China - Guizhou 08/05/2005

Trip Journal From 8th Of May - 13th May 2005

Today is the 8th May - Mothers Day.

Our progress is slower than anticipated due to the road conditions, John and Paul’s vehicles need to travel much slower over the rough terrain which more of it has been than good highway. Where we have been able to we have traveled on tolled motorways certainly worth the toll to use the smooth roads. Toll charges have varied from 5 Yuan 60cents NZ to 60 Yuan $9.00 NZ.

We had a 2 hour delay through a gorge. We were sitting waiting in our vehicles, when almighty explosions shook our vehicles as dynamite exploded along the hillside near us, no safety regulations here!. Men and women working side by side hammering stones by hand along the construction site, more work on yet another new highway.


We drove through many bleak, dirty coal mining towns, the peasants gardens still had Lynda and me snapping constantly. We camped at a truck and bus garage. We decided to head into the town for a pot luck dinner, wandering through the markets the eight of us attracted a lot of interest, Panxian was a coal mining town and definitely off the tourist trail. Sitting down to have won tons, no idea of how many we were going to get or how it was going to be served we were surrounded by a huge crowd of onlookers - At least 50.

The challenge for us all was to look like we were competent at using chop sticks, John had us in fits when he pinched Lawries cap from his head put 20 Yuan in it and stood up and took it through the crowd for some donations. Jill and Paul got taken to have their photos taken, we kept getting our skin touched and people followed us everywhere we walked.

Driving through Guangxi province we climed up through amazing pieces of engineering. Roads hugging the hillside, terraced plantings of crops going for kms awesome scenery nothing had prepared us for this as we looked down on valley s way below us, as we drove we would come across villages, the woman wore white scarves tied around their heads, black or blue pinafores, this was the Bouyi people another ethnic minority. At least when we are high in the hills the temps are lower.

On our way to Anshou we visited the Huangguoshu Falls, one of the provinces top tourist attractions. It was impressive at 80m wide and 74m tall plunging into smaller pools at its base. The view from the tunnel behind the falls was great even if we did get wet. Just as impressive as the falls was the amazing variety of bonsai and topiary trees that were displayed in the grounds. The countryside is beautiful, huge limestone hills tower around us as we head north.

We have found some great camping spots, besides rivers, hotel car parks, others have been noisy where we have had to park close to the main roads but very interesting as usually we attract a huge crowd, like when we camped near the local high school in Xiuwen.They were still tapping on our doors at 11pm to chat to us. Two of the students offered to take us into town to their favorite restaurant. Sounding like fun we all followed, it turned out to be a great little place, we were shown to a private room, the boys ordered for us and it was properly one of the best meals we have had in China... The boys chattered excitedly, they both wanted to be computer engineers when they left school.

Next morning we rose early so we could shower and have breaky before the morning rush of children arrived. 7am they all arrived even the English teacher bought along her class so the children could have their English lesson first hand, it was one of our most enjoyable stops and it’s nice to think we may have touched their lives in some small way.

We are having our first lot of lousy weather, foggy and a light drizzle, not good for taking too many photos. The sights continue to unfold, in the middle of nowhere people sweeping highways and wiping the guard rails, Chinese poplars line the road side, in the villages lots of woman are knitting, this area is very cold in winter and gets snow. We were amused by the splits in the toddler’s pants, bare bottoms and privates showing and no disposables in sight. The crops are changing, we are now seeing canola growing, they are in the fields cutting it manually and in villages the people are hand thrashing it to remove the seeds.

We were invited for a cup of green tea into some local peoples home; they owned a shop near where we had stopped for the night. We met the whole family including the husband’s mother who was 76. She was delightful or she was until she pinched my boob…lol, she had been having an intermit conversation with Lynda, neither understanding each other but lots of nodding and smiling going on, she was poking, touching and prodding Lynda’s arm and then as she stood up she pinched my boob, properly to see if it was real lol.

We had an assortment of moths attached to our vehicle in the morning, the colors and size different to anything we had ever seen before. As we continued at one of the Toll Gates we had to drive over the weigh bridge, weighing in at 5.300 kg was Jo and Janet, 4.600kg was Paul and Jill, 4.500 kg was Lynda and John and the baby, you guessed it, was good old Ruefee at 3.300kg.

Arriving in Luzhou a nice modern city, after Li spoke to a bus driver regarding directions, he told us to follow him into the centre of the city, so we did at a fairly high speed, arriving in the centre of the city next thing we know we are under police escort, to find a parking spot for the night. We were taken to the La Zhou Lao Jiao Grand Hotel Car park. We decided to check into the hotel, it was only NZ$25.00 a night including break, and a good chance to recharge all our batteries and computer etc we were put on the 18th floor with wonderful views over the city. Next thing we knew we were all being summoned to the lobby and awaiting us was the local TV Channel and newspapers, Li did a great job of translating for us and many smiles and photos later we were off to explore the city. We were checking our emails at an internet café later in the evening near the hotel when we found ourselves caught up in a huge demonstration or riot we were not sure which, we could just hear the roar of the crowd, fortunately, hearts beating wildly we just managed to make our way through the crowd back to the safety of our hotel. They sure do things quick sometimes in China, next morning as we checked out there we were in the local paper.

Next morning we were off on the road again, all wishing we had the time to stay another night in Lazhou. We hadn’t traveled far when Jo called over to the CB to say he had a problem, we soon discovered he had shredded a tyre, fortunately a tyre place was nearby and a little while later we were off again, a few more kms on the same thing again except this time it was a a front tyre, again as luck would have it we were handy to a tyre place, this time Jo bit the bullet and finally bought some new tyres much to everyone’s relief.

While we waited for them to get Jo up and running again, Lawrie and I decided to go into a nearby restaurant and have lunch, with no Li it was a hit and miss affair, we were taken for the usual tour of the kitchen to point out some things we wished to order, trying to explain one of the dishes we wanted was egg fried rice had Lawrie and I resorting to making chook noises and drawing pictures of chooks laying eggs. The meal was wonderful and we felt very pleased with ourselves and our choices. When we went up to pay for our meal, they refused to let us pay, it was then we discovered on Friday the 13th May that they had seen us on TV the night before.

At Chengdu we visited the Giant Panda’s Research Breeding Base. We timed our visit to coincide with their feeding time; at least we would get to see them doing something other than sleeping. It was an excellent visit, we saw lots of pandas of varying sizes, and they had an informative museum which also included a huge butterfly collection. Most of the cities we have seen have been most impressive, Chengdu was no exception, we went into town for the evening, walking around the old town was interesting, people playing cards, and Mah Jong, many interesting food stalls, all sorts of kebabs seem to be their specialty, the neon signs in the downtown area were like being in New York, you could catch a train to take you around all the shops in one of the malls we visited. Everyone in the city seems to ride a push bike, there’s 1000s of them, a real hazard when you are driving.

Continuing north we visited the Sanxingdui Museum, where we saw many ancient relics dating back over 3000 years that had been dug up. The museum was impressive as was the way they had displayed the relics. Not a lot had changed in some of the pottery designs used for drinking vessels, most are still used today.

The motorways have a noticeable absence of private cars; we mostly encounter trucks and buses, as china modernizes the mind boggles to think what traffic problems they will have a people swap their push bikes for car.

We have continued to be swept away by the scenery we have encountered in Guangxi Province but we are looking forward to what Central China has to offer.