再见桂林

We said goodbye to Guilin in the rain. It was a sweet farewell to the first place we have called home on our travels…we have lived in Guilin for three weeks and we needed to stop for a while…

My rucksack is heavier (Mandarin textbooks!), my butt cheeks are tighter (although more from the 70 miles of walking I’ve done in the last week than the Tai Chi sessions : -) …and something about me is lighter. Our wedding anniversary was a brilliant day for me and Theo, we had fun, took risks (on our wild scooter ride up and down our local street) and wrote a cracking little song to the tune of ‘Jolene’ which we think may make us our fortune!

…as I walked to the park on that last morning I am delighted to say my Edelweiss man was down by the lake practising another song. It took me a while to figure it out, but I’m fairly confident it was ‘Doh, Ray, Me!’

Why? Was he auditioning for a role in the Sound of Music, or had he got the part already and was rehearsing? Did he have an exam, did he just love those songs or, as Theo reckons, could he be looking to get a part in an Englebert Humperdinck biopic? (Englebert sang Edelweiss apparently and I’ve included this slightly obscure fact because watching Theo’s delight at saying ‘Englebert Humperdinck’ over and over again in the station this morning was priceless).

My sweet Edelweiss man and his beautiful, brave, and slightly out of tune voice will live with me for a long time… And when I get my act together, I’m going to put some of his best clips up on YouTube, he deserves to be heard a little more widely!

There were a lot of goodbyes on that last day, Moulin, one of my Mandarin teachers, came to the park to pick me up after Tai Chi. I was a little in love with my Tai Chi group by now…they had even understood my three sentences earlier in the week, which elevated them to levels of near saintliness, and then they insisted I went in the middle when we were doing Tai Chi so whichever direction we were facing I could see what to do!

It was lovely having Moulin translating – I learned that the most twinkly member of the group was an 80 year old retired professor of calligraphy, and when she told them I was leaving the next day I found I had been added to their WeChat group faster than any of our Tai Chi moves – I can’t wait to see what they post…

And now here I am preparing to say goodbye to a China I didn’t expect and I have grown to love and there is so much I haven’t shared with you. The experience has been a really full one and even my hopes and expectations have been trampled in a stampede of beauty and awesomeness. (…and at this point I am wondering if I should let myself notice that that extraordinary Buddhist temple I was in last Sunday might gently try and remind me that expectation is what leads to suffering… or not? I think I will let that sit for a while).

I am wondering whether to attempt to describe some of what we have seen and experienced or whether it would simply be better if you came yourselves? We will probably be coming back in early April so we could meet up maybe…?

But, just in case you don’t make it, I will write a little more…

I think the place to start is the connections with other students willing to put themselves through four hours of Mandarin study a day, plus two to three hours of homework.

On mine and Rosa’s first night we were taken out for our welcome dinner (rather nice touch thank you very much!) and there were two other people who had arrived on the same day. It turned out they were both vegetarian and Jacek started a WeChat group (What’s App for China) called “Vegetarian Guilin’ and our little group, plus Theo and Pam, have been all over Guilin eating delicious things together and have gotten quite close in the process.

Pablo has many strings to his Spanish bow and lived in Bristol for three years as a student, he was a Bath Hunt Sab and even lived as a Buddhist monk for a short while. Pam is a retired legal assistant from the US who now teaches English to Chinese children online, and Jacek writes apps for fun and is a whizz at all things computer. He comes from Poland and is managing to combine learning Mandarin whilst still supporting clients online.

Each of the people we met has a story, which was one of Pam’s deepest wisdoms from her own life. ‘It’s easy to judge’ she’d say, ‘but what’s the story?’ Pam does volunteer work with her church and has found herself asking ‘Why are they struggling to clean their house or keep a job?!’ ‘If you take time to ask, and listen to the answer, you will pretty much always see people are doing the best they can…’ That kind of thinking makes my heart warm and fuzzy…

Each one of our group was a person I would like to have close in my life and so many of the other people we met – our patient teachers, the incredible helpful and kind interns, the other students, fun and interesting, it was such a rich experience…

The first Friday we were in Guilin was the the day of the mid Autumn Festival, the second biggest Chinese festival and we wanted to make the most of it. There were no lessons and so a small group of us went out for the day, most of the festivities happened at night so we went to ‘Seven Stars Park’ first…we knew there were monkeys living there but it’s a big park so we weren’t sure we’d find them.

