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| our travel route |
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| the Bell Tower in Xi'an's walled city |
Having
enjoyed traveling in the Chinese Province of Yunnan last year, Road
Buddy and I decided to give China another chance to host, dazzle and
entertain us again this year. We planned to travel from the Ancient
Capital of Xi'an in Shaanxi Province, famous for the Terra Cotta
Warriors discovered by a farmer in the 1970s, to the world famous
terrain of the karst mountain formation along the Li Jiang river
between Guilin and Yangshuo in Guangxi Province. We planned to stop
in Wulingyuan National Scenic Park, Hunan Province (the geology of
which inspired the floating Hallelujah Mountains in the James Cameron
film Avatar); the Ancient
Town of Fenghuang, Xiangxi Province; the Ethnic Dong Village in
Sanjiang, Guangxi; Guilin and Yangshuo in the karst mountain area of
Guangxi.
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| Li Jiang (Li River) and karst mountains |
The
travel was more difficult than we had anticipated after the
relatively easy experience we had in Yunnan Province last year and
the weather was basically various shades of gray with intermittent
days of rain and showers—it even snowed in Xi'an adding a extra
shimmer to the old buildings and landscape gardens. A glimpse of a
rare patch of blue sky and a ray of sunshine was cause for
celebration, but, oddly enough, the weather grew on us and I actually
began to like it. For one thing it added an aura of mystery to the
karst mountains shrouded in fog at times or draped in white clouds in
the valleys that gave added definition to the peaks that looked like
goose bumps on the earth or maybe crazy mushrooms.
In
well known places like Xi'an and Guilin/Yangshuo that host foreign
(read Western) tourists English is spoken well enough to make it
fairly easy to travel and stay there. However, once off the beaten
path where relatively few foreign tourists yet go, English is
practically non-existent or rudimentary at best. This makes travel
difficult since communication is essential for finding places to
stay, eat, make travel arrangements, etc. One is reduced to the most
basic of communication tools—facial expression and body
gestures—that actually work with varying degrees of efficiency, or
sometimes have to be abandoned as hopeless. For example, when we
stopped at a roadside restaurant I asked the proprietress for a
toilet, but she didn't understand the word. The only thing I could
think to do was mime taking a leak and she caught on immediately and
laughed uproariously. Then she showed me where a pubic toilet across
the road was located. An interesting thing in this age of technology
is that many Chinese have smart phones that can do translation, dicey
translations at best, but that proved to be a big help in getting
things done in the hinterlands.
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| a family on the boat to Yangshuo |
Nevertheless,
we survived inclement weather and communication difficulties and I
have some tales to tell and photographs to show; and that, after all,
is what travel is all about—taking you out of the ordinary and
having some extraordinary experiences—and, by the way, testing your
mettle and unplugging from the sound and fury of a world in
extraordinary turmoil. Because, on the most basic of levels, ordinary
people are involved in the very ordinary business of living their
lives as best they can—something I think we can easily forget when
plugged in to the seemingly non-stop controversies of the day.
Xi'an,
the ancient capital of the “First Emperor” Qin Shi Huang 秦始皇,
was the first stop on our Winter 2017 travels in China.
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