Di san tian / Third day

Yangshuo itself it no big surprise: The favorite place of western tourists to stay overnight in the Guilin region, it's quite touristy, but nevertheless okay. They say it's famous for pickpockets, but luckily I didn't get in personal contact with them.

Fuli Old Town is half an hours drive out of town, an old farming town with old to 'near-to-destruction' houses with red lucky new years posters and Mao photos on the walls. We also passed the hairdresser's. An old rusty seat with a broken mirror in front, but seems to fit the purpose. Right now those small agricultural village have one challenge: all the young people who can are leaving for the big towns. Mainly old people live there.

The highlight of the day was Moon Mountain. That's the formation you can see in the first photo! with me in front. The view down the mountain was also amazing and was worth the exhausing thirty minutes hike up the hill in 30 degree, sunshine and extremely humid air (the last one being the factor which makes it hard for me).

Last but not least 'Shangrila'. Well, who knows where the real Shangrila is? China has at least two, one near Yangshuo, one in Yunnan. Shangri-La is a fictional place described by British author James Hilton . In his book, "Shangri-La" is a mystical, harmonious valley, the people who live there are almost immortal, living years beyond the normal lifespan. The Shangri-La near Yangshou is a park of minorities where you drive around with a boat through the karst landscape and see minorities dancing and / or singing. Not quite what the book describes Shangrila to be, but nevertheless not bad. So I still have to continue looking for my personal fairyland of Shangrila. But often things you are searching hard are just in front of you...

Cruising on Li River

Every tourist to Guilin does a river cruise on the Li river (shui / water) passing the karst mountains (shan / mountain). In winter the river is totally dry and no boat can go on the river, however, now being rain season, there was sufficient water.

The boats started at 9:30 am. The boats meaning: around one hundred boats at the same time, one driving after the other. That's Chinese mass tourism at its best! And one hundred boats is low season, as I was told they have up to 300 boats. Most of the people on the boats were Chinese and Chinese love taking photos of themselves in front of famous rock formations. Famous rock formations were the rock ressembling 'Guanyin buddha', an apple shaped karst rock, a rock where you had to search twelve horses and last, but not least, the '20 kuai landscape'. So what's that? On the 20 kuai banknote there's a landscape painting of one special spot on Li river which every Chinese tourist wants to have a photo of. So imagine dozens of Chinese standing on board, guessing: 'Is this the 20 kuai?" or shouting out "Now this really is the 20 kuai!". They started shouting 20 minutes before we actually reached the '20 kuai landscape' which of course was officially announced and nobody could have possibly missed it. But what a fun!

When I reached Yangshuo, the destination of the boat trip, I got myself a bike and drove out into the countryside until where the streets end and the water buffalos work together with farmers on the fields and rice paddies... Very nice views again.

At night I visited the famous show 'Impression' , directed by the Chinese director Zhang Yimou. Just imagine a stage on the water between five karst mountains and impressive light effects using mountain and water as part of the stage. Definitely not inexpensive (around 300 kuai if you really want to see something), but this show owns a "wow!", not for the minority girls singing, but for the great fishermen scenes and light effects.

Gulilin ba! 桂林吧!

Right now it's low season for tourism in Guilin because it's raining nearly every day there. My colleagues had warned me to go there and when I checked the weather forecast it didn't sound promising: for the next ten days it forecasted between medium and heavy rain. So the good news first: The first and third day in and around Guilin there was fantastic sunshine, the second day was a little bit cloudy, but brought only an astounding ten minutes rain. When I got back today to Beijing, this was the first real rain I saw the whole weekend!

So where is Guilin? In the South of China - it's part of the autonomous Chinese region of Guizhou where many minorities live.

The first day I visited Reed Flute Cave (Ludi Yan) , a stalactite and stalagmite cave. Very interesting especially the colourful lightning system used and the creative interpretations of stones. I could see bears, a snowman and a christmas tree as well as a lion saying good bye to visitors. Definitely worth a visit because it's fun. The photo I attach shows a stalactite and stalagmite scene called "Shanghai" or "Beijing" or "New York" - whatever version the visitor prefers.

After that the famous Elephant Trunk Hill: a rock formation next to the river resembling an elephant drinking water. I always liked elephants because they are so peaceful animals.

Climbing Fubo Hill, another famous sight of Guilin town, I could enjoy a nice sunset over the town and the surrounding mountains which are karst mountains because of their particular form before I went on a night boat trip on the Guilin lakes. On this boat trip we also passed cormorant fishers (Kormoranfischer). The fishers there seem to be too lazy to fish themselves, but they use the birds for that task. They put a string around the cormorants' throats so that they cannot swallow the fish and then take the fish which the cormorant wanted to eat out of their mouthes again. However, it seems that there are not many real cormorant fishers anymore. When I asked, I was explained: "fishing is not allowed on the lakes here, they just are allowed to show it for tourists". Well...

