(24 December 2004 ˇV 1 January 2005)
My school's Christmas holiday is basically only one week, plus the Christmas Eve Friday. We had to plan a holiday that would fit into this short time-span and also that would not take us too far north in the middle of winter. Our friends, Rick and Rita, were going to Hainan Island and asked us to go with them, but they were leaving on the 23rd, while our school was having a day of compulsory Christmas fun. We decided to explore the south of Guangxi province, making Bei Hai our main destination. We would get to Bei Hai as quickly as possible, then explore a few other places on the way back.
Guangxi is the next province along from Guangdong. It is known mainly for the magnificent scenery of Guilin and the river trip from there to Yangshuo. We have seen that area twenty years ago and would like to return some day, but felt it would be too cold at this time of the year. We were determined to stay as far south as we could.
There used to be a ferry all the way from Hong Kong to Wuzhou, but when I made enquiries I found this no longer operates. I was advised to take a ferry to Zhaoqing and then a bus to Wuzhou. We had to get up at 6.15 am on Friday morning and make our way to the China Ferry Terminal in Kowloon in time for the 8.30 ferry. After a pleasant four-hour trip we found there was a courtesy bus waiting to take us on the three-hour ride to Wuzhou. Nobody had informed us that this was included when we bought the tickets ˇV though they had mentioned a bus. It probably got watered down in the translation.
A man we met on the ferry told us there was an overnight coach to Nanning leaving from the Wuzhou Hotel, where the courtesy bus dropped us. He also said he could get us a 50% discount on the tickets, but became very evasive at the last minute and would not come with us to help get the tickets. So there was no discount, and it took us some time to find out exactly where to buy the tickets. We enquired inside the hotel, and were eventually directed to the car park below, where we found the little old men who sold bus tickets.
We had about six hours to explore Wuzhou, so we left our luggage with the old men and set off to see the town. We had passed through on our way to Yangshuo in 1985 but hadn't really seen the place. It was a pleasant surprise to see the old streets filled with markets and local eating-houses. We couldn't resist snacking at several of these, the best being delicious freshly-made chee cheong farn. There were a lot of restaurants serving dog-meat hotpot, a popular specialty of this region. These were generally packed with exuberant locals, but we resisted the temptation to join them in this delicacy. Instead we thought we would take a walk to find the Western Bamboo Temple, which served Buddhist vegetarian food for lunch. Of course it was too late in the day for lunch, but we thought we would check whether this food was also available in the evenings. We got varying opinions on this matter from different people we asked on the way, sometimes even from the same person. We continued the walk anyway as it gave us a clear destination, and we could easily find somewhere else for dinner if the vegetables didn't eventuate. Finally, a man we had asked directions from earlier caught up with us in his car and told us the temple would definitely not have vegetarian food in the evening, but he would take us to a good vegetarian restaurant nearby. Sure enough he dropped us a few minutes down the road outside a big wooden barn of a place that looked something like a temple. There was a local tour group going in at the time we arrived, so we followed them in and were given a table in a separate area from the group, where there was only one other table of diners. We were given a menu, which clearly identified the place as a vegetarian restaurant, and which listed a wide range of vegetable and mock-meat dishes. However, on investigating the dishes gathering at the other table, as one tends to do when dining in China, we discovered they were eating fish and real meat. So it was a vegetarian restaurant for those who wanted it to be, but a normal one for the more carnivorous customers (i.e. most Chinese).
We ended up ordering two vegetarian dishes, greens with mushrooms and an excellent lo han chai, as well as a pork and yam dish which has always been a favourite of mine. The servings were huge, especially after we had done so much snacking on the way, and we decided to have the vegetarian leftovers packed to take with us and ask someone to heat them up for us the next day.
After a long walk around the city, getting lost a few times, we found our way back to the Wuzhou Hotel and waited for the overnight bus in the lobby, which was comfortable enough, apart from a very irritating mechanical Santa Claus doing an endless rotating dance to a repetitive disco beat. It was a bit like being in a Werner Herzog film.
