Yangshuo Culture House

Somewhere along the way at Guilin, at our last Chinese hotel, I became a hostel convert. The amenities at the hostels--unless you are staying at pricey four-star hotels--have finally outweighed the better bathrooms. By amenities, I mean the abilities to get tours, train tickets, plane tickets, and laundry all by personnel who usually speak fluent English. Train and plane tickets are a big deal. I haven’t yet had to purchase one on my own. The hostels and hostel owners are all wired into the ticket system, have an agent they will use, and can get couriers to bring the tickets to the hostel. I’m sure the hotels will do the same, but getting everyone to understand each other through their very basic English is difficult indeed. Plus, the clientele at the hostels are ever so much more interesting and friendly.

As a result, I chose Yangshuo Culture House for a few reasons. One, Yangshuo was not a very big place, and I had a feeling that most of the hostels listed were in town and in the bar zone--you could pretty much tell from some of the descriptions. Two, most of the rest of the hostels listed said they were several kilometers outside of town. This sounded interesting, but I couldn’t figure out how we would get into town. If the town was small, would there be buses? Taxis? A couple I had met in Lijiang recommended the Outside Inn, which was owned by some friends of theirs. They would be there in a couple of weeks. I looked at the listing, which looked lovely enough, but then I saw the bedrooms, which touted “a mosquito net around every bed.” Mosquito net? Perhaps this was a little too country. So I looked at Yangshuo Culture House, which was not right in the middle of town, but on the map, did not appear to be too far away either. Maps can be deceiving, but I thought it might be a compromise. The real kicker, though, was that Culture House advertised that you would get three free meals a day with your room. Breakfast is no big deal…toast mostly, and the site said that most visitors did not eat lunch there, but dinner was served every night at 6 pm, and guests were welcome to come and eat a communal dinner. It sounded intriguing, and the hostelworld comments all said that the food was fabulous. Food won out, and I booked us five nights at Culture House.

All of that reasoning flew out the window as we drove up to the hostel. It was located on what seemed to be a dingy looking street, and I was wondering what I had gotten us into this time.

However, once Mr. Wei opened the door, I felt better. The house, while not up to Panba standards, was clean and comfortable. Mr. Wei gave us the family room--a double with two single beds with a private bathroom--because no two single bed rooms were available that night. The second floor held a small kitchen/family area, and the third floor had a computer room, although we had wi-fi in our room, so I seldom went up there. The only weakness in Culture House was that there was no place for the guests to hang out, so we ended up spending most of our free time in our room.

A few hours later, we sat down around the ubiquitous Chinese dinner table, round with a large lazy susan glass top and ample room for 8 to 10 people. We met most of our Culture House compadres while the staff brought out dish after dish after dish of local Chinese foods--I think there must have been 8 to 10 different things to eat! All of them were delicious. In China, you are often given a bowl of rice, a pair of chopsticks, and nothing else, so that you take food off the plates straight into your rice bowl. Interestingly, there are no serving utensils; everyone just takes food with their own chopsticks throughout the meal, and no one blinks an eye. Food aside, it really was a nice way to get to know the other travelers, although Mr. Wei and his family did not join us. I wouldn’t have minded that either.

Li River Cruise

We woke up early to cloudy, gray skies and packed all our bags for Yangshuo. I had gotten the hotel clerks to call my airport information girl, Angie, the previous day, and I’d booked a couple of tickets on the Li River cruise. Angie had met us at the hotel at 8 pm to get our money and transfer then tickets. She explained that a van would pick us up at 7:40 am. We’d be able to take all our luggage and stay in Yangshuo, rather than take the return bus trip back to Guilin. While we were checking out of the hotel, the van arrived, loaded our bags, and we were off. After picking up a few more people, we rendezvoused with a larger bus and had to transfer everything over. I was relieved to see that while there were some Chinese people, most were English-speaking tourists.

The ride to the pier would be about 45 minutes. The cruise itself would be another three to four hours. Our tour guide, another young Chinese guy, introduced himself as Yang Yang, which apparently means goat-goat, and he talked about being teased at school. He spoke English well-enough but had a fairly heavy accent, and he talked too fast, which meant that it was sometimes difficult to process what he was saying. While he was funny, his comments tended to be a little more sardonic than the other tour guides we’d had, which told me that perhaps his tour groups hadn’t always gone so smoothly.

After the usual patter, Yang told us we’d be seeing many karst limetone mountains that had been named for their shapes. Four of the sites were the most famous, and we would be passing two of them during lunch.

“So when I say GET UP, you must get up NOW and go upstairs and take pictures,” he said. Then he shooed us all up to the top deck.

The Li River cruise has always gotten great reviews online and in the guide books. The weather, however, was not cooperating, and a light drizzle was in the air, while the mist obscured part of the view. I suspect I was suffering from comparison fatigue…as nice as the Li River landscape was, it just couldn’t compare to Tiger Leaping Gorge.

Just a short time after we left the dock but were well on our way down the river, we suddenly noticed that our tour boat was being accosted by men on long narrow bamboo rafts. The men paddled swiftly to the boat's side and then clambered up, hoisting pieces of jade (or fake-jade) statues up to the tourists, trying to get them to buy. Someone on board bought a statue, which only caused the men to go into a more hyper-frenzy mode of selling. After ten minutes without sales, the men suddenly cast off and drifted back to the next tour boat to try again.

