My Date

While sitting at my desk last Friday casually checking my email before I headed off to enjoy some rice, mystery soup, and oil-laden vegetables for lunch, two of my 6th grade boys poked their heads in the door and said “May we come in?” I was startled to attention by their use of English because most students who come to the door yell something phonetically like “bo gao,” which is something akin to “may I come in,” and they are seeking permission from the other Chinese teachers, not me. This time I realized they used English because they wanted to talk to me. I motioned them in, probably with a not so pleasant look of bewilderment upon my face, and prepared myself for…well, I had no idea.

Student 1 – skinny, glasses, adorably nerdy, quiet temperament but always tries to participate in class, beats himself up when he doesn’t know the answer
Student 2 – short, shouts answers in class, always moving, always trying to help, talkative

Student 1: Hello Teacher. Are you busy on Sunday?
Me: (I could say yes because I have to tutor, but they are trying so hard I can’t say it) No, Only at 2:30.
Student 1: Would you go hike in Lian Hua park with us on Sunday?
Me: (how adorable) Sure, what time?
Student 1: (consults with student 2 in Chinese) 10:00.
Me: Ok.
Student 1: Meet us at the, the, the front…
Me: gate
Student 1: yes, gate. The school’s front gate.
Me: Ok. What are your names?
Student 1: I am Thomas.
Student 2: I am Daniel.
Me: Ok, see you at 10:00 at the school gate. (Oh, what have I gotten myself into? But they are so cute and brave to come and ask me in English to go with them. There is no way I could have turned them down. Oh well, it should be an adventure.)

They walked away with huge smiles on their faces, and all I could do was chuckle and turn to my contact teacher next to me and shrug, “I guess I have a date on Sunday.” She laughed. Of course we didn’t have long to laugh because a minute later we were interrupted again by Thomas, Daniel, and a third boy following shyly behind them.

Thomas: Miss Lori, may he come too?
Me: Sure, what’s your name?
Third boy: Smart
Me: Ok…Smart (me laughing inside at the irony of “Smart” picking a not so smart English name), I will see you Sunday.

So, Sunday rolls around and I am greeted at the gate by not three, but four boys. Thomas is carrying a little canvas sack with music notes all over it, and Daniel is carrying a backpack loaded with waters on each side. Smart, well, he’s just there, and the fourth boy seems to be a good friend of his.

Thomas: Miss Lori, have you eaten breakfast? (This kid is more considerate than most men my age.)
Me: Yes, I have (probably should have lied to make him happy).
Thomas: Oh, well we have food if you are hungry (apparently inside the music note sack and the backpack).
Me: Ok, well maybe later in the park.

It soon becomes apparent that Thomas and Daniel are the leaders. Thomas has the best English and does his best to talk to me whenever possible. Daniel’s English is not too far off, but he is too busy trying to figure out the way to go and things for us to do to talk much. Smart and unknown fourth boy with no English name are just along for the ride. Our journey to the top of the park’s hill is a mix of the four boys jabbering away in Chinese and me wondering if they are talking about me, Thomas asking me questions and then translating for the others, Daniel making comments in English but mostly getting distracted by the other boys, and me every once in a while self-consciously wondering what all the Chinese people around me must be thinking when they see this random, adult, female foreigner walking around with four Chinese boys.

We finally make it to the top of the hill in the park, push our way through the crowds, and squeeze ourselves onto a shaded bench to munch on our potato chips and candy the boys brought for our snacks while admiring the forward marching statue of Deng Xiaoping. Daniel manages to find a woman to take a picture of all five of us near the steps of the statue. (Daniel is wearing the blue shirt. Smart is wearing the white shirt. Thomas is in the orange and white striped polo, and no name fourth boy is in the black shirt). Amazingly, she happened to be an English teacher at a very good middle school in the area, and deduced that I was a foreign teacher. I have to say that I was somewhat relieved to know that our quintuplet didn’t look so strange to her. I kept thinking how odd this situation would be in America. Students would never ask their teacher to hike with them in the park, and if they did, their parents would probably not approve of them asking; and as their teacher I probably wouldn’t think it would be a good idea to agree. There are just too many liabilities in America, but in China no one cares about liabilities. There are just too many people to worry that much.

