.
There was a three hour transit time in London and it was necessary because of the long line of people at the Malaysian Airlines transit desk, we left London at noon (on Malaysian Airline Systems flight MH3), and the flight was ok if a little bit crowded for such a long flight. I talked quite a bit with my neighbour, an Indo-Malaysian returning to KL for his brothers wedding.
Kuala Lumpur airport was small and efficient and it felt already like a pleasant place to stay on the way home, we arrived there at 7.45 am on Sunday and departed at 9.30am on flight MH??.

20 Oct

Guangzhou airport was also small and efficient, arrived a little late at 2 pm (according to the timetable it should have been 13.35) , but then I had to retrieve my backpack and go through customs and then check it in again to Xiamen. The formalities were minimal (as on my previous arrivals by air in China). I discovered that the domestic terminal was only about 100 metres from the much smaller international terminal, and the check-in procedure was very simple. I boarded the plane (Chinese Eastern flight ????) on time but it wouldn't start !! So we deplaned at 5 pm and waited in the terminal. It was not uncomfortable, there were plenty of seats, food outlets and the information was reasonable if not encouraging. I spent the time chatting to Alan and Roxanne - who had an artificial flower business in Chicago - and spent a lot of time commuting from Chicago to China, and were used to delays. The plane was finally mended, at least it departed at 10.45 pm and the flight was uneventful. Chinese domestic airlines have improved their service, there were air hosteses aboard who served soft drinks, sweetes and key-rings to the passengers. On arrival I took a taxi and paid 100 Y for the (30 km) trip into town and to a good standard hotel (for about 280 Y) but it was nice to have a comfortable bed.

21 Oct	I got a good nights sleep so decided to stay another night at the same hotel. I started off walking around Sun Yat Sen (Zhong shan) Park and then took a bus to the ferry terminal. First impressions of Fujian province are mixed, there is a lot of development, traffic and noise. On Gulangyu island however it was like another world. Here there is no traffic, and it is pleasantly occupied by fairly well-off Chinese tourists enjoying the pleasures of the beach. I passed a couple of hotels that were quietly and pleasantly situated, and empty too, it is a bit of a hassle reaching them with luggage. But I would certainly consider them if staying again in Xiamen. I lunched in a typical Xiamen restaurant, vast displays of seafood, shrimps of all siaes, crabs, snail-like creatures, eel-like creatures all swimming or crawling or waving protuberances in tanks and bowls all over the front of the restaurant. Prices were high by Chinese standards, 40 Y to 200 Y for a dish as far as I could tell, I ate some Xiamen special noodles and a seafood soup. There were temples and markets as well as beaches on Gulangyu, and I climbed Riguang (sunlight) Crag with a great view. Later returning to the mainland I explored the commercial centre, an excellent double-decker bus connected the ferry terminal with the railway tation and the quantity of neon along the way was fantastic. Summarizing my impressions of Xiamen, it now has a skyline and a pace of life approaching Hong Kongs and is rapidly expanding in all directions. Like Shenzhen it is a Special Economic Zone (SEZ). But Gulangyu is still a comparatively sleepy and attractive backwater.
22 Oct	After my morning noodles I took the 10 am bus to Longyan. The bus station in Xiamen was a modern but rather isolated and lonely concrete building on a main highway. I thought it was so the bus could make a quick getaway from the city, but in fact the Longyan bus at least returned into the centre and drove around for a while to pick up a lot more passengers. I had company with Mr Zheng who was some kind of teacher. He suggested we share a room, to keep costs down. He knew a hotel he said, and the hotel was fair enough a 2Y rick-shaw ride from the bus station. The only room they had was a triple room for 135Y, and by some peculiar arithmetic, and after a lot of haggling finally cost 135Y plus tax for me and 68 Y for Mr. Zheng. According to Mr Zheng the average income in the prosperous Xiamen is about 1200 Y per month; Longyan is not in the same league but appeared reasonably prosperous for a small town some distance from the coast, and not on a major railway line, and the average income was probably 300 -500 Y per month . I noticed a fair amount of (rather ostentatious) mobile telephone usage, and outside a school at lunchtime I noticed that nearly all the mothers waiting, there were also a few fathers, were sitting on a motor scooter while waiting for their children. About 200 000 people live in Longyan and it is a pleasant place without anything particulat to see. The railway station at the end of a branch line was, unusually for China, completely empty and there could not have been any problem getting a ticket for one of the three daily trains to Yongding or Zhangping. But when I was in the Xiamen station earlier it was not very busy either. Fujian is not well served by railways, it takes a long time to get anywhere by circuitous routes, so most people take the bus. Dinner at a rather shabby, but popular with the locals, Sichuan place
23 Oct	An early morning walk found typical Chinese activities like taiqiquan and breakfast stalls, and what looked like whole school classes drilling in the playground. Near the river were apartment blocks for the workers and big red slogans extolling the joys of work and communism, but I never found any older areas, the city is probably built entirely since the revolution in 1949. However there were al lot of allotment plots, and people conscientiously working them, growing mostly vegetables. I bought a ticket for this evenings sleeper bus to Shantou at 16.30pm and continued to walk around the town. Small towns are often pleasantly laidback and Longyan was no exception. But I was glad to be on my way to Shantou. My first sleeper-bus was quite exciting, it was surprisingly comfortable with interleaved layers of berths so I could recline completely. And escape seeing the road. However there is no toilet on board, and no food so preparations are esential. I thought the bus would take 10-12 hours but I was surprised at 00.30 am to be told to get off as we were already in Shantou.

