Nanning and Yangmei, July 9 and 10, 2004
Friday July 9 in NANNING -
You can see my photos from around Nanning here: http://tinyurl.com/6fr97
Everywhere I went in China, people were meeting me at bus stations. Mary, who met me in Beihai in her father’s car, had arranged for Catherine to come and collect me at the station in Nanning. I called Catherine's number on arrival there, and while I was waiting, two ladies appeared. I thought one must be Catherine but they introduced themselves as Jane and her friend Betty. Jane has been a Webhead for some time, and she is in the network of English teaching professionals that at one time or another has Yaodong as a teacher. She had invited me to Nanning in an earlier email but I didn’t have her phone number. I'd emailed her that I might be there that day, but had received no reply. Apparently, Yaodong, my assiduous agent for all of Guanxi province, had arranged for her to meet my bus, probably through keeping track of my whereabouts via Mary. Mary meanwhile had put me in touch with Catherine, so at the station, once Catherine arrived, my reception committee had swelled to 3.
Later in Nanning, more surprises. Jane takes delight in seeing what she can get me to eat. Bbq'd pig's penises and curdled pig's blood were two delicacies she had placed before me. I think it's great that she made the effort. All of Yaodong's students and their friends have been incredibly kind to me.
After the interesting meal of pig parts and also of course, more palatable foods like bbq beef (at least I think it was beef) Jane conducted Catherine and I to the back rooms of a shopping mall where DVDs are pirated and sold behind a sliding door that can be pulled shut during raids by the authorities, and then took us to drink a coke at a modern, air-conditioned department store with waterfalls dropping through spacious interior. Jane wanted me to see as many unusual aspects of Nanning as possible, and this is why she sent me back to the hotel on the back of a motorcycle that made it to my 4-star hotel in a drizzle that soon turned into a downpour.
I asked at the hotel where I could use the Internet and they referred me to the business center where Internet rates were almost $5 an hour. I asked them if there was a cybercafe nearby and they kindly gave me directions and more importantly wrote them in Chinese on a card for me. It was this card that got me pointed in the right direction when I reached the end of the street without finding it. When I did find it the trail lay through a bowling alley where a man took me to a stairway and pointed down. Downstairs I came to a room full of perhaps a hundred electronic video arcade devices and I thought perhaps I’d been steered to the wrong place, but the kids there showed me to another door at the bottom of the stairs which led outside and up to street level where, at the back of the bowling alley, I found the rooms with computers. Getting in there I had to pass by a kiosk selling soft drinks and when I asked if they had any beer they went to the next shop over for it. So I sat there comfortably drinking beer and using the Internet till midnight or so and the whole bill including the beer came to about a dollar.
Saturday July 10 YANGMEI -
Click here to see photos from Yangmei
Catherine had promised to come by the hotel for me at 8:30 so I made sure I was up and ready to check out by then. She on the other hand had been up since 6:00. She had passed by the Yangmei bus station on her way from the college and backtracked the bus route back to my hotel so she would be able to guide me, and had arrived at 8:00 and had a bowl of noodles somewhere while waiting around to appear on my doorstep as promised at 8:30.
Someone so sweet to do all that made great company for me for the day. We were going to Yangmei, which both Jane and the Lonely Planet had recommended as a day out to an ancient town popular with Chinese tourists. Catherine took me out to the street and got me on the bus crowded with Saturday shoppers to the train station where we got off and walked the few blocks to the tiny station where the local buses left for Yangmei. I think I would have had trouble finding that one on my own as it was an obscure station with only a few buses. Catherine had found out on her way down that our mini-bus left at 9:30, and she made sure we were on it.
The bus took us half an hour to the west of Nanning before turning off some bumpy side roads where truck traffic had spattered the drab neighborhoods mud grey and depressing, but these yielded under where they were building bridges for the new road to green hilly countryside. Eventually we came to a river which we crossed on a ferry barge lashed to an old but serviceable tugboat. Across the river we continued 15 km to the community of Yangmei, arriving shortly after 10:30.
