Big Bad Nanning Trip and the Village(s)

This was a different trip, consisting of alot of hardships, a lot of long off-roading bus rides, and not alot of showering or clothes washing.

The line up:

Gabriel (Gabe)- Chilean born Korean. English is good, and he is great at teaching me spanish. He is the smaller of the two. All around fantastic guy.

Kiwi- Chilean born Korean #2. Not too much spoken english, but also great at teaching me spanish. He beats me at ping pong, and again, really nice guy.

Arve from Norway- proponent of whaling but an all around good guy. Probably one of my friends I have known the longest here in China. Dont get between a Norwegian and his whale steak.

Gabe and Kiwi on a bus. This picture is out of chronological order, but its a good shot of them...and our general travel conditions for the entire trip.

We started in Hangzhou, with a 30 hour train ride to Nanning which is in the south of China, very close to the Vietnam border. It is supposedly one of the poorer provinces in China. The goal: to see some villages.

Before we left, we had some trouble. I had tweaked my back 2 days earlier during a vicious game of ping pong and was in bed for 2 days. Arve had eaten raw shell fish in a friend's home village a couple days before, and missed his mom... if you know what I mean. Gabe was seriously hung over from the night before, and Kiwi has a fear of public restrooms, as in, he wont use them...so we all had our handicaps.

Now on the train, you have the option of soft-sleepers, soft-sitters, hard-sleepers and hard-sitters. We couldnt get sleepers at the ticket office, so we got "hard sitters". Knowing that it was the Spring Festival or "Chinese New Year" we knew it would be crowded. What we didnt know was that we would be getting down-graded to a fifth option -what we referred to as "hard-standers"- when they over-sold the tickets on the train and people sit in any seat that they can find. Then you have to talk them out of the seat.

After we talked some people out of our seats, we were able to sit, but it was never comfortable because people were getting on and off the train all the time, and were always moving around. I tried to capture it with some pictures:

We thought we would take the oppotunity to learn how to play some chinese games, but the thing is that in China, any game you are playing in public becomes a public event. People will look over your shoulder and offer their unwanted advice, sometimes even move your piece for you.

This guy was standing on his seat telling the little boy playing chess with his dad, what he was doing wrong. In the end, he just ended up playing for the kid. Personal space is not an issue as I was sitting next to Kiwi and I spent 20 minutes with my head actually in this guy's armpit...actually touching, and Kiwi spent the same 20 minutes with the guy's chest resting on his head. However, we were sitting back to back with Gabe, who said the back end was worse because of the smell.

Here is the boy that got booted from the chess game. ...and how close they look in the picture, is really how close they are to my seat. Nice looking family huh?

just a baby in the train station.

After about 3 hours, we went to the dining car, bought some food, and hung out. We were talking to the waitress, and she voluntarily found the ticket guy who could up-grade us to hard sleepers for 20 more US dollars, which we did. Fantastic choice, the rest of the trip was a breeze, but we decided to get off the train early at Guilin.


Longji Rice Terraces


The guys really wanted to go to Yangshuo, but I had already been there, so I seperated from them for a couple of days and went to the Longji Rice Terraces. These terraces' peak seasons are certain times every Spring, Summer, Winter and Fall because they are drastically different depending on what is growing, if there is snow, if all of the terraces are flooded with water, or if everything is blooming. I was not there at a peak time, but the terraces were still absolutely fantastic.

When I hopped a random bus to the Longji Rice terraces, I found out it was not the bus that I wanted to get on. Fortunately, it turned out to be a BETTER bus, which was taking me to the very village I had hoped to eventually hike to: the Yao Minority village of Dazhai. I met a guy on the bus, who offered for me to stay at his family's home in Dazhai. I said ok, so I followed him into the village. It turned out to be a 1 hour up-hill hike to his house, which actually turned out to be set up like a hostel.

the Jin Mei Ge hotel.

There are alot of little Yao ladies that offer to carry your stuff from the bottom of the hill to your hostel. They carry it in a big basket strapped to their backs like a back pack. I tried to travel light so I was ok, but I finally allowed one to carry one of my packs as an act of charity. I traded my back pack for her basket. The hike turned out to be pretty gnarly...but also absolutely beautiful.

I hope this paints a picture: that night when I went to sleep, I had a really vivid dream that my airplane (which resembled an giant log with wings, like you ride in splash mountain), crash-landed in a stormy pyramid of water swarming with giant 30 foot tiger sharks. After I was quickly and painlessly eaten, I had a brief interview with "someone" in an abandoned bus station. Immediately after that, I found myself blissfully floating in golden sunshine in a place that was greatly resembled Dazhai and the rice terraces with sheets drying in the warm breeze. True story.

So after I woke up, I hiked around paradise by myself all day. I took so many pictures, its alittle embarrassing, but it seemed like every 10 steps, there was something worth photo-ing. I found myself holding my breath as I took every picture hoping that the I would fully capture what I was looking at, but every time, I would look at the screen and be disappointed.

One thing these pictures do not capture is that nearly
all of the hills in the distance are also segmented, or stepped.

They had these peculiar little chicken sacrifice alters all over the hills.
I never figured out what they were for...might be creepy at night though.

The place I was staying at also had some other patrons who were very nice. I ate dinner with these people. The little girl is one of the village girls. I think she was the niece of the guy who we were staying with. She's wearing their traditional head dress.

The Yao ladies wear these clothes, and keep their Guiness Record-holding long hair in a bun in the front of their heads.

All along the hike, I would come to little pockets of houses.

He's not really mad, just ending a yawn.

I am cutting back on the pork. Too cute to eat.

