Below is just one of the emails received by Mr Ayres almost daily describing their adventures in China. I am excited to see my son on Sunday but will miss these emails. Christian Fell has had the trip of a lifetime... Friends and Loved Ones in the USA, We have just returned (3:00 pm) to the Guilin Bravo Hotel from yesterday and todays excursion up into the mountains around Longji to the Zhuang village of Pingan and are now back in a solid internet zone. This side trip was marvelous and another component to our trip which introduced us to a thoroughly different atmosphere than what we have experienced so far. We checked out if the Yangshuo Guifu Hotel early yesterday morning and drove the 1.5 hours back to Guilin to drop off our luggage here at the Bravo Hotel. Then we boarded the bus and headed north out of the city. As we reached the outskirts of Guilin, we stopped for a noodle lunch at a real 苍蝇馆儿 cāngyíngguǎnr (fly restaurant). The owners, Mr. and Mrs. Huáng, who live upstairs from their restaurant (which has a roof but is otherwise open to the elements), scrambled to prepare enough noodles for our hungry group. Though not the cleanest-looking of places (as its Chinese name implies), such food shops serve some of the best local food you could ask for, food which wont be found in nicer restaurants. The rice noodles for which this region (and Guilin in particular) is famous are unbelievably good. The Huángs boiled our noodles, then served them in a bowl with chopsticks. From here you go to a grimy table to add condiments to taste: hot chilies (a must!), scallions, broth, peanuts, sour beans, meat, etc. Then you sit down to enjoy this peasant dish with gusto. David Everett had three bowls! You have to taste this dish to believe how good it is. We thanked the Huángs many times before leaving. Mr. Huáng was telling me (as if I couldnt have guessed) that very few foreigners eat at his place. Its not hard to see why. The eating area is somewhat dirty, theres no air conditioning, a lot of poor-looking Chinese hang around, and its in a part of town most tourists pass by without seeing. But the food is clean and so delicious, the people friendly and smiling. Mrs. Huáng watched with pride as your sons devoured her noodles. Back on the bus, we drove for about two hours up into the mountains. The palm trees, ferns and jungle vegetation gradually yielded to vast bamboo forest and dense groves of pine as we rose. The air became a little cooler and the mountain scenery more dramatic. About 2000 ft. up, we reached the town of Longji where we had to leave our large bus behind and board a much smaller one for the further ride up into the mountains. This was a little hair-raising as our drive drove, let us say, somewhat faster than I might have done behind the wheel. The hairpin turns and narrow road (about 1.5 lanes but which pass for two in China) made me say a travelers prayer to St. Michael and make a brief act of contrition...just in case. (Last year, as we were coming down, we saw an overturned car in the river below.) The road was periodically dotted with mud slides which made half the width unusable, or with road construction vehicles that challenged even our experienced maniac of a drivers skill in getting around. You could not have slipped a piece of paper between our bus and some of these machines as we drove by. And the sheer drop to our right became deeper and deeper, making me wonder just how badly I wanted to return to Pingan in the first place. We finally reached our drop-off point at about 3300 ft. Now the hike by foot began, a 45-minute walk up to the village of Pingan at the top. Well, most of us walked. Last year, Sarah forced me to take a sedan chair (jiàozi 轿子) from about halfway to the top, fearing I wouldnt make it much further. This year, I didnt even argue. I gave the weakest job of haggling in my life, and for 200 RMB engaged two middle-aged men to carry me to the top. Josh Buttery also took the sedan chair, and we looked like two Western imperialists from the 1800s directing our coolies to take us to our destination. And take us they did, though I have to confess Ive never seen men work harder. For some reason not completely clear, Joshs porters seemed to have an easier time than mine. It must have been the weight of my backpack. Anyway, they stopped four times to rest during the grueling ascent, incongruously smoking cigarettes at each pause. Midway, I had to buy them each a bottle of green tea to counteract their dehydration, and at one point where the steps were unusually steep, I volunteered to get out and walk. They didnt argue. I chatted with these men during their breaks, and they told me they can only make this climb twice a day due to its rigor. When we finally arrived at Pingan, they were soaking with sweat and gasping for breath. So guilty did I feel that I actually gave them 300 RMB instead of the 200 originally bargained for. They earned it, if ever man did, and I really enjoyed their company and conversation along the way. I entered the traditional style Zhuang building made of dark wood with terra cotta tiles stained black which was our inn, the Pingan Hotel, run by a delightful chubby Chinese lady originally from Guilin named Feifei, whose English was pretty good, though there were moments when Chinese served us better. Your sons looked exhausted, confirming my earlier decision to be carried. I realized it was either being