October 16th : Rice Paddies of Longsheng

I wished we had sunny blue skies. We didn’t. It was torrential rain the whole drive up to the rice fields. On the bright side, the rice was supposed to have been harvested in the days leading up to us arriving but due to unseasonal rain, it had been postponed.  What might have been bare fields - with or without water, were still filled with rice as the local people waited for the drier days required for harvesting.

The rain stopped. The clouds came and went with every passing minute. At times, IMC conditions, at other times a wee opportunity to take selfies and capture the golden color of the paddies… rice dangling from long blades, droplets glistening. I never knew what rice looked like before it found its way into a bag at my local grocery store, I am ashamed to admit. It's quite beautiful in a "wild grass at the end of summer" kinda way.

A side note: Sometimes it appears the Chinese have no rules and sometimes it seems lots of rules. In the rice paddies, was this sign: 

And then, 2 seconds later, an older Chinese lady (tourist) trespassing on the rice. She deserved to have her picture taken and yes, she was less than impressed to see me doing it.

The rice paddies are amazing but what was more special today was the invitation from a local family to have lunch with them, in their home. We watched the bamboo rice being stuffed and barbequed on the porch and sat around on tiny chairs enjoying the view. The village was teeming with animals and life… and it was perfect. Everyone had a garden and all around us grew grape tomatoes, squash, eggplant, peppers, bananas and more. 

Tofu squeezers! The water drips right into the drainage system.

I love the Chinese names. Imaginative and connected with the world around.

A reminder of the "one child only" rule, stenciled in the village. Wow.

Opening the bamboo stuffed rice. 

It was then time to walk down from the hills and drive back to Guilin. So many things to see along the way though.

Smoked duck. Like... really smoked! While an old school way to preserve meat for the off-season, I wondered about how much meat is actually left. Our guide is very honest about all sorts of stuff (wait til you read about the pets vs dinner conversation) and he told us that yes, it has be be kinda rehydrated and admittedly there is not much value to it once this duck has been desiccated to this extent. He says the Chinese have "food" that is more to keep the mouth busy, than actually provide calories. Chicken feet is another example. 

Another way to get up to the rice paddies.

Another walk through town was on the books this evening. I needed to find proof for Jason that he was wrong. The spiders and scorpions on a skewer were not solely for tourists, but in fact Chinese people were the ones who ate them. 

(I watched a Chinese woman buy and eat the scorpions!)

We snacked on interesting crepes and squid on a stick, before hitting that amazing bakery one more time.  :-)

October 15th : Hello Guilin!

First let me explain how we got to Guilin. Obviously by airplane, but that’s not what I meant. In March I contacted China Highlights, a travel agency in China that specializes in private or group tours, customized to fit the schedule and budget you present them with. I was pretty much immediately in touch with Ruby Zhou, a travel consultant. She was responsive, super nice and her English was all that I could want or need. Ruby put up with my back and forths on what was “doable” in regard to price and oops… she also put up with some minor faux paux about dates. For some reason I started out telling her we arrived in China on the 12th and left on the 18th. Truth was we arrived on October 8th and left the 19th. MORE time to explore! Around the same time I paid more attention to our flight details I also starting paying attention to Ruby’s signature line. All those emails and I just noticed that she lived in a place called Guilin.

Mark and I Youtube’d Guilin (as you do) and loved what we saw. Karst mountains, gently flowing rivers, bamboo rafts, caves, steep rice paddies and so much more. We had to go so I asked Ruby to add the extra days to a part of the trip that was in south China.

Back to our guide: Jason started out by saying he thought we’d probably seen some great museums and enough of them. Our first outing was to a very old part of the city. This part of Guilin was donkeys years old. When the trade route was solely the river and goods came up from the big city or down from Guilin and trading happened at the dock or close to it.

I loved walking through the old town. Jason let me borrow an umbrella, since today it was kinda rainy. The shiny street, old doors, umbrella colors and characters that we met were great.

We wondered about the deep but narrow homes that bordered the streets and Jason asked a random guy if we could step into his home and take a look around.

The guy who stepped out of his home just after this plan happened to be a retired teacher, his father was a teacher in the area too and his daughter was following in his footsteps. She had married a Japanese guy and moved to Japan and I couldn’t quite gather if that was approved of or not. His home was decorated with pictures of family, a cigarette collection, lots of wood carvings and a minah bird in a cage that said “ni hao” when I talked to it.

And then there was the afternoon. Actually I had asked Ruby to add Flute Reed Cave to our itinerary. Another Youtube discovery? Perhaps.

The cave, stunning in natural beauty was lit in a way that I will call truly Chinese. Lots of colored lights. Magnificent and fun and rather psychedelic.

That evening Mark and I used our time not to relax and do laundry, even though both were overdue, but to walk along the river and into town.

 With some direction from Jason we enjoyed a beautiful walk followed by an enlightened visit to the pedestrian mall. We kinda gambled with dice we found at an outdoor restaurant while sampling Vietnamese rolls, then happened upon street food to make anyone squirm. Spiders, centipedes, scorpions, larvae and more… all skewered and fried. We took pictures but hell no… we didn’t eat it!

What we did eat, was half of a nearby bakery.
My fav... the matcha green tea roll with cream cheese type filling. Yummy!

We walked home the less scenic route, through the city and via underground tunnels to cross complicated wide and busy streets.. It was not advised by Jason, but we did it anyway. It’s not often we go against the advice of our guide! LOL Rebels.