The boat was slow, and the mountains drifted by. I introduced myself to several travelers and we struck up conversations in-between pictures. There was a family from Australia onboard with two daughters, Zoe and Gemma, one a little older than Kinsey and one a little younger. I hoped they would strike up a friendship, but kids this age are slow to pick up new friends. There were older travelers and younger travelers, Europeans and Americans. A nice even mix, although half the boat was still Chinese tourists. The landscape unfurled peacefully and seemed to have a calming effect on the passengers. The Chinese seemed decidedly low-key about having their pictures taken, and the boat was balanced evenly enough that everyone had their own space at the railing.

Yang was making the rounds and stopped to ask me if I wanted tickets to the Impressions Liu Sanjie show that night. He had a couple of tickets left for 188 yuan apiece. The show was outdoors on the Li River and had been directed by the Zhang Yimou, the man who put together the Opening Ceremony for the Olympics. I had heard nice things about it, and it was on my agenda, so I said I’d take the tickets. He took my money and gave me a handwritten slip as a receipt, telling me that someone would come pick us up from our hostel at 6:40 pm.

Eventually it was time for lunch, and we all trooped down to our designated seats. The menu was strictly Chinese, although if you preferred, you could have vegetarian. I have been a little dubious about the cleanliness of Chinese cooking, but have not gotten sick over anything yet. Lunch had been cooked at the back of the boat, a place that did not look like it would pass any health inspections in America. I chose not to look at it too carefully and just take my chances. I had to…I was starving. The dishes were a bit rustic, typical Chinese, and plentiful. It was, however, great fun to have a Chinese meal with a group of people. One of the bad things about traveling in a group of two in China is the loneliness at meals. For the Chinese, a meal is something to be shared with a table full of six or eight people. Watching all those boisterous groups was like eavesdropping on a lot of dinner parties when you’re sitting in the kitchen by yourself. So it was nice to have that veritable Chinese banquet with a group. We all chatted and made small talk until Yang cheerfully announced that we were at the Nine Horses and must all go up NOW!

Half of our table left, and the other half stayed to eat. The rain was coming down a bit harder, so the ones who’d gone up to the top deck, came back fairly quickly. Five or ten minutes later, Yang announced that we were at the next important site. By this time, lunch was pretty much over, so we all cleared out. The rain was back to a light drizzle, and the majority of the cruise was over. Yang weaved his way throughout our group, handing out little hand-drawn maps, showing where we needed to go to pick up our luggage, meet for another tour, or meet for the show. I couldn’t believe he’d hand-drawn 20 or 30 maps. Kinsey and I had clear directions on how to get from the dock to a hotel several blocks away to pick up our luggage.

The boat docked, and we got off into a crush of tourist shops on West Street. The touts were out, but everyone rushed by because no one wanted to shop in the rain and had other places to go. Kinsey and I followed our map, but after we turned off West Street and started walking, it seemed like a lot farther than the map indicated. I kept asking shopkeepers where the hotel was, and they kept waving me down the street, so I figured we were going in the right direction. After a 10-minute walk, we found the hotel, a mid-priced place that catered to Chinese. We picked up our bags, and I went into the lobby to see if I could borrow their phone. Our hostel owner, Mr. Wei, had left explicit instructions that we should call and he would pick us up. Also, due to the many disreputable touts who might try to pass themselves off as his representative, we should look only for Mr. Wei, whom we would recognize because he only had four-and-a-half fingers on his right hand.

It took awhile to ask for a phone and get some help dialing--I couldn’t figure out how to dial out from the hotel phone. Was it customary to dial 9 first in hotels around the world? Eventually I got in touch with Mr. Wei, who had excellent English with surprisingly little accent. He said he’d be by in about 10 minutes.

We waited on the outside front steps under the eaves, and I surreptitiously surveyed all the men who drove up and came in. How many fingers did they have?

Eventually, Mr. Wei showed up and thrust out his hand to shake mine, a kind of low-key sign of identification. We introduced ourselves, pushed our luggage into the back of the van, and were off to the Yangshuo Culture House.

I Do Read My Travel Guides, But...

…it seems I don’t always process what they have to say until later.

I bought a bunch of travel books on China and read them before I left. I brought two for China: Lonely Planet and Adventure Guide: China, by Hunter Travel Guides. Although Lonely Planet is indispensable for basic knowledge, one of the things I don’t like about it is that it seems to give equal weight to everything. You have to wade through a lot of dense text to find things that are recommended, and even then, you can‘t tell how one thing stacks up against another. As a result, it’s hard to make choices on sites to visit just from reading LP. Adventure Guide: China is the opposite…kind of a Rick Steves’ version of China, highlighting only specific cities and what the author considers the best of the lot. AGC also listed some interesting information I hadn’t found in other guides: websites for cycling tours and other light adventure ideas.

I had also heard that a lot of hard-core, or perhaps just seasoned, travelers, don’t travel with guide books at all. They may read them beforehand (or not), but prefer to pick up information from others on the road as they go along. Not being that daring, I try to go over areas a few days before we get there, usually as I’m booking the next hostel or hotel, but lately, I’d been skimming because the travel is wearing me down.

I came into Guilin with some background, but few concrete ideas. I’d heard that Guilin itself is not that interesting, but Yangshuo, a smaller city about 65 km south, was the place to go. As I looked at the possibilities in the books and the brochures, I decided we’d go to Reed Flute Cave and Elephant Hill for our one day in Guilin. I thought we’d try the bus, as LP told us there were two buses that go to Reed Flute Cave, and one of them was free. Trouble was, none of the clerks at the hotel had any idea where those bus routes were. Kinsey and I went over to McDonald’s for lunch, and I watched the buses going by, but none were the numbers we needed. Defeated by that idea, I decided to go for a taxi as I had noticed a fair number of available taxis zooming by.