Irrigation system

...Ha. :)

Has to be one of the best breakfast tables in the world.

Cheng Yang Qiao
There were some complications of the reuniting with Arve, Kiwi and Gabe, so I ended up having a day to kill in San Jiang, a town that is really only known as a bus hub. Luckily I found out about a nearby Dong Minority village, so I hopped a bus and went there. Again, it turned out to be a great surprise, dispite having an admission fee....

Again, some people's homes are set up like little hostels. This was basically my room. Thats meat hanging on the left.

This is the view from my balcony, not too shabby.

Other that the low standard of living, and a lack of a good garbage management system,
life in the village seems simple and happy.

These ladies are washing plucked chickens in the river

Because I was there for the Spring festival, there was a big hoopla down at the town drum tower. There was a big stage, a lot of singing, and a lot of dangerous firework abuse. In the middle of the singing, people would throw large strings of fire works onto the stage at the singers' feet. Then the singers would stop singing and plug their ears and close their eyes, then resume singing after all of the explosives blew up.


As if it wasn't dangerous enough to throw fireworks at adults, people would come out on stage and throw handfulls of candy into the crowd. The little kids would rush the stage, and then someone from the side would throw large strings of fire crackers between the children and the stage, sending the little 6 year olds running. It just seemed alittle unsafe.

In the back of the town, I found the path that leads back into the fields. It really is a nice and quite place once you get out of the town. The bridge also helps you practice for the Beijing 2008 olympics I think.

San Jiang to Cong Jiang

Have you been to the I.O.T.D.F.G?

The next day, I finally met up with the guys in San Jiang. I found out that in Guilin, Kiwi had alittle trouble he needed to punch his way out of, but other than that, everything was great...oh and Gabe had diarrhea and nausea that he figuratively had to punch his way out of. So we hopped a 5 hour off-road bus and headed deeper into the sticks. At the station, we found that many of the busses looked like this...

...which is never a good sign. Its puke.

We bought the tickets to Cong Jiang and went immediately to our bus, only to find it driving away. So some of the workers at the bus station called the driver on his cell phone and told him to wait because the stupid wai guo ren missed the bus...even though it wasnt our faults... We all packed into his little mini car, and he chased down the bus (service you would never get in the states). We got on, and they kicked other angry people off who had hopped on the bus immediately outside of the station.

We got to Cong Jiang 5 hours later, and yeah, it was seriously off roading in a bus, but you get to see how the villagers travel, and what they travel with:

My neighbor has seen better days I think

You frequently stop along the way and pick up people on the side of the road. We passed through alot of minority villages, so it was cool to see how they dressed. I dont know how they get their colors so fresh and bright...

a Chinese Villager seat belt

Once in Cong Jiang, we hopped a cab to a pretty obscure Dong village outside of town. This place did not have anything in terms of marketed accomodation, so we had to ask around. The people immediately pointed us to one of the nicer houses in town, and she set us up for the night for 2 US bucks, dinner included. This place was actually pretty nice though.

Downstairs

Upstairs

The dinner inspection

an old man we found upstairs.

That night, we hung out in the village game room

...and the next morning, hit up some hard labor.

Like I said, life just seems alittle simpler...harder, but simpler.

Zhao Xing
At this point of the trip, Kiwi burnt out, so him and Gabe headed back to Cong Jiang to relax a bit. Arve and I went on to another village called Zhao Xing. We negotiated a price with a Cong Jiang cab driver to take us on the hour drive out to Zhao Xing. We bargained pretty hard, so for less money we agreed to let the guy pick up passengers on the way there, which of course turns out to be more entertaining anyways, so we won, and won.

The drive out had the most amazing fields of yellow flowers. Again, my pictures do no justice.

This was the view from our hostel window in Zhao Xing

We found there was a festival again, where they played big pipes made from bamboo, and lit off alot of firecrackers as they marched around town ...all day and well into the night. They would march around to each drum towers in town, play the pipes, and do something like a cheer, then blow off 3 huge fire crackers that they loaded in these little metal casings. It sounded more like a mini cannon and scared the crap out of Arve and me the first time because we were standing right next to them taking pictures. Everyone was covering their ears, and we were all, "Man, the pipes aren't that loud, why's everyone plugging their ears?..."

Some local entertainment.

Again, the fields in the back of the village were fantastic.

Later that night, there was a dramatic fist fight between two teenage boys, ending when their friends dragged them away kicking and screaming, and a sing-off between a group of well composed, well-dressed village ladies, and a pack of drunk village men

Nanning

We had plans to meet up with Gabe and Kiwi back in San Jiang, so Arve and I caught a local bus down to a small junction of roads where we knew the Cong Jiang to San Jiang bus would pass. We waited there for 3 hours. It was kind of like hitch hiking, but not really..and totally over glorified.

Finally, we were able to get on a bus, and were delightfully surprised to find Gabe and Kiwi were on the same bus, on their way to San Jiang to meet us. Nice. It was like "Whats up!!"

As for the rest of the trip, it was pretty standard, nothing much to report. Nanning is a fantastic city- seems really really progressive and clean. It is the first city park that I hiked where I actually smelled forest, and the streets did not smell like tailpipe. The vegitation was beginning to look tropical, as I imagine Vietnam would.

Skills.

When I was in Dazhai, marveling at how beautiful everything was, I came across two village guys about my age. They were absolutely trashed and lying in the bushes. It reminded me that all of these villages are great to visit, but not so great if you cant leave.

Good times, good company, great experience. It makes you really appreciate what they have, but it also really makes you grateful for what you have.