The Voyeurism Express
Guilin: it means "Plenty of Accacia Trees." If I could identify any flora or fauna besides a sunflower I could tell you if that's accurate. But take it from Guilin. Loads of accacia trees.
But what makes it so amazing, this very tropical tiny city (just a million!) is that it is surrounded by towering limestone formations that jut up from the ground like dozens and dozens of craggy thumbs poking into the land from below. They're called karsts, and they are astonishingly beautiful, and covered with greenery. So this city has a rural feel, and a less relentlessly mercantile feel than the places we've been so far. The highlight of our unfortunately short stay here was a cruise down the river Li, where these crags gather to form an almost otherwordly landscape. It's like something I imagined when I would read the Narnia books or Tolkien. I sort of wished I was on a great adventure.
And perhaps not so much on another vessel designed to show foreign tourists the very best of China. I'm getting uncomfortable with the form of the trip - I feel like a little imperialist, toted from sight to sight while our government approved guides rattle off positive facts and negative facts with a positive spin. Our current guide claims not to have minded being relocated to the country and forced to harvest rice during the cultural revolution because she got really strong. Maybe. Maybe.
I know this is the dominant way we see things because most of the other people on this trip are 55+, but it still seems a little fake, or a little too easy - in our safe American hotels at night, eating our western buffet breakfasts, and all the adults getting wildly constipated from dinner.
It's nice in some ways because I can't speak Chinese, obviously, and that would make getting around an interesting but out of the way area like this (we're only about 200 miles from Vietnam) very difficult.
All this made me feel very strange today when we stopped at a tiny farming village to look at a house. 45 huge white people clomping around and being interested, but without bearing anything practical. Without communicating. Just checking out the local state of impoverishment.
This, some of the same people who pushed off a beggar our last night in Xi'an, dismissing him like he was too lazy to get a job or something. I mean, he's going to die pretty soon. But when we're in the country it's so "fascinating."
Contradictions, complications - I'm feeling ashamed sometimes for being on a trip like this, but, at least I'm seeing things, and at least these people are too (although I flinch at the thought of the dinner table conversations that will go "Oh, Well when Chet and I were in China...")
Gar. Unavoidable.
In other news, this trip is starting to feel a little like Freshman Orientation. The activities are fun, sure, but when does school start? The social makeup is also getting hilariously screwy. One couple SWITCHED BUSES. Why? Who do they not like on Bus B? What did we do?
And because as Americans we're too polite sometimes to get around the walls of formality, many of our conversations are about the food. Just about the food. Good, bad, what it compares to, how it made all these stopped up Western intestines recoil, etc. I almost cried after a 45-minute conversation about eggplant.
That ignores the good conversations, though - my Mom and I had a great dinner last night with a couple from St. Louis. It was so great that even though it was about law school, I enjoyed it! The husband is a lawyer from St. Louis who went to law school at U of M and is a very nice and funny guy and made a number of points that supported the Pro and Cons of graduate study in the law. Good for my Mom and me! We're both justified in our respective feelings about law school!
We've also had some really interesting conversations about politics/Bush/the Republican convention with a number of people on this trip. Although by really interesting, I mean that we all get into a worked up liberal rabid frenzy and find interesting ways to agree with each other. And try not to do it within earshot of the guy who is rumored to work for Haliburton.
That's only partially true. It's fun.
I also went out my last night in Xi'an with the 29 year old employee of the Harvard Alumni Association who organized and came on the trip. As one might imagine, a person that works with picky Harvard alumni has a lot of very funny stories. For instance, on one trip a man lost his toe and didn't know how. She does a great job with everyone, though. I would be very bad at this job. She's amazing.
We were accompanied by Michael, a lawyer, a little younger than the rest of the folks and we returned to the faux sports bar in Xi'an where we walked into to the strains of a cover band rocking it to Wonderwall. And then UB40 and an instrumental version of "Unchained Melody." It was amusing, and also nice to hang out and have a conversation and not be in bed at 10pm. I went to bed at midnight! Wild times!
To finish up quickly - the last morning in Xi'an we went to the Muslim neighborhood there - started at about the time the Silk Road began to operate and brought Islam from Arabia. The Grand Mosque was built during the Ming dynasty as a thank you to the Hui (Chinese-Muslim people) people who helped out in fighting the Mongol hordes. It's built in a Chinese style - the minaret is a pagoda. Really cool - lots of street food, people around and about. Just a pretty morning in a real part of the city. I liked it.
Okay - in one last related anecdote I overheard someone on this trip call someone else a "Chinese toilet lover." Like an insult! Not an insult, but doesn't it sound like a seven-year old's idea of an insult?