We got a taxi fairly easily, and by showing the driver the picture of the cave, he understood where to take us. Nineteen yuan later, we pulled up at a fairly deserted parking lot at the cave. We bought our tickets and took a short hike to the cave entrance. A few Chinese tour groups were hanging out in the waiting area. I told Kinsey we’d probably be in a Chinese tour again, but she didn’t mind.

A few minutes later, the doors opened and we were all let into the cave. It was an interesting experience to see how the Chinese culture differs from ours. The big draw to the cave is that all of the stalactites, stalagmites, flowstones, columns, and other cave phenomena were lit up with colored lights. Caves in the United States National Park system are not allowed to have colored lights anymore--(we learned this at Timpanogos Cave in Utah over the summer, which has one of the only exceptions, one red light on the “heart” of Timpanogos). On the one hand, the colorful stalactites and stalagmites are interesting, but on the other hand, they look rather kitschy and fake. Also, although I couldn’t understand the Chinese guide, I don’t think there were any admonitions to not touch things in the cave. People leaned on things, touched them, brushed by them without any thought. It might have been because the cave was probably already pretty damaged--it had been used during the war as an extensive shelter for residents and I’m sure no one worried about not touching things then--but it was an interesting contrast to me.

After our 40 minute tour, we exited the cave and pondered the best way to get back to the city. We wandered back to the parking lot and tried getting the two taxis there to take us back into Guilin, but they all claimed they couldn’t take us. Finally, I decided we should wait and accost the next driver dropping people off. Several taxis pulled in, but the drivers were waiting for the occupants to come back to the car so they could drive them closer to the cave. Were we the only dolts who had walked? Apparently everyone else knew better. I tried to get a couple of drivers to come back to pick us up after they had dropped their charges off, so I knew someone would eventually get back to us. A few minutes later, a taxi driver reappeared.

Once we got in, I showed the driver our little brochure with a picture of Elephant Hill on it. I pointed to it, and he understood that’s where we wanted to go. He started the car and took off. Just a few minutes into the ride, he pulled out two laminated sheets of photos of Guilin tourist sites. He pointed to Elephant Hill and then he pointed to a large tour boat. I shook my head and said no, and then pointed back at just Elephant Hill. He pointed at the tour boat again and made motions about it going past Elephant Hill. I kept saying no, but then I caught sight of another picture on his card--a small bamboo boat with a few chairs on it. I had read on the internet the previous night that someone had taken a boat like this by Elephant Hill. It sounded fun, so I pointed to the smaller boat. The driver vigorously shook his head and pointed to the larger boat. I pointed to the smaller boat. He shook his head again. We went through this routine repeatedly, and by then, I couldn’t tell if he was telling me the small boats were unsafe, the small boats weren’t running, or he just wanted to take me to the larger tour boat.

By this time, he had pulled up into a parking lot and I thought we were at Elephant Hill. We started to get ready to get out, when he motioned again for me to take the big boat. By this time I was a little exasperated, but I thought I could check out what was going on and then make a decision, so I finally relinquished and told him we could go to the bigger tour boat. I thought it would just be a short distance away; however, the driver started to go too far down the street, so I told him to take me back to Elephant Hill. There was no deterring him, and in a couple of minutes, we ended up at the dock for the larger boats. I tried to get him to take us back, but that wasn’t working, so I got out of the cab and started looking at the river, trying to determine if there were smaller boats out there or not. He chased us around trying to get us to the ticket line. By now, however, we were so far away, I could not see Elephant Hill or anything near it. Finally, I gave up and decided to just take the larger tour boat, although I was very concerned because now we were too far to walk back to our hotel, and it was getting late enough that I thought it would be hard to get a taxi. So I drew a picture of a taxi and a man and showed it to our driver. I pointed to the ground, meaning “here.” Then I asked him, “How much?” He seemed to understand and wrote 20 yuan. So I bought tickets--and he received a 10 yuan kickback--so I knew then what his motivation had been. If I had been able to speak Chinese, I would have told him I’d have happily given him 10 yuan ($1.50) to take me where I really wanted to go.

Kinsey, however, had followed the whole escapade in the backseat and was thoroughly disgusted. She had wanted to take the bamboo boats too, and the tour boat did not sit well with her. So now I was stranded on a boat with a disgruntled daughter.

The tour boat took forever and was pretty dull. The only nice parts were seeing some of the locals along the river, washing clothes, fishing, and quite a few were actually swimming. Elephant Hill was nice, but watching it from the boat just made me wish we’d gotten out when we’d had the chance. There was a trail to the top, and yes, there were bamboo boats there too.

Eventually the boat ride ended, although, I was concerned because we were dropped off at a different spot from where we started. It seemed like a residential area, so there wasn’t much traffic. We tried to poach a taxi, but all of the drivers were diligently waiting for specific customers. After a couple of minutes, our taxi driver showed up, and I was at least grateful that we weren’t stranded. I gave him the address to our hotel, and somewhere during the drive, I let him know that we still would have preferred to take the bamboo boats.

In the end, I don’t suppose I was really so mad…just chagrined at the way I had learned my lesson. Later that night I was re-reading my Lonely Planet, getting ready for Yangshuo, when I came upon the first few paragraphs about Guilin:

“When it comes to Guilin and its stunning karst topography, there’s good news and there’s bad news.

