Dragon's Backbone Rice Terraces

I’ve had an eventful few days since my last post. For starters, I had a great night out last Friday in Shanghai. I went to dinner with Michael’s friend, Julie and seven of her Danish friends. From there, we went to a bar with an eight person Latin band playing – incredible music and delicious long island ice teas (in your honor Mom!). After that, we danced our pants off (not literally!) at a swanky late night club. Very fun night and the best part is that I made it to the airport just in time for my flight!

Guilin is a much smaller town compared to most that I’ve been to lately with stunning mountain peaks that shoot straight out of the ground sporadically around the area and the Li River running to its east. I hiked to the top of the tallest peak in the city on Sunday. Recovering from the hike next to the Li River, I met two Chinese guys, Ma and Chen, who invited me to join them at their university for dinner and to celebrate the Lantern Festival – the last night of the two week Spring Festival to welcome in the Chinese New Year.

I met Ma and Chen at a very local restaurant near their school where we sat on tiny little seats (my knees were up to my chest!) and ate beer fish (from the Li River…I tried to ignore the fact that the part of the river I saw in Guilin was filthy!!). It was actually delicious! After that, we walked around their campus watching people light red paper lanterns and send them off into the sky. It was magical to look into the night sky and see it lined with red lanterns flying through the air. Also, there were fireworks being let off all over the city for 6 solid hours….individuals here can buy the kind of fireworks that cities at home light off for July 4th …so you can imagine that those with money like to show it off by holding their own fireworks show. Multiply that rich family by 30 or 40 and you have an idea of how many fireworks were going off around the river and various parks. It was great to be in Guilin for the Lantern Festival!

I ran some errands (bought back-up shoe laces, restocked on peanut butter, etc....very important stuff!) on Monday and relaxed around the town watching people. I met a great Irish couple, Grace and Keith, who asked if they could join me on my plan to venture north to the Dragon’s Backbone the next day. I was happy to have the company of such fun people, and I think after realizing that I spoke some Chinese, they were happy to be traveling with me as well! 5 different buses with loads of people, baskets of produce and chickens (we think dead??!) later, we arrived in Dazhai. A woman from the Yao tribe invited us to stay at her new ‘hotel’, so we did... not realizing we were going to walk for an hour and a half straight up a mountain to get there! We were the ONLY foreigners in the Tiantouzhai Village which has about 300 residents. It was WONDERFUL to be away from cars, buses, horns and people…I could actually hear the wind blowing through the trees and the water running through the creek. We sat on the balcony overlooking beautiful rice terraces, helped the Grandfather of the ‘hotel’ peel and prepare bamboo shoots for dinner, drank beer and played cards. I learned that the Irish call the club cards ‘cloves’ or ‘shamrocks’…so cute! Also, I think bamboo shoots are delicious – the pandas are onto something!

After a restful night sleep in a lodge made entirely out of wood, we started on our four hour trek through the rice terraces from Dazhai to Ping’An. It was awesome to be so close to the locals going about their daily lives – working the rice fields, hauling logs from one mountain to another, carrying pigs/chickens from one village to another. It was pretty foggy, but we still could see the terraces stretching out almost as far as the eye could see. The harvest was completed in late October and they won’t plant again for another few weeks, so the rice wasn’t at its peak viewing time, but that also meant that there were virtually no other tourists. It was a great workout and a very peaceful trek through what I would consider ‘old China’. That’s the kind of China that I prefer!

I arrived in Xingping, a tiny village nestled between mountains on three sides and the Li River on the fourth, this afternoon. I’ve counted five tourists so far. All of the shops and restaurants close by 8 PM. My next three days here will be a vacation from my vacation…I plan to sleep and read a lot, write in my journal and do some biking around the other smaller villages in the area! Until next time…xoxo.