Day 7: Gardens, Shopping and Dragon's Pearl

We still had more to see around Shanghai! When we walked outside that morning it was sleeting out. Yeah no true story, it was freakin cold and the sky was dropping freezing ice on us, and the poor Australians were so confused, it’s snowing! No, it’s hail! Ask the American she’s from cold climate, Ashley is this hail or sleet? And where did we go site seeing on this lovely day? Another outside garden! It was great though. This was the only private garden in Shanghai and featured this big rock display that was about two stories high. It doesn’t sound so impressive until our guide tells us that Shanghai is such a flat area that 400 years ago when this garden was built this little rock hill was the highest point in the entire region.

Highest point in Shanghai 400 years ago

The garden also featured dragon guardians on the walls and we learned all about the symbolism of the dragon. The dragon guardian on the wall only had three claws because ultimately the dragon is the symbol of the emperor and so only the dragon’s guarding the emperor are allowed to have all five claws. The dragon always has a pearl in its mouth for the pearl is actually the soul of the dragon and if it loses the pearl, it dies. But sometimes there aren’t enough pearls to go around and you’ll see multiple dragons circling a single pearl. They have to share it in order to survive.

Awesome story related to the dragon pearl. When we were in Suzhou I took a picture of two dragons playing with a pepsi pearl. At the time I thought it was just silly because it was a pepsi gimmick. Once I heard the actual story about the pearl and I looked back at that picture it became so much more amusing.

Dragons playing with the Pepsi pearl!

We had some free time to wander around the markets that surrounded the garden, except when it was time to go we were counting heads and someone was missing again. Where’s Dorothy?! We lost Dorothy again! She turned up but we gave her such a hard time she was never late again!

We visited all the high end shopping districts that afternoon. Couple of notes of shopping in China. First of all, the fashions are very plain. Conservative styles and plain colors. Secondly, there aren’t really any big department stores. We did see a WalMart in one or two places but 90% of the stores are small, privately owned and only specialize in a couple of things. We walked down the main shopping street in Shanghai. This place was packed and apparently is the place to be seen if you want to be cool and be seen. Ryan and I called it the Queen’s Street of Shanghai. I found it to be the place where you get harassed by street sellers trying to sell you roller skates. And the older single men found it to be the place to be accosted by young pretty Asian girls. This guy, Dave, in our group is this older British gentleman with a bushy white beard. He told us within the hour we were there he was propositioned no less than twenty two times! And after the fifteenth proposition he was so amazed he went up to another guy in our group and laughed about it, “I’ve been accosted fifteen times!” and this girl pops out of nowhere and goes, “Fifteen dollar? I show you good time for fifteen dollar!”

For all you young men thinking this is the place to be, a word of warning. Our Dave didn’t go along with any of it, but towards the end of our trip we met another Wendy Wu tour group who was doing a shorter 10 day tour. They said one of the men in their group went to the same place and was dumb enough to take one of those girls up on their offer. She led him into a back ally anndd instead of getting sexy times the dude got mugged and robbed. Yeah. Stay away from those girls.

After dinner we went on a river cruise on the river between the CBD and the Bund. It was gorgeous! The city lights up like Vegas. Buildings have entire walls displaying lights and pictures. Both sides of the river were lit up and stunning. Though Ryan seemed more amused by the Star Wars concept art painted on the inside of the boat. But that’s okay. It was still a good way to end our stay in Shanghai

Shanghai at night

Day 8: Welcome to Guilin!

We slept in until noon then took a two hour flight to Guilin. Guilin is surrounded by mountains and the surrounding area is home to just 5 million people.  About a third of the population in this area are part of a minority group called the Zhung people. The main population of China are the Han people. There are over 55 minority groups in the country and they get minority perks like extra points on exams and if two minorities marry they are allowed to have two children instead of the one.

Our local guide, Jesse told us a little about his life growing up. He came from a small village of only 500 people and had to walk to a neighboring village for school every day. Every village in the area spoke a different dialect so most people there can speak several dialects along with the standard mandarin.

Also, our bus had heat which was a godsend after the frozen seats in Shanghai! There was a sign in the front of the hotel saying "Welcome Wendy Wu!" We felt all special. It was the off season, we thought we might be the only big group visiting at the time so they put it up to make us feel welcome. Later we found out they leave that sign up all year around. Still nice, but not quite as special anymore. 

