Ruisui

The slow local train takes me through the Eastern Rift Valley to Ruisui, where at 1pm there is no-one but lazy dogs to be seen. My air B’n’b place is next to a storehouse piled high with a mountain of pomelo, the local crop here in the valley.

My host is Zola, a jolly little guy from Hunan now settled with 4 month old baby, Taiwanese wife and dog in this little town of 12000. He is radically different from any Chinese I have met before and has a laudable mission in life. Zola is developing a platform which enables the archiving of posts and pages deleted from the internet. He is particularly focussed on China where 404 errors (page not available) are the bane of the researcher on the net. He sees his work as preserving history and providing the knowledge that will facilitate informed discussions i.e. a crucial research tool.

We talk about public sphere, we talk about the Chinese govt attempting now to block VPNs. He began this line of work by blogging sensitive news, and of course ended up being censored. He tells me he never saw himself as an activist or involved in human rights until a film was made about him. I have to track this down. I would like my students to check out what he is doing. It seems he is doing something very important which could contribute to a greater sense of “truth” and transparency in China.

Meanwhile, the valley is beautiful and we check out the view with Zola’s drone.

At night I am the only bather in the murky yellow hot springs at the coco hotel. Not really the same calibre as budapest in terms of atmosphere. This is more like a designed resort. The water of my shower afterwards is red as it washes off the minerals from my body. I roll all the way down the hill for a couple of miles, keen not to break a sweat and ruin the lovely glow that my body is feeling. A full moon is climbing high above the mountains.

Guilin to Hong Kong day 20

A day of travel in various forms. Bus 100 to Guilin north station. 3 hour train journey to Guangzhou south, the city being shrouded by a heavy grey sky and electric storm, making it even more dystopian. A gamble that I can get to Guangzhou east in 2 hours and get on a train even though I haven’t booked in advance pays off, though is slightly stressful with 40 minutes of rammed underground trains, and disorientation at east station. I think my least favourite thing in China is trying to cope with these huge stations. Anyway I’m now on the Hong Kong train. Feels like I’m going home. Certainly I’m back in a “more developed” society. This means everyone is on their phone, looks tired, weary and is indifferent and unfriendly. I’ve come a long way in one day or so.

Here is some fruit from Guilin, forming most of my lunch. 

   3 more metros and after 9 hours of travel I’m back in Hong Kong at fortress hill again. This time I’m in the main hostel block and the room has more character and even a view. Vege buffet just around the corner 😀

Xingping to Guilin day 19

All is not as progressive as the Chinese might have us believe. Close experience with infrastructure development reveals directionless unplanned mess. The road from yangshuo all the way to Guilin (40 miles) is torn up in readiness for a new and wider carriageway. Rather than doing it in sections the idea seems to be to smash up all of the road, leaving bumpy unsurfaced aggregate as the main road. It’s a dust bowl, chaotic, no markings, full of potholes, cars, trucks, buses, motorbikes, even a brave cyclist weaving in and out and seizing right of way from sounding their horns. Our bus bumped a truck. This didn’t even wake the guy in the mirrored shades sprawled in the seat behind me. Passengers flag down buses from rudimentary central reservations. The only work I see is manual labouring, cementing kerb stones together, and diggers smashing up Tarmac. There is very very little progress. The guy I met a few days ago on the Dazhai bus told me this is a normal state of affairs in China. We pass through towns which have been bulldozed leaving piles of rubble reassembling a battlefield. The journey takes an age.

Toilets. In my mind the standard of these says a lot about a civilisation. The Guilin bus station ones were horrendous. Squalid squat and shit holes with no privacy. Guys actually using them to do their business whilst playing games on their phones. The toilet at the temple yesterday was even worse. Basically an open gutter in a shed with no flushing facilities. Hold your breath.

Anyway I’m back in Guilin and I time to get to the temple restaurant for another wonderful buffet. I am also able to finally put in some less dirty clothes (having travelled very light to Dazhai and Xingping. At the lake there are various groups of people dancing to recorded music In the glow of the green and red illuminations. One set of folk are female and are practising Chinese classical dance, but not all on time. The others are dressed in black and do some rock and roll jiving then a rhumba. Here and there I catch line older men singing to themselves in the semi darkness by the shore. On the river are small illuminated rafts, each holds the silhouette of a man with a long pole and sitting beside him are 2 or 3 large birds. I summise these are cormorants and these are the fishermen who use them to catch their fish (the birds throats are restricted by a rope so they do not swallow any fish). But they don’t seem to be fishing. A strange thing is that whenever a pleasure boat passes, the guys lift a bird high on their poles. Why is this? To offer a pose for photos? But why do this? What could they gain from this?