First day's conclusion: "Guilin shan shui jia tian xia" / "Guilin's scenery beats that of anywhere in the world" as a Chinese saying goes, seems to be true.

Travel guides - truth or fiction?

Travel guides show to be useful many times. After I heard in the news that a LP travel author had admitted he had never ever travelled to the places he wrote about, but just copied from other books and the internet, here you can find now the ultimate test: Are travel guides telling the truth? The travel guides I used where the Lonely Planet China (Vietnam edition) and Beijing Excursion Guide (Immersion Guides, a loan on the scientific behalf from Agnes :-), thanks).

Immersion Guide titles: "Daytrip"

My opinion: Already the page starts with a lie. Marco Polo Bridge (Lugou Qiao, 卢沟桥, MP Bridge) and the adjacent chinese-japanese war memorial plus town of Wanping take you two to three hours to visit. The travel time even from Northern Beijing is only one hour. Conclusion: "Time is relative" as Einstein, the famous Chinese philosopher :-), said.

Immersion Guide says: "The bridge left a big impression on Marco Polo 700 years ago. He praised it in the story of his travels as 'a very fine stone bridge, so fine indeed, that it has very few equals in the world.' " I personally like to the idea of adventurous travellers travelling around the world already back then (so to say or grandgrandgrand... fathers). Nevertheless some scientists question whether or not Marco Polo was in China, and point out several things that a European traveler probably would have mentioned, but that MP did not mention and that there is no mention of Marco Polo in Chinese accounts of the period. They say he just heard stories from other travellers and invented the whole thing about his trips.

Immersion Guide: " The MP bridge, lined with 501 distinctive stone lions offers an orgasmically precious experience for stone lion aficionados." LP Guide: "The bridge is host to 485 carved stone lions - each animal is different." I have to disappiont you because I didn't count them so I do not know how many they are. I would go for a compromise similar to Chinese bargaining: 493 lions, OK with all of you? The more interesting thing about the lions is that they are all different from each others: some lions have babies sitting on the head of the mum lion etc. And, well, aficionados - por supuesto eso lo somos, pero k kiere decir la cosa esa del orgazmo???

LP guide: "Legend has it that the lions move around during the night". Not only at nite, I can assure you, but if you want to see lions moving around you'd maybe better visit South Africa's National Parks or the zoo. Chances are higher...

Immersion Guide: "Of course, if all the stone lion excitement just warms you up for more, there are plenty of vendors to the west of the bridge ready to sell you enough stone lions to sink a suitcase." I quite like the cheeky language of the guide, but I only saw two sellers and the frogs in the swamp below the bridge were croaking (German: quacken) and singing so loud I didn't even notice somebody was trying to sell something to me.

After the Marco Polo bridge which in fact was quite interesting, I also visited the "Anti-Japanese war memorial hall" (Immersion Guide) or the "Memorial Hall of War of Resistance against Japan" (LP) where they had English language audio guides and where I learned something about the war between China and Japan (1931 until 194x). Why did they build this museum in Wanping? Because Marco Polo bridge played an important role in this war. You can look up more facts on the war with the help of search machines if you want. Maybe the information you'll find is true, maybe not. Just as with travel guides...

Out of town again - Erdoguan

Today we could still feel our two hour kungfu lesson from yesterday in our feet, but nevertheless we went out of town again to the Erdoguan section of the Great Wall. Erdoguan is basically the least croweded Great Wall place I've seen so far and the least restored as well. That explains why it is not the most suitable spot to hike on the wall, but a tiny path leads through the wall from one farmer's village to the next, not too exhausting a hike (although the sun was burning down on us) with a view on the unrestored wall. The workforce of hundred thousands of workers built the wall, but the workers were not buried under the wall as is often claimed, because as experts say: "the builders of the Great Wall were no fools, they knew that a buried body under the wall would rot and leave a hole." Well, this shows that there is a lot of myths about the wall there but of course they are often just that:myths and not the truth.

An old man from the village where we started our trail showed us the way and came along. His family has lived out there for many generations and earns a living from agriculture, i.e. of peaches, plums, persimmons and other fruits. I learned from him that the sun spots (German: Sonnenflecken auf der Haut) on my arm resemble star formations in the sky (waggon etc). Well, he definitely was creative :-). Amazingly, the crops are now ripe and the villagers spread the crops on the street to dry or split it (well, if we understood it correctly, the cars can also drive over it to help split the crops, but I do not know whether this is reasonable???), so one way of the road out there you could not drive on, but it was used for agricultural work. They also spread fruits like peaches on the floor to dry it there (see last photo).