Liability free, we then headed down the hill to the lake where we were greeted by more throngs of people, a choir singing somewhere in the crowd, and dozens of hungry coy fish being fed by the other half of the crowd not watching the singers. The boys decided feeding the fish would be fun, so they bought some overly priced crackers from a nearby stand. We fed the gluttonous fish to our hearts content, and then headed around the lake to hunt for small fish or snails to put in our empty water bottles (Daniel’s idea). I gaily followed along feeling like I should be in a Chinese version of Tom Sawyer. A few snails later, I mentioned that I needed to get back to prepare for my tutoring and Thomas dutifully rounded up the crew for the trek back to our neighborhood.

On the way back Daniel, unsurprisingly got distracted by a stand selling bubbles, which he bought, and which I thoroughly enjoyed blowing for every child that passed by us. The boys were all amazed at my bubble blowing skills especially when I taught them you could run or twirl in a circle with the mouthpiece and bubbles would come out in the dozens.

Bubbles aside, we made it back to our neighborhood relatively fast. We were almost home, when the boys insisted that they wanted to buy me a present. I refused. They insisted. So, we ended up at a little bookstore in my neighborhood. They went inside. I was forced to sit on a bench inside. Twenty minutes later they emerged with a wrapped box about the size of a coke can. They told me to wait until I got home to open it.

I’m slightly embarrassed to admit that my curiosity got the best of me, and I could not wait to get back to my apartment to open the present. What would four Chinese boys decide was an appropriate gift for their teacher? Once inside my apartment I quickly but carefully took off the wrapping paper, on which they had written their names. Under the paper was a box with hearts, and inside the box with hearts was a ceramic bear holding a heart and sitting in a chair with a heart shaped picture frame attached to the top. After my initial “what is this?” reaction, I couldn’t help but think how perfect it was. It is so Chinese in it’s combination of cuteness and tackiness. It is so teacher-ish , maybe kindergarten teacher-ish, but teacher-ish nonetheless with its bear and rocking chair. Finally it is so adorable knowing that four boys, who spent their day catching fish and snails, picked it out for me. I chuckled at the thought of the four boys standing inside the bookstore pondering the gift options and deciding on this heart-bear picture frame. What a conversation that must have been! The gift was the perfect finish to the awkward, but ultimately fun and enlightening Sunday morning.

My Proud Teacher Moment

In preparation for an inspection by the Public School Bureau officials this Monday (October 27th) students and teachers alike have been dusting, sweeping, cleaning, primping, pruning, washing, wiping, and tidying the entire school so that it is picture perfect for the inspectors. This included filling up the empty bulletin boards around the school. My contact teacher, Elli, decided, without my knowledge, to have her 5th grade students draw pictures over the weekend of what they learned in my class that week.

I had ambitiously tackled “taking care of the environment” as my lesson plan that week after I listened to several students list “rubbish” as “something you can find at the beach” during my previous lesson on different types of environments. Surprisingly the kids were really interested and, with a little translation help from Elli and a great recycling song by Jack Johnson, they got the more difficult concepts like pollution and recycling.

I’ve discovered pictures and live props are marvelous things with these younger kids. I may have shocked them a little with pictures of an oil covered duck and a deformed turtle with a plastic ring around its shell, but any time I can get a “waaaahhh” out of my students at least I know they are paying attention (n.b. waaahhh = wow). They also loved my homemade recycle can especially when I threw my iPod, my cell phone, and my camera into the recycle bucket to demonstrate the recycling of electronics. For some reason they are amazed every time I pull out some sort of electronic. It can’t be because they’ve never seen it before because electronics are everywhere here even if they are knock-offs. I think maybe it’s the fact that these things make them realize I am human even though I am a teacher and a foreigner. I had a similar experience when I showed them my suite case, a t-shirt, a pair of shorts, and my tennis shoes when I did a lesson on travel. Although my clothes received a laugh instead of a “waaahh”, and I don’t really care to know why for reasons of self-confidence.