Xingping day 19

A pitch black walk up very steep precarious steps aided by a flashlight took me to a dreamy view of fairy tale peaks and clouds. The only soul there for a while then joined by 2 other photographers to contemplate in awed silence. A great start to the day. Not much more to report as I prepare to leave and begin my slow return journey: Guilin: Guangzhou: HK: UK.

  

Xingping day 18

After breakfast with the Germans. I meet up with Echo who works at the hostel for our planned hike. First we have to get across the river li by ferry and the ferryman tries to charge me 5rmb when the local rate is 2. He doesn’t really have a leg to stand on when Echo has just paid 2, but still complains and argues for 10 minutes as we are waiting to depart. On the opposite bank we are met by her friend (and this girl’s friend, plus a puppy) who works in a guest house next to the limestone mountains, surrounded by a peaceful garden where they grow all their vegetables. She gives us a lift in an electric motorbike 3-wheeler with a flat bed trailer. It’s a very bumpy ride and we have to get out and push the flimsy vehicle out of a puddle. After dropping off our transport we begin the walk through farms and orchards of huge pomeloes, towel gourds, golden oranges (these smaller than a ping pong ball, green skin, orange flesh), past pig sties and chicken houses, farmers driving cows. It’s very local, slow and quiet on this side of the river. We are  hailed by younger girl of about 17 on a bicycle with her 3 year old brother. She tells us that they are making ginger toffee. This involves boiling up sugar and ginger to make a sticky paste which the gnarly old guy stretches and pulls and twists on a bench. It’s then pulled into strips and as it quickly hardens is snipped into bite size pieces by the family. They also make sweets from their own sesame seeds and peanuts. The walk is hot and eventually the path peters out in front of a sheer cliff face. In spite of Echo’s calls and reference pics sent to the colleague back at the hostel we cannot find the right way and have no choice but to descend. It’s amazing the little boy has made it this far completely willing and untiring, the only problem being his losing his tiny blue flipflop which keeps slipping off and needs to be retrieved. At the bottom we become 3 and adopt a backup plan which is to walk along the river to an evocative cave temple. The cave in question having no illumination save for 3 oil lights at an altar. My friends immediate reaction is to use the flashlight on their phones to guide them, but I insist we enter and acclimatise. It is so still and quiet in there. We take a rest and eat some noodles at Echo’s friend’s ghostly guesthouse then head back before 3 when I go to bed for a few hours. Exhausted from the head, and probably our exertions.

The old quarter, which consists of 4 streets, packs up early evening as the tourists have all gone home. The streets are returned to the residents. Loud shrieking kids running up and down. Families, doors open having dinner. Each house has a plain concrete or stone floor with the living room at the front, revealed through open wooden doors. Each contains simple low stools, a table and a huge tv. This is on in every house usually with the sound turned down. I guess it serves as wallpaper. Nobody is actually watching it. I’m glad the TVs are turned down. The chatter of countless TVs from open doors  would be hideous. Some houses  display a poster of Mao on their wall. Older people sit in the darkness on their front steps, bare chested men chat in hushed voices.

Xingping day 17

I can’t accept that guy’s views on meritocracy, and if this is the reality, so much for so-called communism. Even though his father is a cook, his mum does the cooking at home. Makes no sense really. There is a noticeable division of labour in Xingping. The women man (how did this verb originate) the handicraft stalls and sell the vegetables, fruit, chickens. The men are the delivery and tuk tuk drivers. They are the ones who sit in the shade smoking and playing cards. I’ve taken a lot of pics of kids. It’s just occurred that kids are much more visible here than in the uk. Is that a consequence of climate, perceptions of safety among strangers- it’s interesting that mothers are quite into me taking pics of their little ones, even though they might personally turn their head away. Could you imagine that in uk? Imagine the protests, anger and controversy. It’s also nice to see that mobile culture hasn’t permeated society here, and there is definitely no Pokemon go. 