24 Oct

Arriving anywhere after midnight without anywhere to stay does not make for the strongest bargaining position, I was immediately surrounded by what I took to be Shantou's late-night taxi-drivers. I chose, in as far as I was able to choose a guy with a truck who took me to a hotel, and then another, and finally after a lot of driving around, to an acceptable lodging house in the picturesque Western District. It cost 128Y, and the truck guy was satisfied with 50Y. So I think I did better than I could have expected. I had noticed a shabby little place opposite the bus station that the truck driver immediately said didn't take foreigners. I wonder ? Anyway, my neighbourhood is very picturesque, good noodle soup for breakfast, and then off to explore Shantou.

But first, back to the bus station area, and bought a bus ticket to Guangzhou for Friday night (tomorrow) for 80 Y, and immediately discovered that the newly-built railway to Guangzhou appeared to be operational.

To start exploring Shantou, I took a ferry across the harbour, the shabby boat was full of beggars, hawkers, acrobats, in sharp contrast to the high-rise buildings all around the harbour. There was not much to see on the other side, but "my" side was a fascinating jumble of dilapidated, old, colonial style architecture. The rest of the city was however a sprawl of high-rises, luxury hotels, industrial estates, commercial enterprises and official buildings.

The night markets in Anping Road and the vicinity were busy and interesting, cycle rickshaws, motorbikes and taxis thronged the narrow streets, but in general there are no real sights to see in Shantou. I saw an interesting ceremony, connected with a funeral (?) where everyday utensils, and specially decorated paper objects were burned in the street.

25 Oct

More wandering around Anping Road, along the waterfront and through more markets. I had an excellent lunch at a pick and choose restaurant, with very helpful staff, crabs and two other fish dishes well-prepared for Y66. They hadn't seen that many foreigners although Shantou is not off the beaten track.

I spent the afternoon riding around on the local busses. Shantou, like Xiamen, is growing very fast with huge industrial estates springing up in the suburbs, and ostentatious hotels and office blocks and public buildings everywhere. The railway station was in the middle of nowhere - the railway to Shantou doesn't appear to have all its infrastructure in place yet.