We ate dinner and then went to the river to watch an old tradition of cormorant fishing. Cormorants are these big black birds that dive into the water to catch fish. The fishermen train them to come back to the boat after every time they catch a fish. They tie loose strings around the bird’s neck so they can’t swallow the fish so when the bird comes back the fisherman gets the fish. It looked very uncomfortable for the poor birds, but sometimes they get smart. The fishermen have to give them a treat once in a while or else the bird will stop fishing. It’s a dying profession. It’s a slow process and it doesn’t yield much result so it’s mostly just a tourist attraction now.

Cormorant Fishing, Guilin

Our hotel room had two notable things. The first was the shower door with a hole in it. It was a corner shower and when you opened the door it came right up to the corner of the sink. Someone had mismeasured either the shower or the sink but instead of getting a new shower or sink they simply carved out a little hole in the door so you could open it without it hitting. It was sort of the poster for Chinese development. They tend to cut corners sometimes instead of taking the time to re-measure. Let’s just say their standards would never pass inspection in a western country. The other interesting thing was the extra little room attached to ours which contained a poker table! It was a tiny little room and all it had was that table and chairs, the table was clearly designed for a specific type of game but I have no idea what game it was supposed to be. 

Day 9: The Li River

We got to take a cruise along the Li River! The Li River is famous for the stunning views and canal. We didn’t pass the canal but it was built back in 200 BC by the same Emperor who commissioned the Great Wall and the Terra Cotta Warriors. He did a lot of big projects. The canal connects the Li River to the Yellow River and still stands and works after two thousand years.

This river was absolutely stunning. The mountains that line the river are these chunks of Earth that just pop out of the ground. There are so many of them and they’re so oddly shaped that every two minutes the boat moved you would have a whole new view! And the front view would be different than the back view and it was amazing. I took a bajillion pictures and if the weather had been nicer I probably would have taken more. It was another blistering cold day so I could only spend about ten minutes on the top of the boat before my fingers started to go numb. Then I would run back inside for fifteen minutes, warm up, then run back out to take more pictures! A view from the Li river is actually pictured on the back of the 20yuan note.

Li River, Guilin China

It was really foggy out and rained towards the end of the tour. Our tour guide tried to make us feel better by calling it "romantic mist" and telling us this is how the artists all like the mountains. I still would have preferred sun shining off the bushes and water but nature happens. They told us those odd shaped mountains are actually the remains of ancient coral reefs. Several thousand years ago China was all under water and those mountains were carved by the ocean and fish and afterwards by rain and natural erosion. It makes for the most unbelievably beautiful views now.

It started raining as soon as we got off the boat and walked to our hotel. The cruise had taken most of the afternoon and had brought us to a small town called Yangshou. It was beautiful little town with the mountains randomly sticking up around. Our hotel was right next to one. Our room window was literally only about ten feet away from the side of the mountain. There were shops along the street on perfectly flat ground and rising up instantly behind the building would be these towering cliffs. It was unlike anything I had ever seen before. 

Day 10: Reed Flute Cave, Haggling and Western Dinner

It was a two hour drive from Yangshou back to Guilin. We stopped twice on the way. The first to see the rice fields, but it was too early in the season so it was basically just a bunch of green rectangles. Farms are different over there. Instead of one family having a house and their big farmland surrounding the house, all the farmers in China live in villages grouped together then they go out to the fields where each family has their own plot of land they farm.  A lady came by with a water buffalo. It’s a standard tourist thing, she charges 10yuan for a photo with the buffalo.

The second stop was at another tiny town along the river. They were giving boat rides to tourists. We walked over the bridge on the river and watched as the little two person boats went under the bridge, over the little dyke under the bridge and then down the little fall into the water! It looked like tons of fun, I wished we had had enough time to try it but it was crowded and we had other things to do.

After lunch we made a brief visit to the pearl museum. They told us all about pearls, how long it takes them to grow, how to tell real from fake. I enjoyed the little fashion show they put on but I didn’t like feeling like an exploited tourist. That was okay though because the place we went to after the museum was one of the biggest highlights of the entire trip for me.

We visited the Reed Flute Cave! You need to go to google right now and look up pictures of this cave because it is the most spectacular display of lights you will ever see. This cave was massive and they used colored lights all around to accentuate the rock formations. They even put on a light show in the big cavern in the middle. It’s unbelievable how something as simple as a blue light can make a simple rock wall turn into something gorgeous.