The town is lovely and still at 7am. In fact I almost tiptoe through the alleys as people are waking up and throwing open their wooden doors. As I have breakfast I notice a sudden change. Enter the groups of colour coded baseball caps, at their head is a guide carrying a same coloured little pennant. This how the Chinese do tourism. Straight to the river, maybe snapping pics of guesthouse a on the way, ignoring the locals, getting a generic boat trip, buying a generic souvenir, group lunch then back on the bus.

My morning is spent poking around the market again. Here’s a sight from there.

  

Tiantouzhai to Xingping day 16

It’s a bright sunny morning and I’m in a bit of a rush, having had an uncomfortable stomach over night. A bowl of yoghurt and fruit sorts me out, before my final walk down the mountain and into Dazhai where the hard sunshine casts an atmospheric light on old women cooking corn in open fires or spreading red chilliscro dry on their verandas. 

Strangely the bus leaves a few minutes early. The journey to yangshuo is windy, slow and towards the end incredibly bumpy as the bus traverses an unmade road. Even in this pretty rural enclave of China nothing stops progress, as mountains are sliced open and scarred by machinery as it is becoming more accessible to the outside world, which requires speed and direct straight roads, which unfortunately will increase the volume of traffic exponentially. Out bus makes several pit stops, at one, the driver hoses down the bus. The Chinese boy behind me strikes up conversation. I say boy as it is hard to guess his age accurately. He looks about 18 but turns out to be 26. On the bus with  his parents and 2 sisters scattered around the bus. He is sitting alone at the back. He is from shangsha and works in Beijing for a small construction firm. His dream is to build a  huge bridge that will carry his name and be his legacy. As he says nobody remembers who built a tower block. There is a piece in the news today about a glass bridge in zhangjiajie, iconic and making a statement about Chinese technology, which is having to close after a couple of weeks due to high volumes. I show the guy a photo of Clifton suspension bridge and explain its importance in terms of engineering. He is distinctly unimpressed and insists that although this type of structure may have been invented in uk it is China that has developed and progressed it. There seems to be a lot of symbolism in architecture and a certain sense of status in terms of communicating to the world what a society is capable of. He reveals that in Beijing any new development must be at least 6 storeys high otherwise it will not get planning percent. As he says China has too many people. I know this is a mistranslation but an apt one, as “a lot of” and “too” are both communicated by “tai”. That’s an interesting linguistic proposition. Does this mean that a large number is always neutral in connotation? Or the converse?

Language is certainly an inhibitor in trying to accomplish some of what I’m curious about. I have an idea of what my rather privileged Chinese students believe and value (though avian their language isn’t sophisticated enough to really communicate their thoughts), but what about the average and less well to do Chinese? My friend on the bus makes a good attempt to discuss many issues. He has not been to university and travels by bus, so it is apparent he is less well off, however his family are middle class, with his sister working in advertising, and his father a cook. I want to know what he feels about media control. He trots out a line familiar to me that the Chinese government protects its people from “bad information” by censoring the Internet. My friend fails to understand my argument that these restrictions undermine the intelligence of a people, and I fact present them with a controlled view of the world. This guy is a living paradox, as whilst he had no issue with state controlled media he uses a vpn to access Facebook and sees this as beneficial. I see this as dual standards and hypercritical. But this is China. Having your cake and eating it. Dogmatic conforming yet self-interested. A communist state in name but a burgeoning consumer society. As I’m reading about the endemic struggles that women have in Chinese society I ask him about gender roles, and I’m not surprised to hear him support the line that men and women are not equal in skills or abilities and that it is natural that men dominate society. He refers to ability, I hope he means possibility, but the more I hear the surer I am that he means the former. There is no room for debate. He sees things as black and white, is not aware of a world I change and the needs to address traditions that stigmatise and oppress. If I were to challenge him he would retort with “you don’t understand China”. Of course this is true, but one of the frustrating things about the Chinese is this catch-all escape clause, which basically circumvents any critical discussion. I see this in my students too. It’s kind of depressing that these views are so unquestionably held and that people such as this guy are not keen to look at other cultures and see there is something to be learnt from them.