We figured ‘up’ was a good idea so we sweated our way up the little lumpy mountain. We were rewarded with spectacular views of Guilin and – the monkeys, just a few at first and then the mountainside was full of their playing and chattering. They were great to watch …and the big ones were a bit bloody scary so we kept closer together whenever one of them strolled by.

We stayed with the monkeys for most of the afternoon and then headed back down the little mountain to meet up with Jacek.

We wanted to immerse ourselves in any festivities taking place for the ‘yuè bing’, ‘moon cake’ festival and we thought one of the best places would be at the sun and moon pagodas by the lake. There was a very festive atmosphere in downtown Guilin – lots of street food and stalls, it was busy but relaxed and we ate deep fried banana rolled in coconut with salad cream dribbled on it (or tomato sauce, but that sounded gross :)…it was actually way more delicious than it sounds!

The sun and moon pagodas were fully lit in gold and silver and looked stunning, their reflections romantic in the still water. We meandered our way around the lake, once we’d worked out where the moon would rise from. We had learned a little about the stories behind the festival and not surprisingly the full moon holds a special significance for the moon cake festival and we wanted to watch it rise and see it’s reflection in the water. On the way round we were regularly interrupted by teenagers wanting photos with Rosa, she was shy about it at first but it’s actually lovely to have a small group of excited girls or boys want to take a picture with you because they think you are ‘piào liang’!

We sat and ate mooncakes at the waters edge and there she was, full and big emerging gently from a cloud behind the osmanthus trees Guilin is named after. We said a blessing for the 91 year old dad of one of the students who had died earlier that week, and it was time to go.

At CLI they are keen on enrichment so at weekends there are always activities and on the first weekend we went to an old village in the mountains where about 200 of the ethic minority Yao people live. There are over a million Yao people living north of Guilin in the mountains and along the rivers that snake through this incredible landscape. Their customs and beliefs (Taoist), after a turbulent history, are now respected and are an enriching part of this relaxed and beautiful area of China (…and I know there will be more to that reality if I can just learn this language, and then theirs!!)

It was a stunning place to live and their homes were picture perfect. There was a river at the bottom of the valley where we could swim and on the second day we were invited to watch traditional shoe making. The shoe making was interesting but it was the grandma making the shoes who was shiny! She wore beautiful clothes, was quick with her hands and laughed easily. She noticed and corrected any mistakes as we all tried our hand at weaving the rice straw, and she knew her way around a cell phone – grabbing a quick selfie with me before I had even got my phone out…

We swam in a waterfall, hiked up a mountain and played an epic few games of werewolf that weekend…it was fun and relaxing as well as spectacularly beautiful.

Summer is the events coordinator for CLI and she is fit dynamic, friendly and patient, each of the CLI teachers chooses an English name, probably so they don’t have to listen to us stumbling over their real names, and Summer’s name really suited her. We talked a little during the walk down the mountain, she was picking wild flowers for her home and I began to help. We talked about other places we could go and see…there was no trip planned for next weekend but she could help arrange something if we wanted?

Yes we did want! We had been touched by the little mountains of Guilin since we decide China was our route through and we really wanted to go and be inside the picture that’s on the front of our website – she knew exactly where that picture was taken and then she told me about her favourite show. She had been to see it six times… The director had been responsible for the opening ceremony at the Beijing  olympics – there were 500 people in the show and a lot of them were locals, fishermen and women from the villages – it sounded amazing but we didn’t even know if we could stay at that point so we put it in the box marked ‘I so want to do that!!’ and headed home…and yes after a week it already felt like home!