“The good news is the beauty of this scenic city…

“The bad news is that rapid economic growth and a booming tourist trade have made it a challenge to enjoy Guilin’s charms….Touts (some persistent) appear at every turn, with many taxi drivers now aggressively in on the game.” And, under Dangers & Annoyances, the first line was “Taxi drivers can be among the most aggressive touts in the city.”

Lonely Planet got that one right. Be careful in Guilin.

Guilin

I have outspent my budget, some of this due to my increased desire to take planes. Even though fares were somewhat cheap, they added up, and this leg was no different, as we could not take a direct flight to Guilin, but had to take a short flight to Kunming (about 45 minutes) and then transfer to another flight to Guilin (an hour and a half). Between the check ins and check outs, the travel still took us the better part of the day, and we didn’t land in Guilin until 6:30 pm.

On the way out of the airport, I stopped at an information desk to ask someone to write the name of our hotel in Chinese. I had forgotten to ask the clerks at Panba house to do this for me and had been worrying about it on the plane. A perky young girl greeted me and cheerfully wrote down the information I requested.

“Do you want a tour?” she asked.

Because she had been so kind to write the address for me, I stayed to listen to her spiel. She showed me a brochure that highlighted some of Guilin and Yangshuo’s best tourist features. I spotted the Li River cruise among the karst mountains and told her that one was probably the only one we were interested in. I had heard that this particular tour was fairly pricey, so I listened. She gave me a quote of 380 yuan per ticket, which was about 100 yuan less than normal and told me the tour would be in English. This information caught my attention, but I was reluctant to book before getting to the hotel to see what they offered. I asked if I could call later, and she wrote down her name and phone number.

We grabbed a taxi and gave the driver the Chinese directions to our hotel. None of the hostels online had looked particularly appealing, so I had decided to try a cheaper hotel. Apparently, the hotel was not well known, as the driver had to make a lot of phone calls. We drove into Guilin, and I was again surprised…this time by the size of the city. I had pictured Guilin to be a country town, but this was a decent sized city with neon-lights and action packed streets.

The driver dropped us off on a corner and pointed slightly down the street. We grabbed our bags and headed toward the building. In the lobby, I showed the desk clerk the name of the hotel and asked if this was the hotel. The clerk spoke limited English and she puzzled over the writing. Finally, with another clerk by her side, she told me that the address was correct, but that this was not the hotel listed.

Now I was a little worried. Here we were in a new city, it was dark, and I had no idea if I had written the address down incorrectly or if the website had been wrong. We walked out to investigate the nearby streets. I faintly remembered what the hotel was supposed to look like, so we went out to look. At the major cross-street, I looked around in defeat. Nothing looked familiar. I decided we should go back to the original hotel and see if they could call the phone number I had so we could figure this out. Barring that, maybe I could re-look the information up on the internet.

We walked back into the hotel, and the same clerks greeted us. I was about to ask them to call, when one started to look through her little receipts to see if our names came up. I watched as she flipped through and saw our name. Hallelujah! We were at the right hotel after all. Eventually the clerk managed to explain that the hotel’s name had changed sometime in the past, so the name on the website was the old hotel name.

I checked in for two nights, got a key, and we went up to the ninth floor. This hotel seemed to be one that catered more to the Chinese, as none of the clerks had very proficient English, and the signs around the concierge desk only showed tours in Chinese. The room was nice--a basic room with a decent western bathroom, complete with tub and shower. The interior wasn’t new, but kept up well enough. Our windows fronted onto the crossroads of two major streets in Guilin. After unpacking and a quick rest, we went out for dinner and ended our day.

Tiger Leaping Gorge

In the morning, we found out that seven other people from the Panba Hostel were also going to the gorge that day. A large van came to pick us all up at 8:30 am, and the ride would take somewhere between two and three hours. The rest of the passengers were all young college-age students or serious world travelers. We all struck up interesting conversations, but it was clear that everyone on the van had been to many foreign countries and most liked to do unusual things. One couple was traveling around the world, and the guy was going to mountain climb in the Annapurna mountains…basically, the poor-man’s Everest, although you leave from the same base camp. He also talked about the time he bought a motorcycle and rode around Vietnam for several months, wiping out five times. Others had been to Mongolia and regaled us with tales of yurts, horses, and horrible food--mutton and camel meat. The four students were studying Chinese in Beijing and had taken off for National Week. Their stories included riding the night train in the sleeper seats, surrounded by the rural poor Chinese men, who would ask them questions like, “Do you have anything valuable with you?” The students slept in shifts and told us that they were stared at for about 24 hours, while any activity they did--like taking out contacts--was scrutinized very carefully. By the second day of travel, the novelty had worn off and they were left alone. The students were American, but the rest of the travelers were European.

At about 11:00, we made it to the start off point of the gorge trek, a tiny dirt trail that snaked off from the main road. The only way that you would have noticed it, is that someone had unobtrusively painted the words, Tiger Leaping Gorge with an arrow on the side of a wall next to the trail. The four students stayed in the van--they were going to ride to the end of the trail to Tina’s Guesthouse--while the rest of us were going to start here, from Qiaotou.


For some reason, although I research travel things pretty well, I somehow just ignore the specifics of hikes of this nature. Nick had given me a small hand-drawn map of what the trek was supposed to entail--a hike of seven to nine hours, with the first section a steady uphill climb, followed by a strenuous section called the 24 Bends, and then a long mostly even or slightly downhill grade, ending with a steeper downhill section to Tina’s Guesthouse. I didn’t even know how many kilometers the hike was, as the map only detailed how much time each section should take to hike. Compounding that, some guidebooks rated the trek as “very strenuous” and some intimated that it was no big deal. It was hard to get a read on the whole thing.