When we boarded the bus we found it had no seats, but consisted of bunk beds, set out in three rows along the centre and sides. We had to take our shoes off at the door and keep them in plastic bags. Everything was very clean and sparkling new, and we just hoped the locals would get the message that this was not an appropriate place to carry out the usual practice of spitting on the floor. We were supplied with warm quilts for the night, and after the noisy Cantonese babble declined we slept well, arriving early in the morning at the Phoenix Hotel in Nanning. Normally the trip takes about six hours, but presumably this bus takes a slower route, otherwise we would have arrived at about 4 a.m. We later found that this bus was cheaper than the day buses, perhaps because it avoids some of the expressway tolls.
We asked a few people about where to get a bus to Bei Hai. It sounded too complicated, so we headed for the nearby train station to investigate taking a train instead. Just as we got there a bus arrived from nowhere, announcing they were heading for Bei Hai. Unbelievable timing! Three hours later, after yet another comfortable ride, we arrived at our destination, about twenty-five hours after leaving Hong Kong. It was time to find a hotel and have a shower. The Lonely Planet recommended the Taoyuan Dajiudian, just across the street from the bus station. Unfortunately they were talking about a different bus station than the one we arrived at, so after wandering around in circles for a while we took a motorcycle taxi there. A bit of bargaining (we promised to stay three nights) got us the best of three rooms we checked at the price listed in Lonely Planet (70 yuan).
We spent Christmas Day exploring the town of Bei Hai. There was not much of a Christmas atmosphere, despite a few signs at the big hotels. The new Gofar International Paris Hotel had a large ˇ§Marry Christmasˇ¨ sign over its entrance, which did actually become ˇ§Merry Christmasˇ¨ by Boxing Day, so somebody must have put them straight. Fortunately we didn't come across any more mechanical Santa Clauses rotating their hips. Our Christmas lunch was at an atmospheric restaurant with bamboo walls and floors. We had our own little room where we could watch the passing pedestrians and bicycles.
The hotel did not give us a key. Instead a lady on our floor would open the door for us whenever we wanted to go in. We were actually supposed to show her our little Hotel Passport, but this took some getting used to and we generally left it in the room. This got us into trouble on the third day, when there was a different lady who didn't know who we were.
On Sunday we took a bus to Bei Hai's famous Silver Beach. There was supposed to be a 25 yuan entrance fee, but it must have been waived out of season. As soon as we arrived, swarms of ladies in conical hats approached us selling strings of pearls. We've had differing opinions about whether or not they are genuine, but Yoong bought several anyway. The ladies would attack them with knives to prove they were the real thing, but it's hard to imagine buying genuine pearls for the prices they eventually went down to.
There were quite a few people on the beach, as it was a Sunday and it really was a very impressive stretch of sand. Opposite the beach were several hotels and resorts of all shapes and sizes, with names like Hawaii and Haiti. There was also a long row of seafood restaurants trying to drag in customers. We were skeptical about such places and thought we'd see what was offered at the Beach Hotel, which seemed to be the best one around. It even rated an official street sign.
We met the first Caucasian we had seen on this trip, an Englishman who has a factory in Shenzhen. He had promised his Chinese partner that they would speak to the first foreigner they met, so we had a short conversation. They were staying in the Beach Hotel, but could not tell us what the restaurant was like as they had not eaten there.
We spent an hour in the Business Centre catching up on our email, then decided to try the restaurant. They had an English menu, which included an introductory section describing the restaurant and its chef in glowing terms, and in very fractured English. Fortunately, they were better at cooking than at English Composition. It was quite a memorable meal. We had a dish called ˇ§Chicken with hotˇ¨, which turned out to be a Szechuan-style dish with chillies. The chicken was mainly skin and bones but it was very tasty. The highlight was a fried eggplant platter, beautifully presented and exquisite in taste. Our other selection was tofu topped with slices of fish, also excellent in taste and presentation. We thought it would be worth making the trip to Silver Beach again the next day, just so we could try some more of the dishes at this wonderful restaurant. When we walked back along the beach we met the Shenzhen couple again and recommended their hotel's restaurant to them. They had eaten at one of the tourist-trap restaurants, which sounded good but over-priced.
