China - 3 - The Year of the Monkey

I am a tiger*.....

The streets are filled with scraps of red paper, the remains of thousands of firecrackers. The Year of the Monkey - the Fire Monkey indeed, ambitious, adventurous, but irritable - has begun.....  I check with my astrologer:  I am a Tiger, something that later in the day I may come to regret.....

As we leave Ping'an, I notice that the hillsides are splashed with pink, as well, as suddenly random trees have started to blossom.  Also, as it is now the Spring Festival proper, and the family duties of the Lunar New Year have been carried out, tourists, both Chinese and foreign, are beginning to pour into the village, and we see diminutive women carrying huge suitcases up the steep paths, and a palanquin, slung between two sinewy men, bears a mother and her child up the steps past us.

We leave the mountains.  On the way we pay our respects to the Red Yao women again, 

And admire what hangs on their washing line.....

Before plunging down towards Guilin again.  On the way, we were supposed to be visiting a tea estate, but, sadly, this was closed.  Because of the Spring Festival.

Instead, to while away a little time before our flight, we are taken to the Xiongsen Bear and Tiger Mountain Village, which, despite its alluring name, is quite the saddest, most dilapidated zoo I have ever seen.

We were not allowed to take photographs (though Chinese visitors were) under the pretext that research was going on here.  But I think the real reason is that Richard Jones visited in 2010 and wrote about this horror story in the Mail Online:(http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1252500/Exposed-Dark-secret-farm-tigers-bodies-plundered-make-185-wine.html);  I don't recommend you read it, as it will spoil your appreciation of China, and I will probably get into trouble for stirring up unrest. Suffice it to say that there are three kinds of animals in this zoo.  Some thousand or more tigers, who lie limply around in foul conditions until they die and are made into wine (yes, wine: apparently 55lbs of tiger bone (ie one tiger skeleton) is worth £225,000 when crushed up and steeped in fermented rice juice which is sold for up to £185 a bottle).

Chinese medicine.....  

Then there are sun bears, who lie listlessly around in foul conditions or wade in water the colour you get when you mix all the colours in your paint palette, waiting for a visitor to tease them with an apple on a fishing line (lines kindly provided by the zoo-keepers). I say tease, though perhaps it's fun for the bears? There's nothing else for them to do, as the trees are all encased in concrete corsets...  I don't know why these animals are here, though it may have something to do with the fact that sun bear bile and gall bladders are highly sought after in Chinese medicine.....

Oh, and the third animal here is a type of deer, which lie around sadly in foul conditions, their doe eyes betraying the fact that they have read what's on the menu for the tigers....

Anyway, that diversion aside, we are soon on our way back to Haikou, where, believe it or not, the sun is shining.....

And, after three days of washing walls, ceilings, floors and windows (following the ghastly humidity the preceding week), the view  (of the building next door) from the seventeenth floor isn't too bad..... So, to celebrate, we head down town to the old heart of Haikou, which is perhaps the kind of China I was expecting.....

With its temples, complete with incense and offerings:

Their dragons:

Their role as places of learning:

And their shady role as social centres:

Outside, on Zhongshan Road, under European style colonial facades, European style colonial types are remembered in bronze, under the watchful eye of the youth of today.....

And age shades itself under a Ronaldinho hat while selling the ancient art of calligraphy....

Courtyard houses here open off the street, the portico offering shade and the shutters keeping the cool air inside,

While a bicycle rests by heavy armchairs in the open lounge,

And chickens enjoy the security of their roost in the yard.

The streets are busy with the transports of merchandise,

The business of card schools,

The amusement of generations:

And the administrations of public employees, who seem invariably to be female (I guess the men are busy playing cards?)

It is Spring Festival time, and, with the sunshine, there is a holiday atmosphere, so much more relaxed than our first week here in the dreary clouds of the Year of the Ram. 

Our trip is nearly at an end, but first we must travel back to Sanya. So, along with 10.5 million other people in China on our penultimate day, we queue and board, and take the bullet train.  

At the same time, on the same day, five hundred thousand people pass through Beijing's railway stations - the Spring Festival accounts for the largest mass migration of people on the planet, and you can almost feel the island of Hainan tipping south as holidaymakers head for the beaches of the South China Sea.....

