The Travelling Life of Silvan Colani
October 2007 – Guilin
After a reasonably long absence from mainland China, Mei and I decided on another one of these weekend excursions to the motherland, appropriately with our mothers (and Mei’s father)! Our destination was Guilin and we decided to forego the standard Dragonair package tour which seemed rather expensive for five people. Instead, we just booked the flights and relied on some friendly advice as to where to stay and what to do. That turned out to be the right – and decisively cheaper – decision.
Our first destination was the village of Ping An (literally = peaceful) in Long Sheng – famous for its rice terraces – about two hours south of Guilin. However, since the Dragonair flight arrives relatively late in the evening, you have to spend the night in Guilin. We opted for the three-star Guilin JingDu Hotel. I assume it got one star for the stained carpet, one for the peeling wallpaper and one for the concrete-like mattress. But when you’re paying Y220 per room in the city, you can’t expect too much!
Breakfast (Y12 per head) was a non-descript affair of congee, noodles and other tasteless bits and we were glad to find our driver at 8am sharp to get out of the dusty, noisy, honking, squatting mess that is Guilin. However, once out of the city, things change quickly for the better. Ugly buildings give way to rice paddies and ever-steeper hills. The road to Long Sheng was well-paved and traffic light, making things easy for our driver, who like most motorists I’ve ever encountered in China, was a terrible driver. (Note: the Chinese idea of an economic drive is to take the car out of gear on the slightest downhill stretch). Once in Long Sheng, the road rises steeply through a series of narrow switchback corners towards Ping An. At the road head, you have not yet reached the village itself and need walk the final bit on foot for 20mins. The local villagers – indigenous people from the local minority – are eager to carry your luggage for Y20 and if you’re really lazy you can hire porters to carry you up the hill on a sedan chair.
Ping An itself is a peaceful and picturesque village nestled among countless hills of rice terraces. There are no cars up here and the major sources of noise at night are frisky neighbors and a screaming pig being carried up to the village in the morning. You can hike and walk along the rice terraces and enjoy the views from typically Chinese-named vantage points (“Nine dragons with five tigers”; I never see any of those animals…).
| Random Questions About China:
1) Why is the toilet paper not perforated? What’s the point about having an entire roll in one piece?
2) Do they have any non-smoking rooms at the “Cigarette Trade Hotel” outside Guilin?
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Next morning the old ladies were eagerly waiting to carry our luggage back down the mountain. The car ride from Ping An to Yang Shou in the south takes some 3 ½ hours. Yang Shou is what Guilin is famous for, i.e. lots and lots of limestone formations jutting out of the landscape, dissected by the Li River which winds its way down from Guilin. We stayed at a quiet place, the Li River Retreat some 2kms outside the hustle of the town centre along the river.
| Phutonghua For Five Year Olds
When traveling in China – like everywhere – it helps to speak a bit of the local language. “Ni hao!” is particularly useful but I was pleased to find that my Mandarin, despite years of neglect, is still sufficient to converse fluently with these two five-year old kids of our driver. Talk about a high level of proficiency…
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During the day you either take a bike ride or a leisurely cruise on the Li River or its tributary, the Yulong River. “Leisurely” is of course a misnomer, since no tourist activity in China can ever be described as such. We opted to take a 2hr ride on a bamboo raft on the supposedly most scenic part of the Li River. The raft ride would have been leisurely enough, but the river is one endless procession of tour boats coming down from Guilin and drifting along in their belching wake takes a lot of charm out of the otherwise impressive scenery.
Yang Shou itself is a pretty enough place – especially for China – but it is somewhat of a backpacker hangout with plenty of pizza and pancake places, which we generally avoided. If there’s one thing you can rely on in China – especially when traveling with Chinese – is the food. There’s always a meal to look forward to if everything else fails. And the people, surprisingly, are nice enough – a far cry from the shoving and pushing masses in the big Chinese cities.
So yes, Guilin is worth a weekend trip, but I suggest you avoid the standard tour groups in favor of a more ‘intimate’ itinerary like ours above – including the very worthwhile trip north to Ping An.
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