Nov 21 2001 - Travels with Purple Rose

Where do you start such a tale?

It was a dark and stormy night and the wolves were hunting. Perhaps not.

Bondi Beach by moonlight is a disappointment; full of traffic and kids. Lacks a certain something.

Temples lit by green floodlights on the top of vertical cliffs are not everyday sights. This has possibilities. Throw in a bit about local colour, eco-tourism and the likes and we could have a believable tale. Here goes.

Guilin is the tourist capital of China. This is rather unfortunate given that most of the sights that are pictured in the guidebooks are from Yangshuo, about 80 kilometres south of the aforementioned tourist capital. So for a weekend with Rose you obviously give Guilin a miss and head straight for the place with the real cliffs and temples on top of them.

Now these images are a bit hard to believe. You may have seen photographs and you will almost certainly have seen paintings of the “karst” country in this area. I do not have a decent geography book to hand but the name comes from some region of France and, it being French, it is obviously not up to the standard of this stuff. The rock is limestone and the erosion rate must have been phenomenal to make such shapes; one day I will read up about how the scenery was formed. It is O.K., I have not done it yet so you have escaped.

I digress. If you have not seen the pictures; imagine a child drawing mountains next to each other. You would get vertical or near vertical sides rising to a peak or tiny flat top then a gap with a flat piece of ground before the same happens again and again and again. Like a four year olds’ picture, the peaks tend to of a constant height in any locality but the height will vary between localities. Sometimes they are only 40 metres high, sometimes 250 metres. The density also varies; usually the gap between these lumps is greater than the width of the lump itself but not always, as you will find out later. This image is confused by the fact that you get in filling by the peaks behind.

So we arrive late and I think that we had better eat in the hotel. Being the last of the big spenders, I think that we got through 25 US Dollars. Out for a walk where we find tourist street with plenty of places still open with lots of westerners in them – yuh! Out of there to look at the aforementioned green temple. Thirty seconds of that and thirst is really beginning to bite. A local bar full of people laughing and playing cards – good. This was conveniently located between the Holiday Inn and the Hard Seat Café; the Hard Rock Café was 50 metres down the road. Actually the bar was so local that my rather pressing interest in beer was not getting across. Rose is in a none drinking phase so the urgency was not supported to the degree that I think is desirable in a travelling relationship. Fortunately I was rescued by what seemed to be suspiciously like a German backpacker who spoke some Chinese; I have nothing against the Germans but being rescued by a backpacker…

Anyway an early night and up with the (very late) lark. Rose buys breakfast (12 US) and we hire bikes for the day (1US each) and wander off to find a ferry. The ferries can be a bit tricky, the water level is low and you do not know what is running, at least until after you have bought your tickets. We asked for a place 25k down river; the ticket sellers took one look at my beer gut and sold us tickets for somewhere 8 kilometres down the river – at the same price. Anyway, we did not go where we were off to anyway so on to the boat and get comfortable with a pot of tea.

We set off past a bamboo boat (five poles wide with bent up ends) or several. Some of the fishermen on these boats are feeding their cormorants. Now you might not associate fishermen with feeding fish-eating birds but this is true. During the day the fishermen feed the cormorants with little fish and in the evening the favour is repaid. The cormorants do actually go and catch (bigger) fish and bring them back to the fisherman. I am not kidding. Now is this exploitation of the cormorant, the fishermen (unlikely) or symbiosis? Personally it still looks like exploitation of the fish to me.

We did not get far; about 400 metres in fact when we stopped and banged around with many other flat-bottomed, people carrying, overcrowded death traps. (Oh got carried away I am afraid, the boats are flat bottomed but that is because the river is rarely more than a metre deep and often less; the boats draw about 30 centimetres.) There were loads of them and I mean loads; perhaps 50 in the 400 metres that we travelled.