Meanwhile, there were supposed to be guesthouses all along the trail--places where you could stay overnight. Even though you were supposed to be able to walk the entire trek in one day, Nick said that most people stopped somewhere and stayed overnight. From Tina’s, you could catch a van back to Lijiang at 4 pm the next day.

So, armed with a few clothes, cameras, a water bottle, snacks, the map, two umbrellas, and a wallet, we headed off into the gorge. The other world travelers quickly outpaced us, as I knew they would. We were basically wandering around on a little trail through the countryside, passing very poor, rural Chinese farms with outhouses, farm animals, and subsistence crops. However, the farms themselves were usually pretty neatly kept, with nice, sometimes new, buildings. It was the beginning of harvest, and all of the homes had deep yellow corncobs out to dry, some hanging thickly on racks, some covering the floor of a loft under the eaves. All of the fields seemed well-maintained, and many of the farmers and their families were out working.

As we walked, we would frequently come to some kind of crossroads, and the trail was not marked in any way. At some point, a Chinese man with a horse started directing us, waving us onto the right trail. After about 20 minutes, he ended up right behind\ us. I tried to let him pass, but Kinsey muttered, “He’s following us!” and indeed he was. He didn’t really say much, but his horse had a bell on its harness, which jingled constantly and drove Kinsey mad.


“I wish he’d leave us alone,” she said.


But I replied that it was a public road, and there wasn’t really anything I could do to stop him from using it. I realized that he was following us because he thought we might eventually want to ride the horse up the difficult parts. Apparently we looked like we wouldn’t make it. Since I had no real idea of what lay ahead, I figured it wasn’t such a bad idea for him to follow. I wasn’t going to rule out anything.


For quite sometime, the climb was uphill but not difficult. Then, at parts, it started to get rocky and parts were steep. The day was cool, but I was sweating nonetheless. At the first sign of a guesthouse, we stopped to get a drink and use the bathroom.


The guesthouse seemed clean but very, very basic--newly poured concrete everywhere. I bought two sodas and we sat to drink. I waved off the lunch menus because I knew we wouldn’t want to eat heavily during a hike. After a little break, I asked about the toilet. The women pointed me toward the back, and I was confronted with my first trough toilet. It was divided into two sections: men and women, and there were two “stalls” in each section, divided but completely open, with a long, tiled concrete trough that angled sharply down. Next to the trough was a huge pot of water with a metal dipper. You were supposed to squat over the trough and do your business and then wash everything down with the water. It was a little surprising, but not too bad--it seemed clean at least and no one was in the next stall. I wondered, though, where everything washed down to…and what happened after that? Mostly, however, I just felt a little despair--the accommodations at the guesthouses would all be like this…pretty primitive.


We continued on our way--the man with the horse still following us--only now, he would occasionally point to us and then point to the back of the horse. I kept saying “no thanks,” and we all continued up the mountain.


At this point in the hike, we began to see glimpses of the beauty of the gorge. The river had always been evident and the mountains were beautiful. I had seen pictures on the internet, and frankly, the scenery didn’t seem particularly magnificent. Based on that, I’m not quite sure why I kept this part in our itinerary. Still, we plodded on.

Along the way, I would ask the man with the horse or the vendors we encountered, where we were on the map. I kept thinking that we were surely close to or in the 24 Bends, but no, it seemed we were never very far along the trail at all. How on earth were we going to finish this hike? Time passed and the trail got steeper and steeper. The path kept changing, sometimes a narrow even track, sometimes filled with stones, sometimes wide, sometimes narrow. The one constant was that the trail frequently had horse manure along the way. The scenery along the trail was also always changing. There were often farms, but more often it was just woods, and then sometimes there would be the glimpse of the gorge. The man with the horse seemed to ask us more frequently if we wanted to ride--my intense sweating must have prompted his questions--but I always refused. To my amusement, he often got cellphone calls and would have loud one-sided conversations.


Finally, at some point even before the 24 Bends, we came across an old woman sitting at a stand at a great open cliff on the mountain, and the true panorama of Tiger Leaping Gorge came into view. It is truly magnificent. Pictures cannot capture how breathtaking it really is. She spoke to us in her halting English and we bought some drinks from her and took pictures. She had a barrier across an outcropping of rock and managed to convey to us that we could look for free, but would have to pay if we wanted to take our pictures there. We declined both.

On we climbed, marking our progress only from the amusing little signs painted on rocks along the way. Each guesthouse would announce it was next in line and tell how far the next one would be. I was impressed that the area was not more overbuilt. I had imagined guesthouses littering the landscape everywhere, but they were usually an hour apart, often more than that. I was also impressed that there weren’t more vendors, given our experience at the Great Wall. There were a few, but the trek is largely unimpeded by vendors.


We finally came to the last vendor before the 24 Bends. We stopped for another drink and short rest and the woman showed us where we were on the map. The man with the horse also pointed to the map, pointed to the 24 Bends, and then pointed to his horse. I told him no again. After we’d finished our drinks, we left, and he did not follow.


The 24 Bends turned out to be a steep rocky incline with generally short turns. After having climbed the 10 km Jinshanling to Simatai route, I actually thought the 24 Bends were not as bad as the previous part of the hike. At least the bends were short. My only thought was that if I had known where the bends actually started, I might have counted them. As we climbed, I didn’t know how far up the bends we’d actually gone. It didn’t seem too bad and then we were finally out.