My first Kungfu lesson & shopping again

For today morning I had arranged my first kungfu (功夫, Gōngfu) lesson in a park nearby. A colleague from the Netherlands had recommended me the teacher. I had wanted to take a lesson and try myself since my visit to Shaolin monastery, but now that I had a recommendation and that "Kungfu Panda" starts in the movies, it just seemed the right time to have a try. Agnes and her brother Jakob joined the lesson. We tried three different styles of Chinese kungfu art: Shaolin style (many kicks and moves, mainly concentrating on body flexibilty), another style mainly concentrating on self defense and for the 'cool down' we did Tai Qi, which is much more slowly, less demanding and smoother. I personnaly liked Shaolin style the most. By the way, did you know that China tried to establish modern Wushu/ modern Chinese martial art, which is yet another style, as a discipline in the Olympics? This attempt was not supported by the Olympic Committee, so now there is no such discipline.

In the afternoon after a good shower we visited Panjiayuan Antique market - the "mother of all Beijing antique markets". Well, guess what you rarely ever find there? Yeah, right, real antiques. For non-experts like me it's hard to distinguish between old and new, but the stroll around the market was quite nice and we found some unusual stalls selling old phones or suitcases, so it was worth the visit.

sugar water medicine at the tailor's

What happened this week? At work I was busy from Monday to Wednesday because we had an external audit. Seems that it went very well.
Apart from that, Agnes brother Jakob who's on a visit needed a new suit so we went to "my" tailor shop. Hidden in the basement of a Chinese style apartment house nobody would ever find this tailor by coincidence, but only based on recommendation (in my case from a Taiwanese colleague). However, they are always quite busy.
The owner is a woman in her late 40s or early 50s, maybe 1.5 m or 1.6 m tall, from Shanghai and very nice! She talks in quick Chinese to all her clients, evento Agnes brother who doesn't understand Chinese yet. Well, the effort she does is what matters. She is just so attentive and helpful. Suddenly Agnes felt a little bit weak, so our tailor immediately knew the medicine for that: "tang shui" - sugar water! Agnes drank it out of a small cup and she soon felt a little bit better. Our order showed our appreciaton:
one suit, a blouse, three trousers, five skirts. We can't complain about the prices neither. Don't want to make you envious, just for you to have an idea: one pair of trousers: 100 kuai, a skirt: 100 kuai (100 kuai is equivalent to 10 EUR).

Rural escape - Cuandixia

Today we (Agnes, Claudia, Ines, Jakob and me) drove out of Beijing to Cuandixia. I'd like to quote: "Nestled in a valley 90 km west of Beijing and overlooked by towering peaks is Cuandixia, a gorgeous cluster of historic courtyard homes and old-world charm. The backdrop is lovely: terraced orchards and fields, with ancient houses and alleyways rising up the hillside." We climbed up the hill opposite the town and enjoyed the fantastic view. Then we enjoyed a country meal in one of the house's courtyards, which was simple but good. After lunch a walk to the temple and through town (lanes decorated with dried corn hanging on the houses) gave us more impression about this "lovely" Ming village. When we saw a swing in the form of a bucket (Schaufel eines Baggers), we didn't want to restrict the child in us and went on it :-).

Beijing everyday news

Olympia is approaching very fast. Now Beijing municipality placed new traffic signs with indications to the Olympic venues and places. Well, the sign "Olympic Village" is quite clear and easy to understand. But what place does the "IPC/MPC" sign lead to? "Idiot Parking Centre" "Maniac Parking Center"? The best guess so far goes for "International Business Center / Media Press Center", because that's what many people here wish the Olympics are going to be: good business and positive media coverage.
After weeks of heat, yesterday evening and night we had thunder and lightning in Beijing. Quite heavy to be honest and also some rain. Today it's still raining and the air is fresher which of course I appreciate. Wishing you a nice weekend!

And into the desert!

Wow! Amazing! Great! Awesome! - I think these were the most-used words during the last two days in the desert. Some of the photos taken are so much kitch that nobody would believe they are real (if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes...).

Already the way to our desert (called Alashan Desert, the fourth biggest desert in China, part of the Gobi desert) was so much fun! Of course driving through the sand dunes we had to go on special means of transport. In our case a military truck. And then up and down, ahhhhhhh!, yeah!, a feeling like in a rollercoaster, but even better. Traffic signs in the middle of nowhere, huge sand dunes, panoramic desert views and a little bit hurting bum later we arrived in our hotel in the desert at a lake (called Moon Lake). The mosquitos were welcoming us, but not only they, but also we had some nice dinner and minority dancing & singing.