After spending most of the day at Silver Beach we went back to explore the town further. Having eaten so well for lunch we decided to see what the Gofar Paris Hotel had to offer. We had actually tried to go there for Christmas dinner the night before, but the restaurant was closed for the hotel's own private party. It turned out to be a dim-sum meal, packed with locals. We took several dishes from the passing trolleys, with no idea of the cost. Given the number of diners we didn't think it would be too exorbitant. The dishes were acceptable but nothing out of the ordinary, so we were quite happy to find that the cost was not much more than in the little street restaurants. To our surprise, when the bill came, the waiter placed a little pot of bamboo on our table. When we asked what this was about, he just answered ˇ§Mai tan (Bill),ˇ¨ in a tone suggesting that it's perfectly normal for the bill to be accompanied by a bamboo decoration. I'd have to say that this was the only really memorable aspect of the meal. We have yet to find a Yum Cha restaurant as good as the ones in Melbourne, though admittedly those come at a much higher price.
After dinner we walked to a nearby park and found that there was a Cantonese Opera show in progress. The locals signaled to us to sit on some little plastic stools and we watched an engaging duet by a man and woman in colourful costumes, followed by a man dressed in ordinary clothes, who sang for about twenty minutes, using sheet music which kept blowing off the music stand. His performance was actually the best singing we heard all evening. He later talked to us and we found he was just visiting his home-town, and actually lived in Australia ˇV in West Footscray of all places!
During each performance, members of the audience would get up and go to a flower-seller sitting at the side, pay two yuan for a bunch of flowers, offer them to the performers, then place them on a table in front of the stage. Presumably the success of the performers was judged by the size of the mountain of flowers that accumulated during their act. The lady next to Yoong prompted her to get me to contribute to the flower pile. I think I got as much applause as the performers. The spectacle of a kweilo offering flowers was probably as exotic a sight to this audience as the Chinese opera was to us.
At the end of each act, the flowers were quickly returned to the flower-seller, to be sold again during the next performance. Presumably this is how the performers get paid for their work. The show was still in full swing when we decided to call it a night. We heard that a performance takes place every night except when the weather is too cold or wet. For some reason, Tuesday was recommended as the best night to come.
Next day we did a bus-ride around the town, intending to get off at the fish-market, but realizing too late that we had already passed it. We stayed on the bus until it returned to the stop where we had picked it up, leaving the bus driver bemused at the strange sight of the crazy foreigners taking a trip to nowhere. Taking the local buses is actually a good way to see a wider area of the town, except when they are packed to the brim with sweaty passengers. We then took another bus back to Silver Beach. It was quite a different scene, with hardly anybody on the beach apart from the pearl-sellers. The weekend was over and the weather had turned chilly, with a cold north wind blowing. We found out later that it was no better in Hong Kong, which had recorded that day as the coldest in 43 years. We were pleased to get out of the cold into the Beach Hotelˇ¦s restaurant. We had planned to order a boneless duck dish that we had noticed on the menu the day before, but the waiter tried to steer us away from this to a steamed chicken which was their specialty. We compromised and had half of each. No problem. In China, if you want half a dish you pay half the price. The chicken was indeed very good, It's probably all free range here, certainly tastier than the chicken back home. We ordered a different eggplant dish, tempting as it was to stick with the superb one we had already tried. According to the menu, it was eggplant and fish, but there was no fish in sight. Obviously something went wrong in the translation. It was, however, very much to my taste.
Back in town we found a lovely old park and wandered around market streets which surprised us at every turn. We stocked up on peanuts and local delicacies such as sugared dried marrow and preserved olives.