Incidentally, our journey south was enlivened by a very useful public service video, which showed in great detail how the toilets on our train are maintained in case of malfunction.....  It quite took my mind off the passing scenery.

It is warm in Tianya, when we return to the Menthe Garden Hostel. We don't need the extra blankets.  It is very pleasant to stroll along the sands at sunset,

Admiring the happy families at play,

And settling for our final meal, crabs, and prawns, skewers of barbecued lamb, grilled vegetables, oysters.....

It's busy now, the whole world is relaxing, 

and night falls comfortably on the feasting crowds.....

We have a last wander, pacing the streets like caged tigers.  And then a last glass, or two:

And then say goodnight to China, the lights and the signs, the tiger purring in my tank.....  

It may be the Year of the Monkey, but I am a Tiger*, so my astrologer tells me, and I'm proud of it, and I feel so sorry for those magnificent creatures in the squalid conditions of  Xiongsen Bear and Tiger Mountain Village in Guilin. 

I don't really know if I will ever understand this country.....

Zài jiàn - 再見/再见 - Goodbye

*Tigers are unpredictable, always tense. and like to be in a hurry. Tiger people are difficult to resist, for they are magnetic characters and their natural air of authority confers a certain prestige on them.

They are tempestuous yet calm, warm-hearted yet fearsome, courageous in the face of danger yet yielding and soft in mysterious, unexpected places. 

Although they love adventures, and are addicted to excitement it is better not to challenge a Tiger's confidence. They likes being obeyed and not the other way around. Because Tigers are urgent people and always in a hurry to get things done right, they usually choose to operate alone. Tigers like to work, they are hard-working and dynamic. If you assign a task to a Tiger, the job will be undertaken and accomplished with enthusiasm and efficiency.....

China - 2 - Enter the Dragon

Guangxi Province

We took off from Haikou in thick cloud.  Minutes later, the sun was shining.  The first sunshine in a week.  Clear and bright, and reflecting up from the grey blankets below.

Then, little more than an hour later, we dived back into the clouds, and landed at Guilin, and found ourselves shivering in winter weather again, though we were fortunate:  Hong Kong had had a sprinkling of snow, and the north of China had suffered heavy blizzards and freezing temperatures.

Guilin isn’t what I expected – somehow, disregarding the fact that it has an airport, I had expected something old, something characteristic of another world.  I thought the town would be a bit like Bristol, perhaps, but without the bomb damage…..  No. Guilin’s population is around three times the 442,000 that live in Bristol, and there the similarity ends….

But Guilin is the hub of Guangxi Province, and this was the China we had come to see.  

So.  Where was it?

Part of the answer is that cities like this seem to be at their best at night, when the coloured lighting and glowing characters appear magically to rise where in daylight there is grey concrete and urban squalor.  The centre of town has two lakes, decorated by a fantasia of an unreal China – a glass bridge, twin pagodas, tiled tea rooms reached by sculpted pathways and surrounded by giant bamboo. It’s a dragon’s playground, and it comes alive with groups of women practising their coordinated dance routines, some to beautiful Chinese music, some to western pop.

The name Guilin means forest of Osmanthus trees, and in spring the air will be full of sweet scent.  But not now.  Guilin’s official travel website quotes high praise from the National Geographic (I was prepared for so many of the things we saw in other cities: the Great Wall, the Terracotta Army, etc.  But travelling down the Li River, I genuinely felt like I was in a completely different and unique part of the world….) And, apparently, former US president Bill Clinton was so moved by what he saw here in 1998 that it made him think of traditional Chinese paintings…..

So it was that next morning a bus picked us up and we chugged down through the industrial outskirts of the city to Zhujiang Pier to join our river cruiser.  It was a misty morning, and the visibility wasn’t great, but then perhaps this lent the scenery some of the mystery that Bill associated with the pen and ink washes of the old masters.

It’s 83 kilometres from Guilin to Yangshuo (out of the 437 from source to the West River), which gives us a leisurely four hours amongst extraordinary limestone karst mountains, some of which appear on the current 20 Yuan note, which gives cause for a great deal of excitement amongst our co-travellers, most of whom want selfies at this point….