Arrival in Xingping is disorientating and in a not very convenient location. I walk about 30 mins along the highway I construction, past numerous builders suppliers, through a tunnel that penetrates one of the hundreds of pointed limestone peaks that make this area  so unique. A little local bus takes me north up the river li to the small town of Xingping. Popular with Chinese day trippers, or half-day trippers, who come for a bamboo rafting experience, the departure point of which is directly in front of my window. There is a cluster of hutong with bars and tourist shops, which, although geared up for making money do not seem exploitative. The more interesting area is where the locals are. At dusk, a couple play ping pong on a full size outdoor table, elderly people with their wooden doors open play cards or gaze onto the streets, children play on bikes, the bustling market is winding up, but the live poultry area is still active. Some of the sights here are quite unpleasant, birds being plucked, others squeezed into transporting cages, off for someone’s dinner.

Sunset from the roof of the hostel is pretty. Once the day trippers have gone the hostel area settles down to a slow intimate rhythm and after a wood fired oven pizza (really), an odd experience in China, which doesn’t quite work, as this is a dish that is simple and requires the best quality simple ingredients, and China is not known for tomatoes or mozzarella, I have s lengthy talk with Agnes and Christian from Stuttgart. This covers brexit, the meaning of travelling, the changed nature of dreams when we travel, the philosophy and function of photography.

This feels relaxing here. I’m enjoying this trip a lot.

  
  

Tiantouzhai day 15 walking

I’ve had a lot of exercise here walking up and down stone stepped paths between the rice terraces getting lost, sweating buckets, passing through tiny wooden housed Yao villages, searching out view points.

Today I woke up to rain and atmospheric must shrouding the moutains. This meant I shelved the walk to ping an. As the rain eased I went for what was intended as a stroll which took me up to view point 2 (music from paradise) where I watched a duck furraging in the paddy for grubs, forgetting the drizzle until a passing Chinese stopped and held her umbrella over me as I took pictures. I like rain. I like watching people trying to cope with the weather. Tourists are particularly funny in their brightly coloured rain ponchos, umbrellas and ubiquitous selfie sticks, carrying on regardless. The locals are much more canny. No building work today, nobody tending the rice, no Yao women trying to sell you postcards. When I start walking I find it hard to stop and today I went on to,”seven stars chase the moon” then to “thousand layers to the heaven”, down to zhuangjie village, where I got lost but eventually came down on top of Dazhai. I had a lunch of spicy tofu and rice, which was enormous. Fortified I tackled the climb to the highest point, seen directly from the terrace at my hostel, “golden Buddha peak”. A nice path that climbs alongside a bubbling stream, fir trees, ferns, colourful flowers, butterflies, one type the size of my hand. There are a lot of people coming down the mountain. Girls in dresses, some in flip flops. Evidently they took the cable car up and expect an easy descent. There is a massive multi-layered viewing terrace at the top. An orgy of photo activities: dressing in ethnic costumes, touching a massive unhappy tortoise, some holy wood with an inscription. Yao women weaving and attempting to sell their wastes. It’s not raining but the low cloud drifts across the valleys. I’m now very familiar with the geography here and can make out everywhere I’ve been in the last few days. I’m looking for a cut across to tiantouzhai on the way down. This is the path I wanted to take yesterday, but once again I couldn’t find it. So I’m back in Dazhai to do the 40 minute climb back to tiantouzhai for the third day in a row. It’s interesting retracing a familiar path where there is do much life and noticing the small differences. The horse tethered by the building site is not there today. The 2 groups of card players are there again. This must be a daily activity at this time. The men clearing a site for probably a new guest house are not there today. The man cooking bamboo filled with rice on the first slope of my village is not cooking today. It’s a sweaty climb home and it feels wonderful to get back and relax.

Tiantouzhai is to the left of the centre of the picture.

  

Tiantouzhai day 15

Thoughts on photography 

We live in a culture where we cannot function without taking photos, and I am not immune to this. I have the daily chore of trying to create space on my memory card by deleting “less good” photos. But what does that mean? My pictures tend to be of people in places behaving in ways that seem to be representative of their culture; of places alien to what I am accustomed to, and of pleasing views. They are some kind of documentation but not a record of what I have done or reflection of who I am. The more fascinating people and moments have passed almost before I have processed them. I am not sufficiently embedded to work with my subjects. So perhaps they are superficial. Taking them does give me a purpose. I think I would feel unfulfilled by not doing so.