In Nanning we stayed at the Yinglan Hotel, which must have been upgraded since Lonely Planet was there. It was clearly labeled in English and there were pictures of the various types of rooms available. We decided to stay one night and get the night bus back to Wuzhou, which would give us plenty of time to see the sights. Nanning has been described (both by Lonely Planet and Chinese travelers on the internet) as a bland city with few sights of interest, but we found it had the same fascinating street life common to all Chinese cities. After settling in to the hotel we did a long walk to the Guangxi Provincial Museum, which boasts the worldˇ¦s largest collection of bronze drums, not one of our major interests, but mildly interesting anyway. The nicest part was the rear-garden where we saw examples of houses from the Dong and Miao minorities. A group of young people in tribal costumes were performing their traditional dances, turning them on and off as the tourists came and went.
On the way back we walked through an enormous restaurant with a vast array of food, none of which looked interesting enough for us to try. We felt much more at home with a little restaurant around the corner from our hotel where you could choose your live fish from a tank. We had one steamed, with side dishes of greens and ma po tofu which were the usual very generous servings despite requests for the smallest size possible. In the more touristy places they tell you that they have to weigh the fish before they can give you a price, and you inevitably end up being over-charged. This friendly local restaurant had two sizes of fish, either big or small, the big ones having a fixed price of 15 yuan (under A$3), without any of the weighing nonsense. The meal was so delicious we went back the next night for another fish, a different style of tofu and a dish of fresh mushrooms with pork. Along with the superb meals at Bei Hai's Beach Hotel, these were some of the best meals we've ever had in our travels, including the highly-priced restaurants of France.
On our second day in Nanning we took a bus to the Qingxin Shan Scenic Area, a large park with lakes and pagodas and the longest wind-rain bridge in the world, constructed entirely of bamboo. We opted to walk all the way rather than take transport but we did share a taxi back out with another couple, rather than walk back along the rather tedious road to the bus stop. Back in town, there was still time to see more of the sights so we walked to People''s Park, a huge park not far from the city centre, with an old fort, more lakes and lots of people sitting around playing mahjong, cards and Chinese chess.
When we had gone to book our overnight bus tickets at the Phoenix Hotel, the girl at the desk greeted us in English. We soon found we were talking at cross-purposes and getting nowhere, until Yoong tried speaking to her in Cantonese and proper communication began. It turned out that the night before we left Nanning was the last time the bus would leave from the Phoenix Hotel. It would now be leaving from a brand new bus station miles away in the middle of nowhere. This type of thing is known as ˇ§progressˇ¨. We picked up our baggage from the hotel in plenty of time to get there by local bus which took over an hour, but at least cost only one yuan each. Others were not so fortunate. We found that the local travelers were much more confused than we were about the move to the new bus station, and there were lots of angry comments about how difficult it was to find and how much it had cost for taxis to get to the place. Apparently it was going to get worse, as tickets would soon have to be bought in advance at the bus station, rather than at the Phoenix Hotel, necessitating an extra trip to the outer suburbs.
Travelling with a group of Cantonese can be noisy at the best of times, but the excitement level was raised to a fever pitch due to the new arrangements. All the swearing and obscenities went right over my head of course, but Yoong bore the brunt of all the surrounding vulgarity. She had a particularly vociferous lady in the bunk on the other side from me, who chewed gum loudly when she wasn't shouting at her friends a couple of bunks away. The hubbub did settle down eventually and we managed to sleep.
When we arrived in Wuzhou at about 6.30 a.m. we found it was not only cold, but also raining, almost the first rain we have experienced since we arrived in Hong Kong last August. We decided not to stay, but to take the courtesy bus back to Zhaoqing, where the weather might be better. We braved the light rain to go out and find some breakfast in the little eating-places that were just opening up around the market streets, then went back to Wuzhou Hotel to pick up the bus. For some reason, we had to pay 10 yuan each this time for the ˇ§freeˇ¨ bus ˇV something to do with the rising price of petrol, but not everybody seemed to pay, so we were not sure whether we were conned or not. Anyway, it was a small price to pay for a bus that had been a pleasant surprise in the first place.
