2/18/2010 ? Guilin

I arrived in Guilin in the afternoon from an early plane ride. The air outside felt cleaner, and, although it was still a little chilly, it was a lot warmer than Shanghai. Our tour guide, Alex, took us by bus to a restaurant in the suburbs of Guilin, a “small” city of a few five million people or so. As we exited the bus I noticed a women sitting down on a rock by the road. She had simple clothes on and a long stick that may have been a crutch. Then I went in to eat.

In the restaurant we were all seated in one room at circular tables. Each table had a lazy Susanne on it and we all ate with chopsticks. The lazy Susanne was very helpful. As each dish was served we would just pass it around the table by rotating the tray. The food was tasty but did not meet with my expectations of the wonderful authentic Chinese cuisine I had heard of. We had new food like caramelized taro root and a soup that resembles American hot and sour, but tastes more like watered down tomato soup.

After lunch we went back on to the bus and the woman I had seen earlier was standing, using the long stick as a crutch because she had no right leg. She asked us for money in a different manner than I had seen before. Rather than ask for money with an open outstretched hand, she had money in her hand and pointing it toward us would say, “Dollar? Dollar?” I thought this was very interesting because, although it was apparent that she was asking for money, it almost felt like she was trying to give us the money she held in her hand.  

We boarded the bus and continued our drive into Guilin city center. On the way in we passed a tiger and bear research center, where 1300 tigers lived and were studied in an effort to support the dwindling tiger population in China.

We drove into Guilin and saw the multiple small lakes that are part of the city’s beauty. On the horizon were large karst formations of limestone rocks sticking out of the ground. In the city seven on these formations had been sectioned off into a park where many people hike the rocks and do tai chi in the pagodas on the top.

Then we arrived at our hotel, the Guilin Bravo Hotel, and went to our rooms for a half hour before beginning a tour. At the hotel we had little key cards that not only opened the door, but also were required in a little slot to turn on the electricity for the room. My room was nice and large with a good bathroom. The beds even had a thick comforter, which is desperately missing from the ships accommodations.   

Meeting in the lobby of the hotel I joined the group on a tour to go to the tallest peak in the area with a cable car ride and then to a tea plantation. At the base of the tallest peak we got out of the bus to be bombarded with sales people. They would hold up bags and bracelets, or large green coats to us and would bargain with our silence. These people followed us all the way to the entrance line for the cable car. A few of our group were even shrugging out of the coats that had been placed on them as they were walking.

As I moved through the line to the cable car, I realized along with everyone else that it wasn’t what we all though of as cable cars. We looked up at the steep slope to see ski lift chairs rotating around.

Now there was a reason the sale people were selling coats. It was winter, it was cold, it was overcast and we were going up a mountain. Now all of us saw that our transportation was a ski chair. This wasn’t a shock, or a horrible circumstance, by any means. It was more humorous to me, to realize the difference between my expectations and the reality.

Up I went on a ski chair. As we went up there were a few people who passed us, going down. As they went by, almost each person who passed us would say “Hello” and wave with big smiles. They seemed so excited to speak one or two words of English to foreigners.  Music was playing from speakers on the lift and about half way up it began to rain in a fine mist.

At the top of the peak it was freezing. Everyone looked around for a second, took their pictures, and asked a little about why the rocks formed in such random pointed-ness in flat lands. The answer to this was never clearly stated but it had something to do with the land being underwater, and when the sea retreated the limestone rocks were left sticking up. Very quickly we all wanted to go back down. More specifically we wanted to go half way down, and take a luge the rest of the way.

At the half-way we got to the luge, it was unsure the luge would be open due to the rain. They were worried that the metal luge track would be too slippery and we would not be able to break or perhaps even go off the track with enough speed. This made me a little nervous, thinking the luge goes really fast. Therefore, I went after a few people and ended up being behind a girl who was scared to go at any pace where you could feel the wind going by.  However, I had some room between us so I got a little speed around a few turns and it was pretty awesome. I rode a luge in Guilin, China!