For Saturday morning Lilian instructed us to pack a small daypack with a couple of days clothes as we would be carrying our bags everywhere through the rice terraces.
And there would be hills.
And lots of walking. And it would be colder than Yangshuo.
Knowing all of these things we picked and chose and then had breakfast, chucked ourselves and our bags in the van (anyone heard that phrase before?) and got ourselves driven back to the railway station in Guilin. Here we deposited the large bags (which Intrepid paid for) and got back in the bus to drive into the hills. By 1pm we arrived at the entrance to the Longji Rice Terrace Scenic Area. There were some minor difficulties along the way involving the size of our minibus, the width of the road, and the height of the drop over the edge as drove up and up, but they were nothing compared to the road workers we found blocking our way around one corner.
For about 10 minutes it looked like they really weren’t going to consider moving. They had a big truck set up to pour gravel out of and were making (necessary) repairs to the road. Three things needed to be moved before us and the several buses behind us could get past. One, the truck, but not very far; two; the piles of gravel, and they were going in holes in the road anyway; three, the road workers and their wheelbarrow full of gravel. After about 15 minutes, and after the steamroller they needed to finish the job squeezed past our bus on the outside, next to the ravine, and the workers, the majority of whom were women, got everything how they wanted it.
We had only to walk for around half an hour to get to our accomodation in the village of Dazai, up steep hills, along paths that were just as often cut-steps or rocks all jammed in together. And that was when it really started to feel like remote countryside. The local people are very short, wear lots of blue and purple, and the women seem to have those stretched ears with the huge earrings and whatnot. At the top of a very windy path we came eventually to our hotel; I might have said it was a short walk but I believe I did also mention the steepness, and not having had lunch yet everyone was quite glad to arrive. Almost the entire building was made of panelled wood. You can see that in the picture of the room, but also the floorboards and the ceiling were wood. Our twin room smelled like pine and like Olkhon Island, and the view out our window was sublime. First order of business was to open all the windows and look out at the rice terraces, which started 10 metres away under the window and finished somewhere along way away in the distance.
A horse was tethered to a tree down below the window eating rice out of a bag, next to the vegetable garden with eggplant and tiny tomatoes growing, and on the concrete patio out the front of the hotel they had spread rice to dry. Rumours of people growing their own tobacco in the garden there proved difficult to substantiate.
All around was clouds and haze, like it was already raining. A lady swept up and took inside the rice, after Alice cracked three of her very own grains open. I fetched the hackeysack from my bag and we started up a game somewhat like cricket involving stacked-up plastic stools for stumps and somebody’s sandal for the bat. If the ball were to roll off the edge of the concrete patio, into the thin channel of mud (and worse) running near the edge of the terrace, the batsman was declared to be out.
At our peak we were great, and drew a crowd of nearly ten people. The Chinese people walking past were faintly amused, while the ladies in the group sat on the front steps of the hostel drinking tea and bargaining with the locals. Alice tried to get James to explain to her how to play peek-a-boo with the average Chinese child, but he didn’t understand what she meant. But you can still play the game without knowing the words, and later on Lilian confirmed that of course they have that same game, but the words mean something more like ‘Where did I go? Here I am!’ Then we got tired, and somebody found a wooden paddle round the corner that was suspiciously perfect for use as a bat, but which made it almost impossible to get out.
Game over.
That began the trend of accomdation with a combined shower and bathroom. Either they were saving space to begin with or had added the shower after; either way they decided to put the shower in between the toilet bowl and the hand sink. So you couldn’t shower without getting everything in the bathroom wet. It was a really good shower, so we didn’t care.
Downstairs we all sat around two tables and ordered dinner, which for some reason took ages upon ages arriving, although it was very tasty when it did. Almost everywhere we have gone in China the food has been very tasty, plentiful, and cheap. And we were more than ready for bed that evening, knowing that we had a far more lengthy walk ahead the next day.
Greg