Study returned like a heavy weight but I was making (painful) progress and yes we could stay another week so the trip was on! It went up on the board and some of our gang joined up as well…

Our first stop next weekend was in Xingping, on the river Li, I bought a flower headband, I always buy things being sold by old women, tissues, incense, flowers, headdresses …if they are making the effort to sell it then I will make the effort to buy it (and then give it to Theo to wear because it suited him much better than me 🙂 …the flowers did smell amazing and we actually all took it in turns to wear the headdress as we walked down to get on a raft to go up the river. We took proper tourist photos of us with the backdrop that’s on the Chinese 20 Yuan note and after the journey, marred slightly for Theo by the electric motor on the raft, we got off and a butterfly landed on my flowers. It was so lovely to have it there and it stayed a good five minutes…

That afternoon we cycled along the Ulong river in the gentle warmth of the day and watched the sun set on the river – the sunlight reflecting on the water gets me every time! I love cycling (on the flat and downhills) and by the river there were so many flowers. The rice fields were turning yellow and even the piped in operatic music added a slightly weird but not unpleasant extra dimension. We had a meal in a down to earth and delicious little restaurant and then it was time to go the ‘Impressions of Sanjie Liu’…I want to tell you everything and nothing about that show…I’m still processing its effect on me…so for now I will hold that close and share one of my favourite moments of our whole time in China instead, and it happened on the last night of our stay.

We wanted to go back to the Buddhist cave temple we’d visited the previous Sunday to say thank you (for so many things!) …when we arrived the temple was closing so we were only allowed in to the first courtyard entrance to the caves and as we walked in one of the big monkeys from the mountain came walking purposefully across the roof tops. He jumped down, strolled into the temple and climbed up onto the altar and helped himself to a piece of fruit left as an offering. He looked like a regular visitor, I could almost see him thinking ‘I mean what are the Buddhists going to do…?’

…and so it ended, China.

I have such a different view of the country and the people now I’ve been here…we spend a lot of time in the two dimensional realm, on our phones or computers in one way or another, indeed we couldn’t have planned any of this trip without it nor be writing any of this down, but actually standing in that Buddhist Temple Cave, swimming in the mountain waterfall, avoiding the bloody big spiders webs in the bamboo trees (and their colourful inhabitants), doing Tai Chi in the park with a gang of 80 year olds, eating delicious new foods, taking baby steps towards learning a language, spending time in such beauty and seeing one of the most spectacular, powerful and moving musical shows I have ever seen, are what life’s about…and we have all had experiences like that in our lives, so what made it China?

We are subtle creatures we humans and we can pick up how something feels very quickly …we will never know it all but some of what I feel is likely to be right.

I am sitting on the train now reflecting on ‘China’ and I can still feel my slightly clumsy elephantness in the corridors of CLI, never quite understanding any of the Chinese said to me, having to think about every word before I said it but Joey, a teacher for both Rosa and I, was lovely to both of us – easily excited and fun to be with, only three years older than Rosa and a big fan of romantic movies (Titanic and Pride and Prejudice being right up there) – her best friend loves ‘Friends’ – hence her name, she was bright and bouncy and loved cocktails. Moulin had a great sense of humour, a motorbike and enough patience to keep going as my main teacher for three weeks…she brought me little bits of food, helped me write a song in Mandarin and was in fact the first language teacher I have had who helped me get in the freezing water/climb the vertical slope/face the past and speak a couple of words of a new language!

I loved all my long walks through Guilin, the streets populated with electric cars and scooters, there was always so much happening, tango in the underpasses, karaoke on the bridge, and on several occasions night time dance groups, practicing their routines and getting some late night fitness in.

I guess my day to day experience of China was one of people rubbing along together in a slightly more equal way, everyone’s music and fitness ideas being accommodated in the park, the quiet confidence to be themselves in every generation I interacted with. I cannot begin to understand the deeper levels of the complex organism that is Chinese society but I loved how visible and empowered the 60+ generation were and I loved how quiet electric scooters are (once I’d figured out that I couldn’t hear them coming and to be constantly vigilant 🙂 I now know that 52% of the worlds renewable energy is being generated by China and that adds a little hope to my life…these are simple things but I did see them and they will stay with me.

Thank you for letting us in China, I would like to come back and ‘brush up my Mandarin’ at some point in April if that’s okay, and in the meantime if you could just stop using quite so much plastic and sort out animal welfare I’d be eternally grateful!

And for those of you who can’t wait for the release of our hot single…

‘Guilin, Guilin, Guilin, Guilin,

Your humpy, bumpy mountains make me cry…

Your dumplings are beyond compare, There’s magic in the mountain air…’

(…and that’s all you’re getting for now 🙂 

PS – I really struggled with a title for this post so I’ve kept it simple – ‘Goodbye Guilin’ and I haven’t done much homework today so it’s in Mandarin…

PPS – the monkey helping itself to the fruit on the altar is the very last picture!