I’ve been trying to understand what it is other people do with photography. I reckon most tourists have conditioned themselves to perform when they are at designated tourist sites. It could be by taking it in turns to pose by some old piece of wood with an inscription and adopt a default wooden pose and expression. I don’t think the creation of a record that says I was here is the core to this. It’s more about having something to do at a view point or historical building. The curators of a site or the tourist agencies even helpfully indicate by signage that these are the places you should go to, this is the object you should stand next to. A photo of a view is meaningless unless you are in it….These are all stages which are given to us for our ritualistic performances. The selfie stick is a handy accessory and quite honestly a ridiculous appendage. An extension to your arm and on the end of it is live feedback, like a mirror. Watch the Chinese girls walk around a tourist site clutching this anti/social object viewing themselves and their backgrounds. Seems impossible to turn around and look at the view with your own eyes. Mothers pull their kids into shot for a group selfie. The kid on cue shoots up the Asian two fingered salute, then runs off to explore reality as the mother scrutinises the picture, before calling the child back to try and produce a picture where she is happier with her appearance. This may take several attempts and a range of false smiles. Two fingered smile. 
As people are taking selfies so frequently it seems that everyone has thoroughly practised and perfected a repertoire of expressions that show them to be eternally happy and confident. This is how they want their friends and family to see them. This is their avatar. It’s shaping life through technology. It’s rejecting reality in favour of hyper reality.
In China there is a phenomenon which involves renting costumes, eg ethnic dress, often cheaply made and looking like a pantomime costume, which you may rent for 30 minutes or so in order to adopt more poses and be photographed. The more I think about it the less I understand what this performance means. Why do people need to do something? Why not simply enjoy one another’s company and appreciate the beauty of a place. The world is becoming a theme park.
I saw a sign on the path near viewpoint number 2 “No photograph when walking”. A warning as the paths are narrow and you could drop into the paddie terraces. I notice that people take selfies and shots of their friends often in the middle of paths, even with the sun I their eyes? Why I’m thinking that there is an irresistible compulsion to take a photo every couple of minutes, regardless where they are. My walk up the mountain today was frequently interrupted by these impromptu halts by others. Then there is the posing with the environment. Attempting to interact with something they have no connection with. I saw two urban Chinese guys holding stalks of rice, like they were farmers. 

Perhaps the Yao women have got it sussed when they turn away from the cameras we point at them like hunters shooting cornered animals. The smarter ones ask us for money. A more cynical approach is the man with the huge tortoise trapped in a box, unable to lumber off, charging tourists for the photos we inevitably want to take.

Tiantouzhai day 14

The morning has a refreshing breeze and my corner room with Windows on 2 sides is a relaxing place to read Xinran’s “Good women of China”, a revealing investigation by a radio broadcaster into the role of women in Chinese society, through the eyes of those who are oppressed and forced to conform.

Busy sounds and voices permeate the air, butterflies flutter over the rice stalks near my window. Later on the terrace I observe how business is conducted here with locals calling by with baskets on their backs plying their produce. One man has fresh white and red speckled bamboo shoots. A woman in local dress has a pole on her shoulder, a sack on one end containing a primitive balance, the one at the opposing end is full of an orange bark. She encourages me to chew a sliver. It has a spicy sharp taste like cinnamon. The girl at reception tells me it’s used in traditional medicine. Most of the stuff consumed up here is brought up on people’s backs apparently.

I chat with her for a while. She is from Fujin province and majored in business English. Never been out of China, found the job here by Internet, believe it or not.

The peaceful atmosphere is shattered by an obnoxious Chinese girl who checks in, laughs at me for asking if there is meat in the dumplings on the menu, then walks onto the terrace conducting a loud video chat that goes on for 15 minutes. She can’t talk quietly, has no sense of others’ space, no appreciation of the location and succeeds in driving me inside. She kind of encapsulates many of the negative characteristics  I’ve noticed in a certain demographic 0f modern young Chinese. Loud, rude, phone obsessed and selfish. I wonder if she has read Xinran. I wonder what her perceptions of modern woman in China are. I will never find out. She has now walked into the lounge and sits at the bar carrying on her conversation oblivious to the receptionist  1 metre away and me again. Is she going to spend the whole of her stay doing this? Now she is giving whoever the bloody guy on the other end a video tour. If they miss each other so much, why not come here together? I have to go for a walk and get away from this abomination.