It didn't rain in Zhaoqing but the weather had turned very cold. The bus dropped us at the ferry terminal from which we would be departing on Saturday, two days later, so we looked for the Flower Tower Hotel nearby. It seemed to have disappeared, but there was a Jin Ye Hotel on the other side of the road, where we negotiated two nights at 100 yuan per night, the most expensive, but also the nicest, of the three rooms we had stayed in. Certainly the hot shower was welcome after all the traveling. There were a lot of diners in the restaurant on the third floor, so we couldn't resist trying the ubiquitous Yum Cha, which turned out to be rather mediocre. The yam-cake was nice but cold, and when we asked if they had a hot one, they micro-waved one for us, which pretty much destroyed its texture. We found far better food in the street restaurants.
It was quite late in the day by the time we walked into town to see the famous lake. We were about to cross the road to Paifang Square, at the southern tip of the lake, when we were approached by a motorcycle-taxi driver, who offered to take us around the lake for 40 yuan. We thought it was a bit late and a bit too cold, but he went down to 30 yuan, showed us a map of all the places he would take us and we weakened, as we knew we would not have any other time to explore the lake. It turned out that, apart from a couple of stops on the way, he really only took us to the entrance to the park on the other side of the lake, where we had to pay a hefty entrance fee of 50 yuan each. Of course we should have asked in the first place if there would be any extra costs involved. We could hardly expect our driver to volunteer this information. We were down to our last 100 yuan note, but decided we had better see the sights now that we had come this far already.
In Guangxi, entrance fees to scenic spots ranged from 2 to 8 yuan, but Guangzhou, being so close to Hong Kong, has had more experience in gouging money out of tourists. We gave our last 100 to the lady in the ticket office, who looked at it suspiciously and called someone over to check it. In the meantime we were ushered in through the entrance and headed for the Prosperity Temple. We were quite used to people scrutinizing our 100 yuan notes carefully as counterfeit notes are in circulation, but they normally did it in front of us. On this occasion, however, the lady came running up and calling out to us when we were already in the temple and asked us to exchange it for another one. We knew quite well that the note we gave her was genuine as we had got it from our HSBC bank in Hong Kong. If the note she held in her hand was a fake, which it probably was, then she had substituted it for the one we had given her. As it was, we had no more notes to give her. She asked our driver to exchange it for her, and he seemed about to agree, which alerted us to the likelihood that he was in on the scam as well. No doubt he would later prove to us that the note was a fake and demand compensation. He had already offered to lend us money if we needed it for the boat, until we could change it later. The lady continued to insist that we exchange the note, until Yoong pointed out that we were arguing about money in front of the god of Prosperity ˇV not a wise thing to be doing. We were saved by the fact that we were able to be so positive that our note was genuine. No doubt the trick sometimes succeeds when people can not be sure where they got their note from and would not want the poor ticket-lady to be held responsible, despite her failure to check it properly in their presence.
Once she knew we would not budge, she took the note to a different machine for checking so she could save face and that was the last we heard of the matter. Our driver acted cursorily as our guide for a short time and then left us to our own devices.
Before we went in, we knew there would be another cost if we wished to take a boat, but could not get an answer when we asked the cost. We were told we would have to ask the boatman. It turned out that the boats were clearly listed as 25 yuan per person, but we were told that there were no passengers so we would need to charter one for 300 yuan. We declined the offer, even when our driver ran up to us and told us he had managed to negotiate it down to 100 yuan. We did not have enough cash anyway, but even if we had, we felt we had seen enough tricks for one day.
