Along the Way from Dali to Yangshuo, China
Traveling in China in 1990 was a far different experience from traveling in today’s China. In 1990, I traveled the summer with two college-aged friends I had met in 1988 when I first taught in China.
August 13, 1990
I’ve turned a year older in the very picturesque town of Dali in Yunnan Province. The boys gave me some cute little gifts. I bought myself a special Dali blue tie-dyed skirt and top that fits well, but turns my skin blue. My birthday dinner was Hungarian Goulash, the best I’ve had. Because Dali is small and gets a lot of foreign tourists, there are some good restaurants here that have learned and copied as best they can recipes from homesick foreigners craving familiar food.
This is a big minority area too, so we went out to the Sunday Shapin Market where the boys were a particular hit with the local Bai women. They bought tie-dyed vests and matching hats, necklaces and bracelets that make them look like tourists.
August 16, 1990
The bus ride from Dali to Kunming may not have been the longest I’ve taken in China, but it was definitely the bumpiest. Sometimes a work crew was only yards in front of us working on the road. There was no heavy equipment, only dozens of men breaking rocks with pickaxes like a chain gang.
Kunming is a beautiful city. I think the bright blue skies, cool air, and wide, uncrowded streets help to make it so. I’m trying to mentally prepare myself for our 33 hour train trip to Guilin.
August 18, 1990
I suppose that my memories of this long summer trip will be divided into small moments and poignant encounters. I can’t get the beautiful face of a beggar boy out of my mind. He was lying on the sidewalk next to the railway station fast asleep. Maybe he was about 11 years old. Both he and his clothes were absolutely filthy. I assumed the bulge in his stomach was from malnutrition. The boys and I had just come from eating dinner where I had complained about my chicken, cut inedibly into what another tourist had called “chainsaw chicken” due to the way Chinese cut up whole chickens. How that little boy would have loved what I had left behind! I felt ashamed.
Later, when the train made a stop at a small station, an old man with one leg and one arm approached my window on one crutch. I’d been repeatedly warned by my friends not to give anything to beggars who are, they assured me, mostly just pretending. I handed him a banana. He sent me a grateful thank you with his eyes and hungrily proceeded to tear off the banana skin with his teeth.
Later on, something was announced on the loudspeakers in the train, which the boys translated as “Watch out for your things on the small tables by the windows.” At the precise moment they finished the translation, some food zipped off several tables. The boys said street urchins did it, but I was sure they must have been magicians.
For some of the ride, the train was thankfully not overly crowded. I went out for a change of space to an area between the cars of the train. One other weary traveler was there, sitting on a piece of newspaper on the floor. I had noticed before that Chinese don’t like to sit directly on floors or even grass. I was wearing jeans and just sat down on the floor. The man kindly reached for his newspaper seat, took off another page, and silently offered it to me. We sat together in that small space with our own thoughts for quite a long time. Too bad we couldn’t talk.
There was another problem to overcome on this train trip. We were able to buy hard sleeper tickets for the boys, but I could only get a hard seat ticket. The boys were willing to sleep together in one bed and give me the other bed, but the railway clerks were known for coming around at night to check the number of feet sticking out of each sleeper. This required some intrigue as we carefully planned our timing so that they wouldn’t be caught sleeping in the same bed. Pure luck was with us.
August 22, 1990
We spent only a little time in Guilin and then went to Yangshuo where the boys were interested in doing some amateur spelunking in one of the many caves there. I was glad to send them off with a guide and a young English girl whom I’d met because the hotel put us together in one room. Alison was pretty, bold, and always in third gear. She went from spelunking to a long swim down the Li River with nary a breath in between. The boys enjoyed her thoroughly and told me they had never met such an active girl.
Most foreign tourist boats go down the Li River from Guilin down to Yangshuo with fresh fish caught, and served while on board. We took a less-used tourist boat ride from Yangshuo up to Guilin without the fish feast. The scenery, however, was just as magnificent as the looming karst formations reached out of the river. During this ride, certainly one of the most picturesque and unique boat rides anywhere in the world, Richard read a book and Russell fell into an exhausted heap.
Tags: Dali; Kunming; Yangshuo; Guilin; train culture in China, Travel
