Reed Flute Cave in Guilin

I had a busy day on Saturday.  We were planning to drive to Yangshuo in the afternoon (after Sandy was done his Saturday classes) so I decided to visit the Reed Flute Cave in the morning.  To get there is a walk and a bus ride (and of course I got lost trying to find the right bus stop) but eventually I made it.  I just had time to do the cave tour and get the bus home before it was time to leave for Yangshuo.

Of course we had to follow a guided tour, and of course they turned the lights off when the group had passed through an area, so you had to follow the tour.  Which was too bad because the Reed Flute Cave was one of the most impressive I've ever seen.  The limestone formations were just breathtaking.  And the tour of course was fixated on the formations that happened to look like stuff ("Lion looking back at a camel", "Some kind of Buddha pose" and so forth) so we just raced past everything else.

Here are some highlights:

This formation looked like "roses", so they helpfully lit it up to look like roses.

Did I mention that the touts have taken over all the best photo ops?  Every once in awhile the tour gets interrupted while they shout their pitch, and wander around in front of everyone who is trying to take a picture on their own.  Many of the young couples (like above, notice how they're wearing coordinated outfits  that's very common here) get their picture taken at every single opportunity.  And of course the rest of the group has to wait.

I ran into a couple the other day from Singapore, and the wife said she was sick of caves, and all the caves around Guilin look the same.  I have now visited three (Seven Star Cave, Reed Flute Cave, and the Assembly Dragon Cave in Yangshuo (I am catching up on my blog!) and yes all the caves here look "the same", but they're all very spectacular.  Caving here in China is a whole other adventure!

Climbing some shan's in Guilin (在桂林爬山)

The landscape of Guilin is defined by the limestone hills and ever since I got here I've been dying to climb them and see what the view is like from the top.  Friday we had a day off school due to Dragonboat Festival so I had my chance.  My "dad" had already told me the hills in the vacinity I could climb so I had a plan.

However I ran into a tout on my way downtown and he convinced me to start with a tour of the city by boat.  Guilin is "两江四湖" as I've mentioned before and the boat does a tour that includes both rivers and all 4 lakes  Why not?  My boat was something like the following:

The tour lasted about 70 minutes and I got a riverside view of some of the shan's (or "san's" as they say here) that I wanted to climb.

Fobu Shan:

Xiang Shan (Elephant Hill):

... and some others, the pictures didn't all turn out (one of the hazards of trying to take pictures from a moving boat).

Here are some of the pictures from the various peaks.  Guilin is a very beautiful city!

However Guilin has nothing on Yangshuo, where I am now.  If it stops raining here long enough I'll run outside and take some pictures and show you!  In the meantime you'll have to imagine :-)

Here are a few more shots of Gulin at night

Guilin is a town of "Two Rivers and Four Lakes" ("两江四湖").

(The Chinese do this a lot.  In the Forbidden City in Beijing the famous "7 Dragon Wall" was so named because it was a wall with 7 dragons sculpted on it.  In Xi'An the Drum Tower and Bell Tower were so named because they used to contain, respectively, a drum and a bell.  Guilin has 2 rivers and 4 lakes so they have named their town accordingly.)

These shots are along one of the rivers (and one lake) at night.

An update on my School and Homestay in Guilin

I've been in Guilin almost a week now (well it counts as a full school week since tomorrow (Friday) is a holiday, and I get a long weekend).

The school is working out great.  I have 4 hours of 1-on-1 classes a day, and 3 different teachers, so I get to practice listening to different speaking styles and accents.  I got an assessment/test on my first day, and they decided I most needed to review and practice grammar (they thought my pronunciation was ok).  Since I'm only here for 2 weeks (and shortly afterwards leaving China) I told them I wasn't really interested in learning a lot of new words and grammar, just practicing what I'd already learned, and getting some practice speaking and listening.  So that's what we do.  we're covering grammar and some new words, but mostly we just chat, talking about the various differences between Canada and China: healthcare, public parks, restaurants, food, etc.  It's very interesting!

My school is on a little side street, here it is:

The building is very modern.  Here is the lobby:

There are a bunch of different classrooms on the first 2 floors, and above that 4 floors of dorm rooms.  There is a kitchen on each of the first 2 floors, and the school cooks a hot lunch every day.  (You can purchase meal cards for the lunches, or go out and eat on your own.)  The meals usually consist of rice plus 5 or 6 different dishes - veggies, meat, tofu, etc.  It has been quite busy this week as there are 2 groups of students from the states.  One group is leaving today and the other next week so things should quiet down a bit after that.

Most of Guilin is pretty modern (apartment blocks, shops, markets and malls, just like everywhere else).  Right out back of the school there are some dilapidated old houses and a bunch of chickens running around.  My immediate thought was bird flu!

Also yesterday morning I passed a lady carrying a dead chicken home from market.  She was holding it by the feet and it was just dangling from her hand, feathers and all.

My homestay family is amazing.  They are taking great care of me, but they are all so busy I hardly ever see them!  All three of them work dawn to dusk, and whenever Sandy (the son) is around he is practicing his saxophone or doing homework.  (Or playing video games, of course!)  Right now he's out paying badminton.  (I was hoping to go watch but I guess it didn't work out.  I'm not sure why, communication is an issue with this family!)

Here is one of the dinners they cooked for me!