Yangmei was a not-all-that-inpiring collection of 300-year old quaint brick houses by the banks of the river. The people there had a market for a yellow tart fruit, and many seemed involved in the peanut trade, with women outside houses separating them from their stalks and laying them out in shells on mats in the streets for others to reduce to smaller piles of just the nuts.
Catherine didn’t seem interested in hiring a guide to any of the attractions in the area, but eventually she succumbed to the long spiel in Chinese of a lady with a bullock cart which we discovered we could hire for two yuan to take us to a temple. The short trip was of course a hook for an attempt to get us to subscribe to a longer one but the cart went a lot slower than we could walk so neither of us was interested. The temple too had its guards whose task it seemed was to extract a few yuan from compatriot tourists, but it had little inside except a few photos of luminaries from the revolution of 1910.
By then it had started to rain but we proceeded on foot to a Confucian temple Catherine had devined was nearby and then walked down by the river. 'Food Street' had little to attract us at midday. I was in fact surprised that there was so little variety of things to eat as this town could make a killing on bored tourists looking for someplace to sit and while away time over a meal. Back at the bus stop at noon, right off the market under construction, there were again few shops and nothing of interest to buy in the them. Worse, there was no bus for another hour. We had trouble pinning the drivers down when the actual departure was so in fact we waited at the market for a whole hour until the bus revved up for its scheduled departure at 1:00.
Yaodong had sent Catherine a phone message asking her to arrange my arrival in Liuzhou for our long anticipated meeting at about 3 or 4, but it would be after two before we could return to Nanning and there I would have to return to the hotel for my belongings and then get across town to the inconveniently located northern bus station. Since we stopped for noodles on the way it was 16:00 before we reached the station. Catherine made sure I had a ticket and she not only saw me to my bus but she got its number and then phoned Yaodong in Liuzhou to tell him when I would arrive and on what bus number.
You can see my photos from around Nanning here: http://tinyurl.com/6fr97
Everywhere I went in China, people were meeting me at bus stations. Mary, who met me in Beihai in her father’s car, had arranged for Catherine to come and collect me at the station in Nanning. I called Catherine's number on arrival there, and while I was waiting, two ladies appeared. I thought one must be Catherine but they introduced themselves as Jane and her friend Betty. Jane has been a Webhead for some time, and she is in the network of English teaching professionals that at one time or another has Yaodong as a teacher. She had invited me to Nanning in an earlier email but I didn’t have her phone number. I'd emailed her that I might be there that day, but had received no reply. Apparently, Yaodong, my assiduous agent for all of Guanxi province, had arranged for her to meet my bus, probably through keeping track of my whereabouts via Mary. Mary meanwhile had put me in touch with Catherine, so at the station, once Catherine arrived, my reception committee had swelled to 3.
Later in Nanning, more surprises. Jane takes delight in seeing what she can get me to eat. Bbq'd pig's penises and curdled pig's blood were two delicacies she had placed before me. I think it's great that she made the effort. All of Yaodong's students and their friends have been incredibly kind to me.
After the interesting meal of pig parts and also of course, more palatable foods like bbq beef (at least I think it was beef) Jane conducted Catherine and I to the back rooms of a shopping mall where DVDs are pirated and sold behind a sliding door that can be pulled shut during raids by the authorities, and then took us to drink a coke at a modern, air-conditioned department store with waterfalls dropping through spacious interior. Jane wanted me to see as many unusual aspects of Nanning as possible, and this is why she sent me back to the hotel on the back of a motorcycle that made it to my 4-star hotel in a drizzle that soon turned into a downpour.