The sleeper bus left on time at 8 pm and I had a berth near the front so I had a chance this time to observe the road and driving habits for a while. The coastal road from Shantou to Guangzhou is probably, at the moment, one of the best (and most trafficked) in China. It is a well engineered, and generally two lane highway. Signposting is adequate, and, at least at night there didn't appear to be much pedestrian, animal or bicycle traffic. It also appeared to bypass the centres of most villages and towns, although this part of the coast is very densely popularted. There was a meal stop at 23.30 pm and again (for the drivers) at 3.30 am and we arrived in Guangzhou at 6.30 just as the city was starting to wake up.

26 Oct	Guangzhou is "the big city". My memories from 1983 are vague, but there have certainly been big changes in those 13 years. The bus station where we arrived was small, and the nearby train station appeared well-organized and not too crowded, at 7 am on Saturday morning. The left-luggage office near the station however wanted 30Y to look after my bag for a few hours. But unusually for China it was not easy in the station area to find a good noodle breakfast, just fast food of different degrees of badness. I took a quick tour of Guangzhou on bus 31 to Shamian Island, crossed the Pearl River and looked around the luxurious White Swan hotel. Along the river bank was an interesting market area, with fortune tellers and feng shui practitioners, antiques merchants and ice-cream sellers. Walking back from there towards the city I found the famous, and fascinating "everything that moves can be eaten market" and finally a number 5 bus back to the station. On the way I got a counterfeit 5Y note probably from a soft-drinkseller, not easy to get rid of, everyone is on the look-out, and it was a rather crude forgery. But I used it on the airport bus where I went to meet the rest of the group. We are only 4 , Ulla, Annette, Arne and myself and our guide is Hua Tiezheng. He had decided that we should fly directly to Guilin, and continue by bus to Yangshuo and sleep there tonight. The four of us walked around Guangzhou airport and discovered a rather up-market restaurant with tablecloths etc. We ordered a dish that was orange and gelatinous and that we later found was cow-heel. The flight was on time and we arrived at a sparkling new Guilin airport, opened very recently, efficient luggage handling facilities, and almost empty. A bus met us and our local guide, Miss Li (Li Shu) and we sped through the city of Guilin on the new motorway, four lanes and also empty, and were in Yangshuo in less than two hours. Yangshuo is one of the backpacker paradises of China and a first stroll down the main road showed a number of pancake and müsli restaurants with names like "Sunny Side Bakery" and "Minnie Maos", souvenir and T-shirt shops, fax offices, establishments offering traditional Chinese massage and remedies, and all the other parapharnalia of modern tourism. However behind the main street Chinese village life continues, chili peppers are laid out on the street to dry, commerce and entertainment all happen on the street. But there are more luxurious and modern houses in Yangshuo than most other places in China, a testimony to the power of the tourist, even the backpacker dollar. We stayed at the Xi Liang Hotel, I shared with Arne, and the room was adequate, reasonably clean and with water in the shower, although not the standard I have accustomed myself to in the past week. However it is a typical backpacker haunt and costs about 40 Y per room. The weather is very pleasant at this time of year, 20°C, and so far no rain. It was about 11.30 pm now and Arne, Hua and myself went to the Green Café for a beer before retiring.
27 Oct	We all went for breakfast to Lisas, a Yangshuo backpacker institution, porridge and waffles and things like that. But the service was poor compared with the average noodle shop. Then we rented bikes from the hotel, not bad bikes for 5Y a day and pedalled off in the autumn sunshine with Moon Hill as the goal. The first stop was at the Big Banyan Tree, and the countryside was really beautiful, and the weather perfect. The road however was constantly under repair the first kilometres out of Yangshuo so we didn't make good time. A small village at the Big Banyan Tree was making a good living off the few tourists coming there, charging 9Y per head to appproach the tree, and letting the tourists ride on a camel or horse - or perhaps to be photographed on them. But the commerce wasn't disturbing, since the number of tourists was still small. Mass tourism