The old adage says, What goes up must come down. So it was with us. While easier on the heart and lungs, the trek down is harder on your feet, knees, and calves. Still, it was a relief to get a break from the relentless uphill climb. Right after the 24 Bends, comes a steeper downhill section, which eventually begins to level off to a mild downhill slope. It was about 2:30 pm at that point, and we had probably only gone one-third of the way through the hike. After having seen the initial hostel, I thought we should press ahead to Tina’s, thinking it must be a better place to stay, although I had no real factual basis for that opinion. Getting to Tina’s surely seemed impossible. I figured we’d have to stop hiking somewhere between 6 and 7 pm. China tends to get light early and go dark early, so I had no good way to know when exactly the light would go. I did have a small flashlight in my pack, though. In the meantime, my back started to ache pretty significantly. I had only packed a minimum of stuff, but had overloaded my pack, hoping to save Kinsey. It didn’t help that it wasn’t a proper backpacking pack, just a basic school backpack. I kept shifting things around and wishing I had hired the horse to carry the pack. Somehow, in my tortured thinking, that wouldn’t have been cheating and we could still say we’d done the whole route. But the horse was gone, so there was nothing else to do but soldier on.


Back pains aside, I really enjoyed the downward trek. The flora and fauna were always changing, as was the trail. And the view was still spectacular. I should also mention that while the views are spectacular, the dropoffs are also spectacular. We met some couples with children between the ages of 6 and 8 who were hiking the gorge, and I wondered if they were constantly worrying about the dropoff.

Meanwhile, we kept checking our progress by the guesthouse signs we would pass. Many times we didn’t even see the houses, as you’d have to leave the trail in order to get to them. The hours wore on. Kinsey noted that we hiked at a slightly slower rate than the signs estimated. This was not only due to our slow hiking pace, but also because we would often stop to take pictures. My hopes for Tina’s were fading.

At about 5 pm, I could tell my reserves were fading, so I told Kinsey to sit and rest. We hadn’t eaten much, so I pulled out a Clif bar (one of our last from the US. There are no Clif bars here, and I think they’re indispensable on some days, so if you like them, I’d tell you to bring quite a few) and had the bright idea to take some Advil for my back. After only ten minutes, I felt quite better, and we struck out on the path again. We started to meet a few hikers traveling in the opposite direction, toward Qiaotou, which we had just left. One hiker was a Chinese man who spoke a little English. I asked for his opinion on when it would get dark, and he suggested 7 pm. Could we make it to Tina’s by then?

I tried to pick up the pace, and just before six, we came to a small waterfall. We took pictures and started off down the track, when we could see behind us, a couple of hikers. We continued on, and eventually came out onto a wide, newly paved road. I hadn’t heard about this part, but we walked on. After about 10 minutes, Kinsey noted that the hikers behind us were catching up. When we met up, I asked them where they were planning to stay for the night, trying to gauge whether we were in shot of Tina’s, but I was estimating that it was still an hour and a half away--too far for us to make before dark. The hikers, a young hard-core traveling couple from Europe, told me that they were going to stay at Halfway House for the night.


“How far away is it?” I asked.


“Just a few hundred meters,” they said, and then they smiled and walked on.


“Do you think we should stay there?” I asked Kinsey. “Or should we keep going to Five Fingers?”


She shrugged. We kept walking and then saw a fork in the road, one branch with a painted sign pointing to Halfway House.


“Well, let’s go see it,” I said. “If it doesn’t look good, we can go on.”


We followed the track, which was surprisingly long, winding between chicken coops, farms, and other buildings. At some point, I started thinking, “I don’t want to have to walk all the way back to the trail!” Eventually we came to another sign for Halfway House with an arrow pointing into a courtyard. Kinsey, with more youthful energy than I, walked in first, and said, “This looks pretty good.”

I followed, and we went down some steep stone steps into a courtyard. The hostel seemed to have four or five buildings in a rough semi-circle around an open courtyard.

Several other hikers were already there, asking about rooms for the night. We waited for a few minutes, until an older gentleman came over and I enquired if he had rooms. Yes, he said, there were rooms of several different styles. I asked if I could see them. He disappeared to get the keys and then led us up to the third floor of one of the buildings and unlocked the door. We were greeted by a clean, new-looking room, with two twin beds, fresh bedding, an exposed brick wall, and trim and carved wooden window panels in warm pine. He showed us the private bathroom with stone floor and walls, a nice shower area, and a western toilet. I was in heaven! It was actually nicer than Panba!

“How much?” I asked.


“Two hundred,” he said.


“Two hundred!” I said, a little loudly and somewhat shocked. I didn’t have the faculties to process the yuan into dollars at that instant, but 200 sounded high. At the same time, I was desperate for the luxury, so I quickly amended my answer. “I’ll take it!” I couldn’t even consider hiking around to see the other rooms. Sly innkeeper that he was, the owner had taken me to the most expensive room first, I later learned. Still, after translating yuan into dollars, I wasn’t going to complain about $29 USD.


The owner left us, and I slowly unpacked our meager belongings. “I’m going to put on my flip-flops and go out to the terrace,” I said to Kinsey.


“Flip flops!” she cried. I had managed to pack flip-flops thinking we’d be staying in a dreadful place and need them for the bathroom. It turned out that after hiking, flip-flops were the perfect remedy for sore feet.


We dropped our shoes, stretched our toes and took off for the terrace I’d seen across the courtyard. As we were leaving, two new travelers came by, one of them almost hitting a worker with something sticking out of his backpack.


“Sorry,” he cried. It was a kite, and they explained that they wanted to try to fly the kite here.