carried in a sedan chair or a coffin, so I didnt begrudge the 300 RMB too much. We checked into our rustic rooms, more or less what youd expect in a local inn off the beaten path: hard mattresses, wood walls and bamboo ceilings, your basic no-frills bathroom, and a small balcony overlooking the beautiful valley below. These older inns still have the annoying practice of requiring your electronic keys to be in the rooms slot for anything electric to work, and this includes the AC which, for a wonder, was excellent, better than the 5-star hotel here in Guilin. When you leave, you have to take the electronic key with you if you intend to get back in your room to sleep. But with the rooms being small, they cool down very quickly. Alex Guan, my friend and our guide, led most of the students on a trek to the right side of the valley, while I took the left path which, I believe, has better scenery as well as a chance to talk to the local Zhuang people, all of whom are bilingual in Zhuang and Mandarin, the former of which I am completely ignorant. The best views are, in fact, about halfway up to the mountain top. Here in Pingan, you see vast landscapes of the sculpted rice paddies dug into the mountainside. These terraced paddies were created over the centuries as the Zhuang people were pushed by the incoming Han majority out of their lands where they farmed rice and up into the mountains. Terracing the mountainsides made it possible to grown rice on the slopes, and it is one of the wonders of China. The paddies had been flooded and were glistening pools of water reflecting the blue sky as the young shoots of rice began to push up. Tended daily, it is exhausting work. Many of the Zhuang people wanted to turn to inn-keeping to make money, and the government actually pays them a stipend to continue working in the fields, lest the beautiful landscape created over centuries should fall into decay. I will leave your sons pictures to convey this beauty. As the sun set, we went to a local Zhuang restaurant for a delicious dinner, including sizzling steak and onions, bamboo chicken, rice, and some delicious green beans cooked with chilies and bamboo sprouts. We sat out under the stars wolfing down the food and polishing off bottle after bottle of Sprite and Coke. It was a wonderful evening in this village. As it got dark, we left the restaurant to return to the inn in darkness. This is a small village, and electricity is used sparingly, so many students lit their way over the uneven rock paths with their iPhone flashlights. On the way back, we came across an empty kissing fish boutique where those who had not done so in Yangshuo got the opportunity to immerse their feet in cold water and have the kissing fish nibble away. Some who had done it before did it again. Its not an activity to be missed. Back at the inn, most of us went to bed or watched the Soccer Cup playoffs. In the cool mountain air, air conditioners at night are not really necessary, but it was nice setting them to 20 degrees Celsius and having them reach that temperature! We slept like babes after Ollie Alfir was totally freaked out by an attacking moth the size of New Mexico. His shrieks echoed through the inn! This morning, with no phones in the rooms, there were no wakeup calls, so we emerged from our rooms two-by-two. It was an overcast, beautiful misty morning up here in the mountains, and breakfast was prepared by the single kitchen chef who fixed an American breakfast of fried eggs, toast and jelly, and coffee. She also fixed some very tasty crêpes which you could dip in a hot local chili sauce. As we prepared to leave, it started to rain, and there was a flurry of poncho purchasing. The rain did not last long, however, and it had the effect of creating the most beautiful clouds and shrouding mists on the mountain. Like in a fairy tale, Belle commented. It was breath-taking, but you had to be sharp as we walked down the slippery, wet steps of the mountain. It only took about thirty minutes to reach the point where we caught our minibus for the descent into Longji, leaving Pingan village sadly behind. A two-hour drive brought us back to Guilins tropical weather. We ate lunch at a restaurant that specialized in goose, and where I had the the best river shrimp I have ever tasted (the heads were still on, and you had to peal them). We returned to the Bravo Hotel about 2:30 this afternoon. It was a wonderful side trip! This is our last full day in the PRC. Tomorrow morning, our wakeup call is 4:30 AM. We have to leave the hotel about 5:45 to catch our early flight to Shenzhen, the border city across from Hong Kong and the only Mandarin-speaking city in Guangdong (Canton) Province. Well go through Immigration and Customs, then cross into the Hong Kong region where well meet our guide Hardy and a bus that will take us the 1.5-hour drive into Kowloon, the part of Hong Kong that lies on the Mainland. This city, the Pearl of the Orient, is where we will pass our last three days of the trip. I cannot believe how fast the time has gone, and what fine young men it has been my honor to guide. Were going to either KFC, McDonalds, McFound or a local noodle shop for dinner, depending on ones taste. I may write again this evening, but most likely youll hear from me in Hong Kong tomorrow. Until then zàijiàn. Rick Ayres
Posted on: Wed, 18 Jun 2014 12:15:49 +0000
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