Friday, March 13, 2009 – Tour to the Rice Terraces at Longsheng, China

Woke up with the 6:30am wake-up call. Showered. Went down for breakfast. First we went to the 'western' restaurant. While Sue loaded up on fruit and yogurt I got the word from the maitre de that we were only entitled to the Chinese breakfast. Western breakfast is $10 more per person. Sue gets up and we're off to the Chinese restaurant. Only rice dishes here, but Sue picks up some muffins and croissants. I have coffee – too early to push food down. It's raining outside. I wonder whether we're even going to go. We come down from our room at 8:20 and a big Chinese guy asks us if we're Longji – no, we're 'NIKKEL'. He looks a bit worried. We explain that we're looking for a tour to Longji. Oh, we might be the right people. Sue shows him our receipt. Yes, we're the ones he was looking for. I get a couple of hotel umbrellas and we're off. But he's only driving us to the bus. He drives across town and soon a big bus pulls up next to us. An English-speaking guide (you can call me Joe) introduces himself and we get on the bus. Lots of Chinese people on here – some say hello. We're the only non-Chinese. Tour guide will talk Chinese for 40 minutes, then he'll come to us and give us the English version. There's no heat on the bus. We're wearing everything we've got along on this trip. So we ride on in silence, listening to the rumbling of the engine, the patter of rain on the windows, and the incomprehensible babble of our Chinese guide as he brizzles on into his mike, ending each cadence with "ah!" He seems to have a way with his audience though. He pauses occasionally, presumably after asking a question, and the passengers volunteer answers. There is much laughter. He's probably a very good tour guide. After an hour we stopped for a pee break. No doors in front of any of the stalls in the women's toilets – only squat holes, bring your own paper. Then another 45 minutes and we arrived at the Yao Village. This Yao village is located at the foot of a mountain with a beautiful river zig-zagging around it. The main attraction here is the custom of this particular ethnic minority. Long hair is a local tradition. A Hongyao woman can only cut her hair at 16 years old, symbolizing the fact she is an adult who can look for a lover. The hair cut off isn't thrown away, but is rather kept by the grandmother. When the woman marries, the hair is made into an ornamental headdress and brought to the husband's home as a souvenir. We were ushered into a big open wooden log house capable of seating several hundred tourists. There were only about 60 of us, and only 4 Westerners. Now the long-haired women, dressed in colorful red vests, sang and danced for us. It was cold in the hall. We all got a cup of rice tea. We were invited onstage to dance with the women and take photos and get pinched in the butt (symbol that they like you!). Then some serious haranguing began. As we filed out and were led down a path and across a swinging bridge back to our bus, the women tried their best to sell us postcards, little knit wallets, or fake silver bracelets. It got annoying rather quickly. As we walked across the bridge a costumed old lady ahead of me suddenly pulled out her cell phone and chatted with a friend – a little incongruous with the whole traditional get-up! On the other side of the bridge we closed our umbrellas and once again boarded our bus. A short drive on up the hill we were ushered out of our bus and transferred to smaller shuttle vans which would take us up the steep switchbacks of Longji. The vans parked near the top. From here we would hike a further 20 minutes up some steep (and wet) stone steps leading to the mountain village of Zhuang. We could see the vast region of rice terraces stretching layer upon layer, coiling around from the base of Longji (the dragon's backbone) Mountain to its summit. The Dragon's Backbone Rice Terraces covers an area of 66 square kilometers and spans an altitude between 300 and 1100 meters. The rain continued on and off. We walked with our umbrellas up and wondered whether any of this would actually be worth the trek. Surely our photos would be mostly fog and mist. After a 20-minute climb we reached the tourist town of Zhuang. Here the buildings are made of wood without nails. In fact, I watched as a couple of carpenters were hand-planing logs into 4x4s and chiseling out the corner joints of the timberframe boards. This is where we would have our lunch stop. Our group was herded into one of the restaurants; bamboo rice and bamboo chicken were recommended menu items. That's what we ordered. Soon two bamboo tubes were delivered to our table. They'd been hollowed out and stuffed, one with rice and one with chicken, and then steamed over a pot. The 'waitress' opened the split tubes for us and stood back to watch us go at it. Hmmmm. Chopsticks? The chicken dish had chicken bones, skin, head, innards, everything all cut up and cooked and lying there steaming in front of us. It looked like we'd be eating rice today. Sue took a couple of mouthfuls and spit out some stones. The next mouthful of rice included a few bamboo slivers – that was the last straw. We asked for our bill. All the restaurant people and the other (Chinese) members of our group as well as our tour leader seemed very concerned that we weren't enjoying our meal. We just wanted to get out of there. We paid our 80 Yuan ($16) and decided to go see the top of the rice terraces without food in our stomachs. Up we went. There's only one way here, and that's up. There were quite a few 'hotels' and hostels in the small village – it looked like a very popular 'Lonely Planet' backpackers kind of place. We reached the top. The view? Stunning. Very impressive. It seemed that every square inch of the hillside was terraced and under cultivation. This is the famous Seven Stars with Moon rice terrace. We took lots of photos. We asked other tourists to take photos of the two of us, hoping that they would be able to capture the incredible beauty of the terraces with us in the foreground. Some of our group slowly trickled up to our viewing platform. And now the weather was breaking too. The mist seemed to 'blow out' every once in a while (something like our experience at Machu Picchu a few years ago) and then we'd have glorious views of the bright green terraces. Snap. Snap. Click. Click. More photos. It turned out to be not so bad a day for picture-taking after all. We started our way back down the hill. We passed some of the small tourist shops along the way. This was obviously not a good day for the vendors – everyone looked rather laid back and resigned to the fact that the rain would keep away the customers. We got down to the shuttle parking lot and waited for the rest of the group. Our guide suggested that we take an earlier shuttle down to the bus and wait for the group down there. We did that. Again, the hairpin corners and sheer drops on the edge of our road made the drive down interesting. Once we reached the bottom and disembarked Sue was again accosted by those long-haired women selling silver at the bus parking lot. They were very aggressive and even followed us onto the bus where we sat and waited for our group. Several other group members, about 10 of us in total, waited on that freezing cold bus. After an hour of waiting the rest of our group arrived in their shuttle. Two Chinese women sitting in the back of our bus, behind us, let loose. Our poor guide! He came back to try to explain, but quickly was chased back to the front by the shrieks of these two women. They seemed very angry that we had had to sit here and wait for the others. And they didn't let up. There would be no more 'guide-talk' on this trip – I don't think our guide dared to say another word. Even the passengers in the front half of the bus didn't say a word – didn't even turn their heads to look at the Furies in the back of the bus. For the next few hours we rode home in silence. We arrived back in Guilin during rush hour, after 6:00pm. Our guide explained that he would put us in a taxi since the bus would not be able to navigate back to the Sheraton in this traffic. Our taxi delivered us back to the hotel at around 7:00pm. We both took a long hot bath and tried to thaw out. An interesting day; one we won't soon forget.