Spring rolls, thousand year old eggs (duck), soup, garlic pork chops, beans, and of course bai jiu!  (Bai jiu is this foul Chinese alcohol but it grows on you.  I'm going to bring some home and force everyone to try it!)  Other nights they've cooked dumplings and other delicious meals.  A couple of mornings Sandy has taken me out for breakfast and we've had Guilin Noodles and Baozi (steamed buns).  Last night they picked me up at school and we had dinner at the grandparent's place.

I'll post some photos of the family and apartment later.  I've hardly ever seen the whole family together.  Chinese people work too hard!  (Note to Canadian kids, Don't complain about your workload!)

One evening I wandered about downtown and checked out the shops.  Here is a picture of the Sun and Moon pagodas all lit up:

The Chinese like to light things up at night, pretty much all the office buildings and hotels have some kind of light show every night (just like the Seven Star Cave).  It's like every night is Christmas!

(PS  One of the things about the Chinese is they are very modest, and one of the first things you learn to do in Chinese is to shrug off a compliment.  "Your Chinese is very good!"  "Na li na li, no it's very bad."  That kind of thing.  "Ma ma hu hu" is another thing you say when you get a compliment.  It means "horse horse tiger tiger".  You can't avoid the culture when learning the language, and that's one of the big benefits I've found from taking classes here.  However modesty aside I'm very proud that I'm able to chat for almost 4 hours per day in (mostly) Chinese in my classes.  I'm also able to communicate minimally with my Chinese family here, even though they talk very quickly and have a very strong local accent.  For example:  eat ("chi"), ten ("shi"), and four ("si") here in Guilin are all pronounced "si".  So "eat at 10 past 4" ("si dian shi chi fan") is "si dian si si fan".  I actually figured this out on my own and then confirmed with one of my teachers (and she told me a bunch of other local differences) so not bad, eh?  "Na li na li, no I just have great teachers!")

The Seven Star Park and Cave

The other day I wandered over to the Seven Star Park.

The landscape around Guilin is quite impressive, here are a couple of shots of the cityscape:

The hills are limestone, and the nearby cities of Yangshou and Zhangjiajie (inspiration for the landscapes in Avatar) are quite famous, but Guilin itself is very beautiful.  There are many of these hills within the city that just seem to erupt out of the ground.  Seven Star Park is the area around 7 of them.  Gulin is also famous for its limestone caves, of which Seven Star Cave is one.

Here are a few shots of the scenery in the park:

Above is "Glory of China Square".  Of course there are Buddhist sites everywhere:

And since it's China they take every opportunity to extract money out of you:

Pretty much every Chinese park is like this.  I've had a couple of interesting conversations with the locals about this.  One girl was asking me about Niagra falls (she's seen it in pictures and movies) and asked me how much it was to see it.  "It's free, you just go and look."  I'm not sure she believed me.  Another time I was explaining to one of my teachers the differences between parks in Victoria and China, and I said there are no paved trails and stairs (at least not up the mountains the way there are here) and parks don't have the same kind of "carnival" atmosphere.  "No paths and steps?  How do people know where to go?"  I explained that there are trails, but usually not paved.  And sometimes people mark trails by tying ribbons in trees.  I don't know how the Chinese would react to that kind of "trail".

Here are some pictures from the cave.  As you can see it has a nice inlaid marble floor:

The limestone formations were illuminated with an impressive collection of coloured lights, and in some sections there was dramatic music in the background.  We had to follow a tour guide, who explained everything to us (in Chinese) and they turned on the lights as we entered each section of the cave.  If we wandered off we would be in darkness :-(  The formations had different names, for example above is "A Frontier Scene".

There were some shops in the cave, and we were given lots of time to shop!  (And like I mentioned we couldn't wander off.)  All the best photo ops were co-opted by professional photographers who offered to take our picture for 20 RMB.  We had to stop about 6 or 7 times to listen to their pitch.

"A Natural fresco".

A real waterfall underground!

There were wild monkeys in the park, and lots of signs warning us to not feed them.  Of course people were feeding them anyways.  I admit, I was just waiting for a monkey to attack someone!

I'll just leave you with this.  Isn't it cute?

Another rainy day in Guilin

I'm still hoping it will clear up (yesterday the rain let up and it was a clear, sunny afternoon) however it's been a torrential downpour all morning and so far is showing no signs of letting up.

Update on my homestay family - we had a nice dinner together last night, and then the mom immediately ran off to work.  She works in the tourism industry and is very busy!  She told me that she'll be working some evenings and will I be ok to fix myself dinner some nights?  I said no problem, there are lots of restaurants nearby!  lol

(By the way the mom's name is Zu Ling and the dad is Lu Yong.  The son's English name is Sandy (I did't quite catch his Chinese name but I'll get it.)

After dinner I went for a walk with Lu Yong and we had a nice chat.  All in Chinese, I'm very proud of myself!  There's a bit of a local accent (they pronounce their "sh" like "ts" so it's very confusing for me!) so I'll ask my Chinese teacher about it tomorrow when I start class.

Sandy plays badminton and also the saxophone - here's a picture of him in action:

He was very good, he played me about 5 songs, and he speaks very good English too.  (Zu Ling and Lu Yong speak almost no English, which is very good for forcing me to practice Chinese, however it's nice to have a translator around!)

Here's the view out the kitchen window right now:

You can't really get a sense of the downpour so I'm going to try to upload a video.  I haven't tried this yet so wish me luck.

Make sure you watch this with the sound on.