Reed Flute Cave, Guilin

If you want a story about haggling in China you can’t beat this one. Of course before you entered the cave you had to walk through a gift shop. One of the guys in our group stopped and looked at some very nice scrolls hanging on the wall. A sales girl noticed him and casually mentioned the price of a scroll was $880yuan. He wasn’t actually interested in buying one, he was just admiring them, so he ignored her and walked away. As he turned she instantly started lowering the price. 600! 550! 300! By now our group was making our way to the entrance of the cave, she actually followed us out the store and down the stairs 200! 150! He was laughing quite hard at that point and explained what she was talking about to those of us around him. 100! She yelled out her last price. No joke, this lady came down from 880 to 100 and Dave never said one word to her. He didn’t take it, he didn’t want one to begin with, but it was amazing. We saw similar things happen several more times throughout the trip. It’s amazing how much they mark up their items for tourists.

Dinner that night was special. We had a Chinese “Western” style dinner. We sat at rectangle 4 person tables instead of the big round ones. There were no chop sticks, we had forks and knives (side note, we usually were provided with forks at our meals but hardly anyone used them and most of the time the forks were actually intended for serving the food, not for eating). Our appetizer was a spring roll which made me giggle because our western dinner was not starting out very western. But then they brought out minestrone soup and bread rolls, and for the main course we had a choice of chicken, beef and pork. I had the beef and Ryan tried the pork. Both were wonderfully done, absolutely delicious.

After dinner we wandered around the shops. Ryan bought some new jeans. I saw a terra cotta replica at one of the kiosks. I mentioned how I was planning to get one when we went and saw the real things in Xian. Ryan then prompted me to buy it now because it was likely to be more expensive at the actual attraction. It was a nice sized maybe 10 inch statue of a sitting archer. Just so I could get a price comparison I asked the lady how much for it. She said 120yuan. That was a bit more than I had anticipated so I shook my head and made to move on. She grabbed me (not literally but some people there will, you need to watch out for that) and we moved back and forth on the price. Finally after much uncomfortable debate (you all know how good I am with situations like that) I walked away with a terra cotta statue for 40 yuan. Roughly $6.5. Yes, that lady came down from 120 to 40 for that little statue. And I’m sure I’ll mention this again when I get to the part with the real things, but later at the official factory the exact same statue was selling for 400yuan. Yeah.

On the way back to the hotel we stopped to admire the Sun and Moo pagodas in the lake. One was lit up in all silver and the other in gold and they reflected on the lake. It was a gorgeous sight. 

Day 11: Elephant Trunk Hill

We weren’t meeting the group until 11am. Ryan and I actually managed to get our butts out of bed before 9 because we wanted to go see the Elephant Trunk Hill. It’s one of the more famous landmarks in Guilin and because of that I was really surprised it wasn’t on the official itinerary. It was only a few blocks from our hotel and it was about 60yuan ($10) to get into the park. There were hills to climb and caves to explore and an old pagoda that had been shut down. The hills we climbed were steep and the steps slippery from the rain and I decided the reason it wasn’t on the official list was because many of the people travelling were retired older people who could fall and break a hip on the slippery rocks. It sounded like a valid theory until we climbed several other hills later in the tour that were just as steep and slippery, if not more so, so I don’t know what their excuse was. It was a lot of fun though, to explore around with just the two of us without having to wait for a guide or stay with other group members.

Elephant Trunk Hill in Guilin

We rejoined the group at 11am for our official tour, which just happened to be at another park with hills to climb! This park was admittedly bigger than the Elephant Trunk hill and had lots of different routes you could climb. The hills ranged from mild with only about 100 steps to painful with over 500 very steep steps. Ryan was enthusiastic to see everything he could. We climbed the smaller hill then raced back down to try and find a cave on the map. It was up another steep hill and the cave was only half way up.

 I needed time to rest but gave the camera to Ryan and let him trot off. I managed to get up there eventually just not as quickly or gracefully as he could. From the top of the mountain we could see the bulk of the rest of the group on top of another slightly lower peak a couple hundred meters away. We made our way back down to the starting point. With only about 15 minutes until the designated departure time Ryan decides he just has to climb that last hill. After the first hill in the morning and the last killer I was done. I told him not to kill himself and I wouldn’t let them leave without him. He managed to make it all the way up and back down with a few minutes to spare.

After lunch we headed to airport to fly the Kunming. We had been checked in beforehand so our seats weren’t together. As I got on the plane I looked back and noticed there was someone in my seat! The row was filled with three big old Chinese guys. If anyone had spoken English I could have just switched with whatever seat they were supposed to have, but being the mute tourist all I could do was show my ticket to the stewardess. She looked at the seat number and the guy sitting in my seat and some very harsh words were exchanged back and forth (but all Chinese words sound harsh) Eventually she got him to move and let me sit down even though by that time I really didn’t want to. Most uncomfortable flight ever. 