Why had we stopped? Well it appeared that there were a lot of men in uniforms at the end of the boat. Now I see no reason to tangle with men in uniforms (women on the other hand..) especially when their hips bulge more then mine on one side. So we admire the junks, take a few photies and do a bit of general purpose hanging around. This is not African hanging around, just casual stuff; you can see movement, detect conversation and even questions – rank amateurs in fact.

Two men in different uniforms suddenly reappear, board the boat and we are off. They were carrying buckets of vegetables – part of lunch!

Down the river we went. We seemed to share the viewing deck with half a dozen French folks; the fifty or so Chinese seemed to stay downstairs drinking tea and eating a lot of the time.

The trip was relatively uninteresting – beautiful views, fabulous butterflies, bathing water buffalo, people doing their washing in the river – the sort of thing you see every day in Tufnell Park. Perhaps the only thing of interest was that the boat stopped so that we could hear a couple of out of tune girls sing some wailing crap. Well they may have been beautifully in tune but, on their boat, they had the Britney Spears/Geri Halliwell “I can sing badly and dance at the same time” microphones so you do not know what they are actually singing like.

In to Fu Li and off we get, or more precisely our bikes are removed from the boat. This we take as a very broad hint that some higher authority is in charge. A rather nothing little village that is more lively on market days.

Two things of note. An old man was down by the river washing his dog. Well I say “his”, he was in possession of the dog with Rigor Mortis and yes, he was cleaning a dead dog that he had killed. “This is China, they will eat anything”; being a modest chap, I quote myself. Upon enquiry about what happens to the cleaned skin, this is no problem, everything is eaten. Apparently the old gent is a well-known local character who will kill any dog. All the local dogs also know this and constantly bark at him. Now, you are thinking how clever of our esteemed narrator to know this when his Chinese can most graciously be described as rudimentary.

Well Rose is a little wary of local contacts but I have a different view - what can I lose, apart from my wallet. (I realise that some of you will know this is a change in behaviour from my youth when, if approached, my response was “ I do not know you, I do not want to know you, I am not buying your crap or giving you money. Fuck Off” but I am now such a mellow fellow it is difficult to believe that I would ever behave in such a gauche way.) The imparter of most of the information was the local restaurateur who had been happily engaging me in conversation since we arrived in the village. I spent 4 dollars buying a print from his friend, so everyone was happy. Mine host was even happier when I persuaded the wilting flower to take his suggestion of a different route home. This was a local ferry across the river and our esteemed host on his bike showing us through the villages. Total cost 5 bucks.

So off we go. Boat was luxury, well it had an engine that worked and got across the river. The track through the village was a little hard on the parts of the body that no bloke who is not gay ever thinks about. After that it was dead easy – rice paddies, hills that you have got bored with me mentioning, buying fruits that I did not recognise from the locals, going to our guides ancestral village where his cousin was busy getting married that day etc. In short a normal day in Essex.

Well back in town for a late lunch. ($8, I paid) What to do? Somebody wanted to go round the market. Skinflint said that we should use the bikes for fitness. Guess who won? What a shock. Cycle south towards a “mountain” with a view to strolling up it. Knowing my place I was a couple of bike lengths behind Rose when I suddenly have company – the proverbial teenage girl on either side. My regular readers will know that such adulation is becoming a normal part of my life when I am out of the big city. However, this is tourist land – what are they selling? Themselves, of course. Now some of my readers will need to calm down at this point. After various polite questions about where I am from, what am I doing etc., one of the pair catch up Rose whilst the other one offers to show me around, invites me to her house etc. A conversation ensues and they are coming to our hotel at 8.00 the following morning to show us round.

Back into town complete with very sore arses. Despite Rose’s persuasion I decline a foot massage, on the basis that it hurts a lot and pain is for the ignorant, the willing, women giving birth - in fact anybody but me. However, at my vast age, I do have my first massage – slept through most of it except when I got cramp in my toes. I couldn’t understand the logic of Rose getting a woman masseur and me getting a bloke.