Yangshuo has long been on the map for climbers, and it is inundated daily by the floods of trippers who disembark here before taking buses back up to Guilin.  The centre has an old, stone, feel to it, but the writing is on the wall, as an enormous mall is being constructed.

We are staying in the tiny village of Jiuxian, some way out of town, in a reconstruction of village houses that has been patiently carried out by a South African, Ian Hamlinton, who has been here for six years. 

Next point of call is the village of Xingping, which is back up the river at the point where the 20 Yuan note was drawn.  We have a memorable lunch here - memorable for the webbed foot that surfaces in our duck dish….

Then it is a long ride across country, held up here and there by holiday traffic – whole families in trucks and three wheelers, many with live chickens - and colourful markets spreading through the streets.  Then we speed along stretches of almost deserted highway through unspoiled countryside, before hitting a bit that has either been washed away by rains, or which has never been made…. 

We have to negotiate Guilin again, before heading up country, past pomelo orchards, and then tea plantations, until we reach the entrance to the Longji Terraced Rice Fields, where we stop for lunch in a riverside village.  Here we taste delicious salt pork with bamboo, served by women of the Red Yao minority, who never cut their hair, but wind it up on their heads like turbans.

Our destination is the village of Ping’an, and we are staying at 800 metres above sea level.  It is really cold here, but the Year of the Ram ends with good weather and in the morning we start out from Ping’an Zhuang Village to trek to Dazhai Village after a late breakfast.  Our host, Lynn, from Guilin, had said that she had made the trek in two and a half hours, though she thought we would need perhaps four….

So, optimistically, we set off, along the path to the Moon surrounded by Seven Stars, from where the extent of the Longji (Dragon’s Backbone) rice terraces unfolds.  

These terraces, covering sixty-six square kilometres (16,308 acres) were begun in the Yuan Dynasty (1271 – 1368).  

They range from 300 metres to over 1,100 and their construction continued until the Qing Dynasty (1644 – 1911).  This is one of the wonders of China, having survived the rigours of history, including the cultural revolution….

It is hard to tell when might be the best time to visit, but we are exceptionally lucky, as the day is clear, the temperature pleasant, and we encounter few people on the path, most of whom are carrying chickens and fireworks to pay respects at their ancestors’ graves.  In summer all would be green, and shimmering with mosquitoes.  In silver spring or golden autumn the paths would be filled with tourists.  As it is, we have the bamboo forests, the shiny waters and bare slopes at our disposal.

It is lunchtime when we reach the village of Zhongliu, which is about as unspoiled as you will get, with no hotels or restaurants, just a couple of shops.  

The people here are Yao, and the women bind their uncut hair in black headscarves.  A commotion erupts as a chicken makes a break for freedom, and everyone joins in a sudden burst of activity.  Then the rooster is in the pot, and we are on our way, toiling up towards 1,200 metres, before dropping back down into Zhuang territory.

It’s late when we pass Tiantou, and getting dark when we arrive in Dazhai.  Our progress has been slow and we are tired and hungry.  Our host, Qin, transports us back to Ping’an, where he and his wife have prepared a New Year’s meal.

After the scenery of the day, the chicken hotpot dinner, with purple sweet potato noodles, is very welcome, and the conversation dances around Chinese dynasties, and personal histories (Qin’s father was a friend of Lin Biao, Mao Zedong’s right-hand man - who died mysteriously in 1971 –  and he was executed by the regime) while raising our glasses of excellent Changyu red from Shandong, and sorghum-based Baijiu to the New Year. 

Then as we fall towards sleep the rooftops are flashing and the crackling of firecrackers inform my dreams.   

We are woken by gunfire.  Automatic weapons rattling in the streets below at dawn.  Where?  What?  Why?  Surely at 800 metres in remote China it cannot be terrorism? 

I look out from our verandah.  Blue smoke rises beyond the grey tiles.  Cockerels complain to the rising sun.  Another shattering explosion of gunpowder, and then I remember.

Not gunfire.  Not terrorism.  The Year of the Monkey has begun.

Another world.....