Guilin!
But what makes it so amazing, this very tropical tiny city (just a million!) is that it is surrounded by towering limestone formations that jut up from the ground like dozens and dozens of craggy thumbs poking into the land from below. They're called karsts, and they are astonishingly beautiful, and covered with greenery. So this city has a rural feel, and a less relentlessly mercantile feel than the places we've been so far. The highlight of our unfortunately short stay here was a cruise down the river Li, where these crags gather to form an almost otherwordly landscape. It's like something I imagined when I would read the Narnia books or Tolkien. I sort of wished I was on a great adventure.
And perhaps not so much on another vessel designed to show foreign tourists the very best of China. I'm getting uncomfortable with the form of the trip - I feel like a little imperialist, toted from sight to sight while our government approved guides rattle off positive facts and negative facts with a positive spin. Our current guide claims not to have minded being relocated to the country and forced to harvest rice during the cultural revolution because she got really strong. Maybe. Maybe.
I know this is the dominant way we see things because most of the other people on this trip are 55+, but it still seems a little fake, or a little too easy - in our safe American hotels at night, eating our western buffet breakfasts, and all the adults getting wildly constipated from dinner.
It's nice in some ways because I can't speak Chinese, obviously, and that would make getting around an interesting but out of the way area like this (we're only about 200 miles from Vietnam) very difficult.
All this made me feel very strange today when we stopped at a tiny farming village to look at a house. 45 huge white people clomping around and being interested, but without bearing anything practical. Without communicating. Just checking out the local state of impoverishment.
This, some of the same people who pushed off a beggar our last night in Xi'an, dismissing him like he was too lazy to get a job or something. I mean, he's going to die pretty soon. But when we're in the country it's so "fascinating."
Contradictions, complications - I'm feeling ashamed sometimes for being on a trip like this, but, at least I'm seeing things, and at least these people are too (although I flinch at the thought of the dinner table conversations that will go "Oh, Well when Chet and I were in China...")
Gar. Unavoidable.
In other news, this trip is starting to feel a little like Freshman Orientation. The activities are fun, sure, but when does school start? The social makeup is also getting hilariously screwy. One couple SWITCHED BUSES. Why? Who do they not like on Bus B? What did we do?
And because as Americans we're too polite sometimes to get around the walls of formality, many of our conversations are about the food. Just about the food. Good, bad, what it compares to, how it made all these stopped up Western intestines recoil, etc. I almost cried after a 45-minute conversation about eggplant.
That ignores the good conversations, though - my Mom and I had a great dinner last night with a couple from St. Louis. It was so great that even though it was about law school, I enjoyed it! The husband is a lawyer from St. Louis who went to law school at U of M and is a very nice and funny guy and made a number of points that supported the Pro and Cons of graduate study in the law. Good for my Mom and me! We're both justified in our respective feelings about law school!
We've also had some really interesting conversations about politics/Bush/the Republican convention with a number of people on this trip. Although by really interesting, I mean that we all get into a worked up liberal rabid frenzy and find interesting ways to agree with each other. And try not to do it within earshot of the guy who is rumored to work for Haliburton.
That's only partially true. It's fun.
I also went out my last night in Xi'an with the 29 year old employee of the Harvard Alumni Association who organized and came on the trip. As one might imagine, a person that works with picky Harvard alumni has a lot of very funny stories. For instance, on one trip a man lost his toe and didn't know how. She does a great job with everyone, though. I would be very bad at this job. She's amazing.
We were accompanied by Michael, a lawyer, a little younger than the rest of the folks and we returned to the faux sports bar in Xi'an where we walked into to the strains of a cover band rocking it to Wonderwall. And then UB40 and an instrumental version of "Unchained Melody." It was amusing, and also nice to hang out and have a conversation and not be in bed at 10pm. I went to bed at midnight! Wild times!
To finish up quickly - the last morning in Xi'an we went to the Muslim neighborhood there - started at about the time the Silk Road began to operate and brought Islam from Arabia. The Grand Mosque was built during the Ming dynasty as a thank you to the Hui (Chinese-Muslim people) people who helped out in fighting the Mongol hordes. It's built in a Chinese style - the minaret is a pagoda. Really cool - lots of street food, people around and about. Just a pretty morning in a real part of the city. I liked it.
Okay - in one last related anecdote I overheard someone on this trip call someone else a "Chinese toilet lover." Like an insult! Not an insult, but doesn't it sound like a seven-year old's idea of an insult?
Guilin!
posted by The Gadabout at 5:04 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home