A quiet night, dinner cost $10 – yes I paid again, buy the odd tee shirt, game or two of backgammon and early to bed.

The girls are waiting in the morning and off we go; we know not where. Needless to say we have vastly better bikes than our hosts (total age 29) so we can keep up. We did some tourist stuff. Have you ever seen water flow up hill without a pump? We have; a hydraulic system that involved pressure and exhausts. I must get somebody who knows about these things to explain it to me one day. Naturally, I will need a new set of friends to do this but I can afford it.

To Moon Mountain. This is a natural arch at the top of one of the larger peaks, perhaps 250 metres. The girls go off to cook lunch and will come back for us in an hour. We get instructions to walk for ten minutes and take the right hand path. Well do they think that we are fat old farts who cannot do anything. There is a right turn after two minutes; we ignore it and find another after seven minutes. We decide that this is it and up we go. As my dedicated readers will know the Chinese dislike disorganisation and like paths. This was a path with steps, lots of steps. After about twenty minutes Rose saw an arch to our right and decided that we had taken the wrong path; we should have taken the first right path. Now this is difficult; it was unlikely that the original choice of path was incorrect but who am I are to argue with a delicate flower. “I will go another five minutes.” Naturally I hurried and stretched the five minutes and yes there it was. Could I get anything wrong this weekend? A super view; if a bit murky – typical of the area. Well I could obviously get something wrong. My backache was like a Tony Blair speech – embarrassing and excruciating. Was it the bike, the massage or what? Somebody asked Rose if I was Dad. When I complained, the lady of the couple said it could be worse; they could have asked if I was Granddad. Why cannot the Chinese be a bit more inscrutable sometimes?

Down to lunch at the house of one of the girls. (We had a super view up the peak and I did not mention that the first “arch” was only an indent in the rock and not something that you could see through.) Parents were present but their English was poor so they did not contribute much.

This was the bit I had been looking forward too. First of all the food was excellent but that was not why I was interested. Wash your hands with a pump – something that I did as a kid when there was a drought. The Living Room has a telly in front of the main wall with a picture of Chairman Mao above. This is the only political poster around; there are other posters on the wall but these are Chinese Pop or Adverts. There are bags of rice in the corner, fairly basic furniture and doors to at least two other rooms, a kitten that wants feeding and a healthy dog in the yard. Xu – the girl who lived here – was quite proud of her very abridged Chinese/English version of Treasure Island. This was much as I had read about and, if you exclude the temperature difference, probably not so different from our grandparents (or, in some cases, great-grandparents) way of life.

After lunch Rose went back to the town and markets. The girls did not understand why I wanted to go up the grottiest lanes to look at their fields and later their schools but they are excellent hosts. It would not make interesting writing but classes of 58 and 54 give you a clue. It will come as no surprise to you that they started taking the Mickey out of my bike riding and my laugh.

One odd thing at the end of the afternoon. I was sitting with the girls having a beer – please contain your surprise – when an old woman came up to us, put a budha down on the table and said “How much”. What a generation difference in selling technique!

It is difficult to judge (and I asked my Chinese friends in the big city and thy did not know either) what we should have given them. I can only say that if we helped their education without thinking that tourist money was so easy that they should stop their education then we got it right; I suspect that we gave them too much; Rose thought they looked disappointed. To us it was worth many times the eight dollars each that they got. They seemed pretty keen on us coming back and bringing our friends so I think I know who is right.

A truly fascinating weekend and, if you hadn’t guessed, I think that the Chinese are great people.

Rose?

Well “Purple Rose” in Pinyin (Chinese written in our alphabet) is Zvi. Zvi is a 53 year- old male American, ex – Israeli. Having him along is like having a woman around – worrying about getting ripped off, complaining about spending money, who are these strange men, is somebody getting the better of us, it was cheaper sown the road etc.

The locals haven’t dared tell me what I am called yet.