I asked at the hotel where I could use the Internet and they referred me to the business center where Internet rates were almost $5 an hour. I asked them if there was a cybercafe nearby and they kindly gave me directions and more importantly wrote them in Chinese on a card for me. It was this card that got me pointed in the right direction when I reached the end of the street without finding it. When I did find it the trail lay through a bowling alley where a man took me to a stairway and pointed down. Downstairs I came to a room full of perhaps a hundred electronic video arcade devices and I thought perhaps I’d been steered to the wrong place, but the kids there showed me to another door at the bottom of the stairs which led outside and up to street level where, at the back of the bowling alley, I found the rooms with computers. Getting in there I had to pass by a kiosk selling soft drinks and when I asked if they had any beer they went to the next shop over for it. So I sat there comfortably drinking beer and using the Internet till midnight or so and the whole bill including the beer came to about a dollar.
Saturday July 10 YANGMEI -
Click here to see photos from Yangmei
Catherine had promised to come by the hotel for me at 8:30 so I made sure I was up and ready to check out by then. She on the other hand had been up since 6:00. She had passed by the Yangmei bus station on her way from the college and backtracked the bus route back to my hotel so she would be able to guide me, and had arrived at 8:00 and had a bowl of noodles somewhere while waiting around to appear on my doorstep as promised at 8:30.
Someone so sweet to do all that made great company for me for the day. We were going to Yangmei, which both Jane and the Lonely Planet had recommended as a day out to an ancient town popular with Chinese tourists. Catherine took me out to the street and got me on the bus crowded with Saturday shoppers to the train station where we got off and walked the few blocks to the tiny station where the local buses left for Yangmei. I think I would have had trouble finding that one on my own as it was an obscure station with only a few buses. Catherine had found out on her way down that our mini-bus left at 9:30, and she made sure we were on it.
The bus took us half an hour to the west of Nanning before turning off some bumpy side roads where truck traffic had spattered the drab neighborhoods mud grey and depressing, but these yielded under where they were building bridges for the new road to green hilly countryside. Eventually we came to a river which we crossed on a ferry barge lashed to an old but serviceable tugboat. Across the river we continued 15 km to the community of Yangmei, arriving shortly after 10:30.
Yangmei was a not-all-that-inpiring collection of 300-year old quaint brick houses by the banks of the river. The people there had a market for a yellow tart fruit, and many seemed involved in the peanut trade, with women outside houses separating them from their stalks and laying them out in shells on mats in the streets for others to reduce to smaller piles of just the nuts.
Catherine didn’t seem interested in hiring a guide to any of the attractions in the area, but eventually she succumbed to the long spiel in Chinese of a lady with a bullock cart which we discovered we could hire for two yuan to take us to a temple. The short trip was of course a hook for an attempt to get us to subscribe to a longer one but the cart went a lot slower than we could walk so neither of us was interested. The temple too had its guards whose task it seemed was to extract a few yuan from compatriot tourists, but it had little inside except a few photos of luminaries from the revolution of 1910.
By then it had started to rain but we proceeded on foot to a Confucian temple Catherine had devined was nearby and then walked down by the river. 'Food Street' had little to attract us at midday. I was in fact surprised that there was so little variety of things to eat as this town could make a killing on bored tourists looking for someplace to sit and while away time over a meal. Back at the bus stop at noon, right off the market under construction, there were again few shops and nothing of interest to buy in the them. Worse, there was no bus for another hour. We had trouble pinning the drivers down when the actual departure was so in fact we waited at the market for a whole hour until the bus revved up for its scheduled departure at 1:00.
Yaodong had sent Catherine a phone message asking her to arrange my arrival in Liuzhou for our long anticipated meeting at about 3 or 4, but it would be after two before we could return to Nanning and there I would have to return to the hotel for my belongings and then get across town to the inconveniently located northern bus station. Since we stopped for noodles on the way it was 16:00 before we reached the station. Catherine made sure I had a ticket and she not only saw me to my bus but she got its number and then phoned Yaodong in Liuzhou to tell him when I would arrive and on what bus number.
Glad you arrived safe and sound in Zhongshan. I guess that the delay caused by the repairs and bad weather has made you tired so that you decided to cut short your travelogue about the day in Liuzhou.I can't image what it is like sitting in a coach for 17 hours....
Have a good trip to HK,then to Abu Dhabi.
Take care.