“Tell us when you’re going to do it,” I said. “We’d love to see that.”


The terrace turned out to be the most gorgeous spot of the entire guesthouse. The owner had put a lot of thought into building his place, and the terrace hung right at the edge, giving a masterful view of the gorge. Most of the people staying at the guesthouse seemed to be hanging out there, or heading there as they arrived. There were lots of tables, chairs, and a couple of bench swings. It was here that I met the most hardcore travelers we’ve yet encountered.

The couple we initially met on the road turned out to be going around the world. It seemed as though they’d done a lot of traveling before. They had started off separately from Germany, meeting in Mongolia. The guy had hitchhiked from Germany to Mongolia in 17 days. The girl had gone a different way, but their plan was to go through Asia, over to New Zealand and Australia, and then make their way to South America all without using a plane. The rest of us were aghast, not quite envisioning how this would work, but lauding their fortitude. The two guys with the kite were traveling together, although I never did quite find out how they knew each other. One was Chinese with great English and a full-blown camera setup and the other was an affable Frenchman with a kite. The last set of people I met was a family with two small children, a girl and boy, about 7 and 9 years old. The parents were from Toronto (although the mother was from Michigan), and they were teaching at an International School in Suzhou, taking a break for National Week. The dad seemed more like a hard-core traveler now settled down with a family, but itching to do some things. The mom was happy to travel, but a little more protective of her kids. We talked as moms do, and she asked questions about home schooling, while I asked her how her kids had adjusted to China. She was pretty frank, and told me it was incredibly hard in the beginning, that after the first few months, she wondered if they hadn’t made a huge mistake because she could tell her son was unhappy. The other teachers told her to wait, that it would get better, which it did, but she said they wouldn’t go to another country.


“We could probably stay in China for another contract,” she said, “but I wouldn’t move to a whole new country and do this again. It was too hard on my son.”


She told me that almost every time they went out, the Chinese wanted to take pictures of their kids. It wasn’t so bad in Shanghai, which was more cosmopolitan, but in Xi’an, they encountered busloads of Chinese who were touring for the first time and had never seen a foreigner. They often picked her children up without asking or touched them. Her daughter had a hard time with that, although her son loved being in pictures. Curiously, she said, no one ever bothered her or her husband. Just the kids.


We ate dinner and the evening wound down. We retired to our room, where I discovered the bed was one of the softest I’d had anywhere in China.


TIGER LEAPING GORGE, DAY 2


After a good night’s sleep on a softish bed, I was ready to go and pleasantly surprised that I wasn’t much affected by the hike, other than a little stiffness. Kinsey slept in a little, and I went out to the terrace for a breakfast of apple pancake with honey.


The two guys were out planning their day, and I enquired if they were going to fly the kite.


“Yes, we should do that!” they enthused and went off to get the kite. I decided I’d better give Kinsey fair warning, so I went off to let her know. She popped out of bed immediately, and I went back to finish my breakfast.


About ten minutes later, the guys were laying out the kite, tying everything together and getting it ready.

The owner and the guesthouse staff somehow found out what was going on and came out to investigate. Everyone was quite excited. Perhaps no one had thought of doing this before. The owner inserted himself in the process and was helping however he could.

The three Chinese girls who did the cooking and cleaning, lined up along the railing and watched with great interest and amusement. Eventually Kinsey showed up, as well as a few other guests.


The two guys and the owner tried again and again to launch the kite, but the winds were fickle, swirling up and then dying down. At last they managed to get the kite aloft, and the winds blew it over the guesthouse, but alas! After only a short flight, the kite nose-dived into the courtyard.

After that, though there were many attempts they could not get the kite up for a decent flight. The crowd dispersed and the kite was packed away for another attempt in Tibet.


Kinsey ate some of my apple pancake, and then we decided to finish of the hike. We packed up and this time I spread the weight a little more evenly, figuring Kinsey could take a little more weight for only an hour and a half. The newly packed bag was much better for my back, and we started off.


Only about 30 minutes from the guesthouse, we came upon a waterfall that cascaded over the trail. It was long, but widespread, so that the water did not gush with intense force. We stood in the waterfall and took pictures--it was just lovely. We met up with the family with the young children right about then. The father had gone across and a little distance to see what it was like. The mom stayed behind with the kids. She told me they had decided to get a van from Halfway House, as the downhill hike was actually harder on the kids than the uphill. We bid them goodbye, and went on.

 The trail downhill was not as bad from this side as it would have been if we had walked the opposite direction from Tina’s to Qiaotou. We made decent time. It probably took us two hours to finish the hike and we strolled into Tina’s around noon, meeting up with almost all of the people from Panba’s. The four American students had just hiked around Tina’s and stayed the night. Everyone else had done the hike straight through and arrived at Tina’s around 6 pm. They were all taking off for Shangri-la at 3 pm. Kinsey and I ordered lunch and hung out until the van arrived at 4 pm. The ride back was largely uneventful, and the driver dropped us off in Old Town, where we could walk back to Panba.


We took one last wander though Lijiang, buying a couple of bags of walnut cakes--small cakes made in presses that are shaped like walnuts. They have walnut and a melted bean inside. Quite delicious, though I suspect they might improve with a dusting of maple sugar. Kinsey bought a silver tiger charm to celebrate her hike through Tiger Leaping Gorge, and we window-shopped all the way back to the hostel.

Nick was at the desk when we returned, and there was a couple with him asking questions about the trek. We imparted all our new useful knowledge, and then headed up to our new room. Even though we hadn’t walked as far, I was still tired, and we needed to get up for a flight to Guilin in the morning.