consists of groups flying in to Guilin, taking the boat trip up the Li river to Yangshuo, spending an hour or two shopping in Yangshuo and then being bussed back to Guilin. In the fields around rice was being harvested and threshed, by hand, or rather by foot with contraptions which could be pedalled like a bicycle. We continued to Moon Hill which is one of a large number of peaks rising out of the otherwise flat and fertile terrain, it took about 40 minutes to climb at a leisurely pace. Half way up was an old lady sitting serenely selling half a dozen bottles of fizzy drink. Considering that we saw no-one else on the climb, it can't have been a very lucrative way of making a living. At the top there is a rock with a hole in it, according to legend so placed that the full moon can be seen through it. It was mid-afternoon when we got up so we couldn't test the theory, but there was a magnificent view from the top. Li Bo was with us, and invited Ulla and me to visit her grandfather; he is a well-known artist named Li Zheng'an. They lived in an apartment in the centre of Yangshuo, and it was quite large, but the rooms were bare and lacking in amenities. The studio was a cold room piled high with canvasses and paints and utensils. She paints too and I bought two of her paintings for 50Y apiece, which I hope I can get home in one piece.
28 Oct	Today was market day in Fuli, so we pedalled there. The market was situated in a large open field on the outskirts, of the very small village. I bought a Mao cap for 4Y, and admired the butchers and the vegetable displays. There was a TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine) practitioner who was a bit of a showman. His speciality was cupping, and he used up to a dozen cups at the same time on his patients. He used lots of moxa, but he was more restrictive with the acupuncture needles. He also sold herbs and dried bits and pieces from various animals. After lunch we climbed one of the mountains in Yangshuo itself. It was a typically Chinese type of excursion, with steps cut out all over the mountain, and plenty of temples and pavilions at regular intervals along the paths. From the top we could see that Yangshuo was a very fast-growing town.
29 Oct	Today we made the trip on the Li River, most tourists make the trip as a day trip from Guilin returning by bus from Yangshuo. So we were practically alone on the river in our boat. However we did not have one of the luxurious tourist boats, ours was more like the everyday Chinese ferries, and proved it by being difficult to start. But we finally got started and enjoyed a warm and sunny day on the river, surrounded by the scenery that is considered typical on Chinese paintings. Fortunately or unfortunately we didn't have any of the mist that usually is visible on such paintings, and which is so common in Guangxi. We thought the trip would cost 90Y each, but just before the return trip we were told it would cost 10Y more. Typically Chinese busines methods, but still very reasonable compared with the more than 400Y that is currently being charged for the tourist boats. I made that journey in 1983 as part of the tour after my summer course at the Peoples University of Beijing (Ren min da xue) and Yangshuo has certainly grown since then from the single street that I remembered, but the river was presumably less changed. In the evening we went out cormorant fishing. This is an ancient method of fishing where tame cormorants with a ring around their necks perch on the boats until they see a fish, then they dive for it. They are allowed one fish in every four or five. It was nice to be on the river in the dark and quiet but we didn't see much of the fishing.
30 Oct	An early start for the 8 am bus to Liuzhou from the rather chaotic Yangshuo bus station. Liuzhou is the metropolis here in central Guangxi and is considered by many to be "a poor relation" to Guilin where the scenery is concerned. It seemed to be a thriving city, we ate a good lunch in a "fast food" restaurant opposite the station, and afterwards had only time for a quick walk around. (we will see more of Liuzhou on the return journey) However I noticed many attractive, carefully made-up young ladies, walking purposefully, aimlessly around ! Still, we had a train to catch and the 16.38 express to the west offered a rather shabby hard sleeper towards Jishou. No-one except Mr. Hua and myself fancied a meal in the restaurant car, but it was quite good, with a good selection of well-cooked dishes. And plenty of interesting company, as the evening wore on and the beers went down.

China (19 Oct 1996 - 30 Nov 1996)