We walked across bridges out to various islands and climbed the limestone crag behind the temple. It was pleasant enough but did not warrant the expensive admission price. When we had seen enough, the driver took us back, stopping at a couple of souvenir shops where he hoped to pick up some commission. He also recommended a fish restaurant to us, but, of course, it turned out to be the rip-off tourist type seafood restaurant that we had long ago learned to avoid. Instead we later found a decent-looking hotpot restaurant, full of local diners, which advertised a chicken hotpot for 20 yuan. Even here, there was an attempt at the tourist tricks endemic to this town. The restaurant man tried to steer us away from their advertised special and upgrade to a ˇ§better qualityˇ¨ chicken for 30 yuan. When we showed signs of walking out he quickly offered to give us a very nice chicken for 20 yuan, no doubt the same one we would have got for 30. We accepted and enjoyed a delicious meal that was perfect for a winter night.
On Friday, the last day of the year, we took a bus to Dinghushan (Bus 21, not 15 as in Lonely Planet). This is a beautiful scenic area about 20 km from Zhaoqing. Once again, there was the exorbitant entrance cost of 50 yuan, but we knew this area should not be missed.
We had managed to change money that morning for the first time since we arrived in mainland China, but it was not as easy as we had expected. Our hotel directed us to a bank across the road, which had no foreign exchange, but which told us there was a Bank of China further up the road. We tried another bank on the way, where the teller said we would have to go to their head office to change money, and assured us that the same would apply to the Bank of China. We eventually found a branch of the Bank of China, more or less where the first bank had indicated, after being misdirected by various people. We had no trouble changing money there, though a member of staff did have to run across the road somewhere to make a photocopy of Yoong's Hong Kong ID card.
There were three main sights in Dinghushan and lots of minor ones. One was a waterfall area, where we were supposed to breathe in the ˇ§anionsˇ¨, something we both admit ignorance of, Baodong Park, which has the worldˇ¦s largest cooking vessel (it's in the Guiness Book of Records) and great views over the valley, and the large Qingyun Temple. Along the way we had some tofu fa ˇV the usual sweet type for me, and a very tasty savoury version, which was new to us, for Yoong. It was my first food for the day as I was recovering from an upset stomach. I blame the local specialty ˇV zongzi, the triangular pork and rice snack in a lotus leaf - that we had tried the day before.
There were no celebrations for New Year's Eve. Only Chinese New Year counts here. We watched a film on television (Heartbreakers) and, in between, saw glimpses of celebrations in Hong Kong and around the world, somewhat muted because of the disastrous tsunamis that have devastated much of the South-East Asian region. We also saw a particularly annoying ad for IXUS cameras repeated twice in every commercial break, of which there were far too many for one film.
I am writing this on the ferry as we make our way back to Hong Kong, loaded up with preserved fruits, sweets, CDs and DVDs of films not yet released in the cinema, but without the Tai-chi sword Yoong was looking for everywhere we went. Much as we enjoy life in Hong Kong, China is so much nicer in many ways. There is so much to see, even just in the limited area we were able to explore, and the food is wonderful, whether you eat in the best hotels or with the locals in the endless variety of specialist street restaurants. We were surprised to find the food was generally much better than a lot of food we have had in Hong Kong at about five times the cost. In general, people were welcoming, though the stares we experienced 20 years ago are still there and the cries of ˇ§Kweiloˇ¨ show that the locals are still not used to foreigners in their midst.
As for costs, we spent about 2,300 yuan, on hotels, transport, meals and shopping, not including the return trip by ferry from Hong Kong (which was HK$740 in total), altogether about A$550 for eight days, less than it would have cost to stay in Hong Kong, considering that we don't have to pay rent when we vacate our hotel.
I have to say, though, that travelling in China would have been much more difficult if I was not accompanied by a reasonably fluent Cantonese-speaker, and could never have been such a rich experience without Yoongˇ¦s enthusiasm for the local food and culture. This trip has whetted our appetite, and we will be back in China again as soon as we get the chance.