Lijiang

After another long ride on a sleeper train--and this one seemed even longer because we left at 1:40 pm and didn’t arrive in Chengdu until 5:30 am--we tied up some loose ends in Chengdu, like laundry and rest, and caught a flight to Lijiang. Although I’d like to say that I took the flight because I had tired of trains, in fact, Lijiang does not have many trains going to it, so a flight is pretty much a necessity, unless you really want to take many, many hours on a bus.


We arrived little the worse for wear, and I was startled to discover that this was a very small airport in a very rural setting. We managed to snag a taxi driver--a woman--who spoke no English. She was, however, willing to work with us, so she read our address and made some calls. Communication was limited, but she wrote down that the fare would be 100 yuan, a pretty substantial sum in terms of taxi fare, but I was a captive audience and readily agreed. Although I might have initially thought that she was taking advantage of me, the drive itself was quite long, and the farther we went, the more I thought her fee was deserved. Meanwhile, we kept going through only very rural areas, until suddenly she pulled over to the side of the road. There was nothing there.


“This is it?” I asked confused.


She whipped out her phone and called the number for the Panba Hostel. There was a brief but animated conversation, and when she hung up, she motioned for me to get out. Visions of abandonment filled my head, but I told Kinsey to get out, and we got the luggage out of the trunk.


The taxi driver motioned across the road, where another lone road creased off at a sharp angle.


“I go down there?” I asked, motioning with my hand and thinking this could be a disaster. She nodded and then made another motion with her hand.


“Ah! Someone is going to meet us!” I said, light dawning.


She nodded again. I paid her, and to her credit, she didn’t drive off, but waited until a girl appeared across the road and hailed us. I thanked the driver profusely, and we trotted of down the street.


I had made the decision to go to Lijiang with no real good intention, except that I had heard the trek through Tiger Leaping Gorge was a good idea. The closest jumping off point to the Gorge was Lijiang, which was still two to three hours away. Other than that, I had no idea what Lijiang was like. In addition, I had picked our hostel, Panba House, with a little trepidation. It was listed on Hostelworld with a solid high rating, and the clincher for me was that it had received a Top Ten Cleanliness Award. However, I hadn’t been sure where it was located in the scheme of things, and now it seemed we were in the middle of nowhere.


We dragged our suitcases down a narrow stone street, and the streets and homes seemed deserted. After a few minutes, we reached Panba House, and my spirits lifted considerably. The entry was manned by a young Chinese guy named Nick, who spoke excellent English, and was friendly and helpful in every way. The hostel itself was beautifully appointed with lots of carved wood, sliding wooden window panels, thoughtful decorating, fairly new, and above all, it was impeccably clean. Although I had to drag our luggage up to the third floor, the place was magnificent. Our room was huge--I’d had to take a family room with a double bed and a single--but there was an open verandah overlooking the old city with inviting rattan chairs and tables. Each level of the house had an open air courtyard with lots of spaces for mingling.

It was mid-afternoon, and we had not had a decent meal that day, so I told Kinsey we’d better go out and look for some food. I asked Nick how to get to town, and he told me to step outside, turn right and walk straight down the street, turning neither right nor left, and we would get there. He also provided me with a small map, showing the Old Town.


We set off. I still wasn’t sure what kind of town we would be encountering. A little way down the road, we encountered a group of American college-age kids talking with an American woman, who seemed to be giving them ideas on places to eat. I stopped to listen. She told me they were ex-pats living in Lijiang, and she had just picked up her children from school--there were two boys with her, about 8 and 10 years old. We tried to memorize her suggestions, while the college kids were more interested in cheap and funky hole-in-the-wall dives.


We continued down the street, when suddenly, small quaint shops started appearing, first a few, and then a flood, lining the narrow street we were on. It was a shopper’s paradise! Not being much of a shopper, I was overwhelmed, but thoroughly charmed. The shops were all inviting and well-kept, offering the most colorful, interesting items for sale. Only after thoroughly exploring Lijiang, did I conclude that many stores sold the same types of things, but at first glance, the items for sale were quite different from other items sold in China. For example, handcrafted items were a bigger draw here: wooden carvings; bright colorful tiered skirts; a local harem pant; funky jewelry; crafts that looked African more than Chinese, and more. Apparently, local Chinese ethnic minority groups sell in Old Town Lijiang, so the style is much different than in Beijing or Shanghai.

 As we continued through the Old Town, canals started appearing. There were beautiful pathways of stone, bridges, and flowers everywhere. It might have been touristy, but it was certainly beautiful.

After a lot of exploring, we picked a place to eat, trying to find something with a little Euro-sensibility to it. I ordered spaghetti and Kinsey ordered a hamburger. The spaghetti was decidedly overcooked, and the burger ended up to be stuffed with vegetables, so we were both a little put off, but it was still a nice change of pace from Chinese. Afterwards, we shopped, wandered, got lost, and eventually made it back to the hostel.


Although Panba House was a veritable oasis, after having endured the long days in Chengdu, I was beginning to get tired of China, so I thought we’d start rushing through the rest of our days. I had asked Nick if we could go to Tiger Leaping Gorge the next day, but he told me he could not arrange it on such short notice. So we agreed to stay one more day in Lijiang and go to Tiger Leaping Gorge the day after that.


It turned out to be a blessing, as we were both more exhausted than we’d realized, and needed a day to sleep in and relax. Our second day in Lijiang turned out to be a lovely day of shopping, eating, reading, and resting…we later learned it would be important for our trek in the gorge.