In the morning we went on a camel ride. Don't think camels are nice animals, at least mine was naughty and some others as well. The camel ride through the sand dunes to a nomad family's house was offering amazing views, but I was mainly concentrating on trying not to fall down the camel and didn't dare to use the camera too often. Back at the hotel, I did a go kart ride in the sand and then it was already time to go back by military truck. The way back was much more challenging to the trucks and in some cases, we needed three tries to succeed to drive up a sand dune...

Alashan desert was a unique experience. Why? Not touristy. A real desert with amazing sand dunes. And last but not least the military truck was just so much fun!

Rock paintings around the world unite!

On our second day in Ningxia new adventures were waiting for us. In the Helanshan (Mount Helan), a very penurious mountain, we visited rock paintings which are over 2000 years in age. Back then the people who lived there painted animals, humans and human masks into the mountain caves. Amazing are the analogies in world history: human beings painted quite similar rock paintings in America, Europe and Asia. That's astonishing given the distances between the different places!Back then human beings used to be nomads, but that's just too far a way to walk...

Another highlight of the day were the Xixia Tombs. Ming and Qing Tombs in Beijing are not the slightest comparison. The Xixia Tombs just look like a huge pile of stones. The emperor of a time when China was split into different kingdoms is said to be burried there.

Chinese Grand Canyon and Chinese Winnetou

Why go to Ningxia? In most travel guides you don't even find this province. It's one of the smallest, newest and poorest provinces of China. One third of the population belong to the Hui minority (yes, they are really called 'Hui') who are muslims. The silk road also used to go through Ningxia.

Ningxia was most surprising to me. They also have the Great Wall there, but it's earthern there and doesn't look like it could last for more than 20 years, but well, they built it in the Ming dynasty and it's still there. This Great Wall was just so different from the Beijing Great Wall! And the most astonishing there is the surrounding nature... they even have a 'Grand Canyon' there and the atmosphere feels like any second there could be Lucky Luke coming around the corner singing a cowboy song. Or Winnetou. Wild Wild West.

Our hotel was in the old town (our Chinese guide saying that, but old to her means from the 1980s :-)). Our driver was a Hui whom our guide considered to be 'very handsome' as she said. Just in case they ever come together and get married, she as a Han Chinese would need to convert to Hui and their religion and they would fall under the exeption of the birth control law. In China there's a law that families normally are only allowed to have one child; exeptions i.a. are minorities which are allowed to have two children per family.

Have a look at the photos to have an impression yourself...

Mountainyoga in the Western mountains

After the long travel on Wednesday I decided to spend a quiet, relaxing weekend with a little bit of sport. So when I had read an article about http://www.mountainyoga.cn/ who offer weekend yoga retreats in the Western mountains of Beijing ("Xishan"), I had spontaneously registered.

It worked out perfectly. Not only was the weather a mere pleasure, also the place (an old buddhist temple in the Western mountains which is not being used as a religious place any more) was great. Compared to the Fragrant Hill (Xiangshan), the Western mountains offer especially one thing more: a terrific mountain panorama.

We did not only yoga, but also climbed a mountain in order to enjoy the view. Up the hill there were hardly any tourists and from the pavillion we could see as far as the Beijing skyline. We went down on another side of the mountain, so we had to walk back to the temple on a railway track. which was also being used as a hiking track. Well, maybe you also still remember your parents telling you not to play or walk on a railway track. There it was quite different: plenty of people were walking the railway track and when the train came, you just went to the side and waited until it had passed. Just have a look at the photo to have an impression yourself (of course the obligatory umbrella to protect the skin from the sun was also frequently to be found among Chinese women hikers...).

Since I have done hot yoga for the first time I really like yoga! It even stabilises my back where I had some problems at the end of last year. This weekend we did many yoga styles - most of them I liked and I would call sport.

But we also did 'Yoga Nidra': "Yoga-Nidra ("Yoga sleep"), is an expression widely used to denote the highest state of consciousness. Although yoga nidra means yogic sleep, it is actually a wakeful state of deep introversion. ." Imagine you lying on the floor with a blanket over your body. A voice tells you to find a comfortable position, to relax all parts of your body, to not fall asleep, to really not fall asleep, to totally relax, to relax your fingers, to not fall asleep, to really not fall asleep etc. Of course it's a little bit more than that, but to be honest everything my body wanted was to fall asleep in order not to have to listen to the monotoneous voice. Well, now I at least know which yoga style I don't like...