Day 12: Welcome to Kunming and Stone Forest

Kunming is a nice tropical area so for the first day in two weeks we had beautiful sun and warm weather. The only activity for the day was going to the Stone Forest. On the way our guide gave us the introduction of Kunming and the area. It’s about 7 million people and is home to a ton of minority groups. He said of the 55 minority groups in China 22 of them live in the Kunming area. It’s also one of the worst cities for traffic but all cities in china are bad for traffic. They’re a well off area though, about half the families own a car, whereas most other cities the ratio is closer to 1 in 10. Still a couple million cars in one city will lead to some horrific rush hours. He said he was stuck in traffic with a friend one time. They watched as the lady got out of the car in front of them, walked over to the noddle shop, ate some noodles and came back 20 minutes later where no one had moved at all.

Stone Forest in Kunming

The Stone Forest was beautiful and very appropriately named. It’s this collection of giant stones that literally just pop out of the ground like trees. It’s very very cool. I wish we had had more time to explore there. It was very cool though, one of the local minority groups was in the middle of its spring festival so there were people everywhere dressed in traditional costumes and children in colorful hats and it was super cute.

That night there was an optional performance on at the theater. We had the option to see several shows throughout the trip but they all cost like 200yuan and I hadn’t budgeted for that sort of expense in every city (and of course they claim that every single show is the best show in China!) This one caught my attention though because it was longer than the rest of them (two hours long instead of just one), it had won actual awards and had toured internationally so I figured this might be the one actually worth seeing. (I heard the show we missed in Guilin with the lights was also spectacular for future reference) The show was called “Shangrila Dynamic Yunnan” it was a show that featured different songs and dances from the various minority groups in the area.

The star of the show was this lady, when I saw her picture on the brochure she was so skinny I thought it was photo shopped. But no, after the show we found out she had actually had surgery to remove two of her ribs to attain that skinny super curvy look. She was pretty spectacular though, she could twist and dance like no one I’ve ever seen. The other sort of star was this little girl they used in several of the acts, she was the cutest darn thing that ever happened. The last act of the show was this peacock dance which was one of the most elegant things I’ve ever seen. It was a fantastic show. 

Day 13: More Mountain Climbing and Welcome to Chongqing!

We visited another mountain this morning. Now, we all knew we had a flight to catch later that afternoon and lunch beforehand. Several times the question was asked, “what time do we need to be back to the bus?” but a specific answer was never given, which was unusual and kind of annoying.

 I wasn’t feeling too fantastic that day. Colds and bugs were starting to work their way around the bus. I only went about half way up the mountain before I decided I was done. Ryan still had energy so I gave him the camera and told him to stay with the guys, there were five of them all determined to get to the top. I slowly made my way back down and sat and chatted with some of the ladies at the coffee shop at the bottom of the mountain.

We watched as the group slowly made its way back down to the starting point. Again, we hadn’t been given a specific departure time so everyone just sort of came back when they felt like it. Half an hour passed, about half the group was back. An hour passed, about 75% of the group was there. An hour and a half…we were still missing some of the guys. Including Ryan. We talked to other guys who claimed they had made it all the way to the top and back down and had not seen our little group. We started getting a little worried. I was worried because the mountain was slippery and Ryan had a new hip that could have popped out if hit in the wrong place. One of the British wives was also about to call the cavalry, her husband was also having joint problems and she had specifically told him not to wander off. Gump even talked to the park workers to check if anyone had seen them.

It was probably two hours before we finally saw them strolling around the corner. They all had huge smiles on their faces because they knew they were in trouble. They had actually gone past the “top” part of the mountain to find a temple off the main trail. They made up stories about having to save the orphans on the mountain. Uhhuh. It was a stupid move but they were all okay and they still made it back in time for us to catch lunch. For the rest of the trip they were referred to as the famous five. 

After lunch we took our last flight to Chongqing and thankfully I didn’t get stuck next to any Chinese guys this time. The Chongqing province contains over 32 million people, making it the largest province in the entire world. We went to dinner at an art museum which sounded a lot more fancy than it looked. When we walked in it looked like we were walking into a back alley warehouse. But the basement of the art museum was cool, it looked like a European wine cellar type place and the food was fantastic.