So Elli shows up Monday afternoon with a stack of pictures the students had drawn about “taking care of the environment.” She told me that she thought I had taught a great lesson, and wanted to depict the lesson on the bulletin board for the government inspectors. I could care less about government inspectors, but I was so excited that she thought highly enough of my lesson to assign her students homework pertaining to it. I am not allowed to assign homework or give grades, so it was a real reward to see the students put so much effort into what they had learned.

I don’t know if they will retain this information or put it to good use, but at least they have seen the pictures and heard the words associated with taking care of the environment. In fact, in some ways I believe China is doing a better job than the United States in their efforts to protect the environment. Most of these changes are recent and due to intense world pressure, but the changes are visible. For example, you have to bring your own bag to the grocery store or pay extra for the plastic ones. You also have to bring your own toilet paper and napkins to public places and restaurants, and it is rare to find paper towels to dry you hands off after washing them in the bathroom. Another example is that almost all Chinese people turn off their air conditioner when they are not in their houses. One of my friends even got laughed at by her Chinese coworkers when she mentioned that she left hers running all the time. In the stairwells of most public buildings the lights do not turn on until it senses motion, and the escalators do not move until someone steps onto them. Finally, there are almost always recycle cans attached to the trash cans.

These are just a few small examples of the good things. The bad things, however, are just as noticeable if not more noticeable. There is trash everywhere! I can hardly go anywhere without seeing trash on the ground, and although there are recycle cans next to the trash cans, I think most Chinese people just throw whatever they want into both. Also, although the stores decrease the amount of plastic bags they use, the products they sell in the store are sometimes ridiculously wrapped as to use as much plastic as possible. For example, I bought a pack of hard candies near the checkout. I had to unwrap the outside layer of the tubular package, then unwrap a second layer of clear plastic, and then unwrap each candy individually. By the time I finished that pack of candy, I had enough plastic to make my own plastic bag. Another obvious pitfall to the environment is the number of cars everywhere. Every Chinese person does not own a car, thank God, but the number who do own a car is growing all the time. It’s still not as bad as the U.S., but there is potential for disaster.

I hope that disaster is avoided in the future by knowledgeable citizens who understand the impact of their actions on the environment, and I guess in a small way introducing ways to protect the environment to 600 primary school students is a start. Although, I can’t see the future, I can see that bulletin board and hope.

A Collage

In this blog I promised to reflect on the culture and the people here in China, and I don’t believe I’ve lived up to that promise yet. It’s so easy to get caught up in the day to day surface activities of my own life here because everything is still a novelty to me. Just this past week I tried something new almost everyday:

Monday: Badminton with some teachers at my school; Muay Thai (Thailand style boxing) with a friend
Tuesday: Tai Chi followed by a game of Ping Pong
Wednesday: Indian food in China
Thursday: Making dumplings (jiaozi) for the first time; Eating and making my dumplings with a Chinese family at their home
Friday: Nothing new except the new Chinese words I learned in class
Saturday: BBQ Chinese style with some newly made Chinese friends
Sunday: Going to the beach in Yantian

All of these activities offered a glimpse into Chinese culture, and I have not failed to notice. I have just failed to piece together the significance of these glimpses to me as a foreigner, an American, a fellow human being, an outsider trying to become an insider.

All I have now is a collage to offer of these random glimpses that I have caught as I’ve wandered and bumped along on this journey. Here are just a few from last week.

***

Mid-day heat on the way to Chinese class in downtown Louhu, I see a woman sitting on the ground, baby in her lap, picking out scraps of food from a tilted trashcan and eating the scraps piece by piece.

Late night, sitting in a bus with Autumn, my new English-speaking Chinese friend, after a day of wandering through “The People’s Park” and cooking BBQ with her friends: We talk about jobs. I tell her that I would choose family and friends over my job. She doesn’t understand. I tell her I would also choose a job I believed in over a job that just made me a lot of money. She doesn’t understand. I use a plastic surgeon, who makes his living telling people they are ugly, as an example of a job I could never do despite the good money. She doesn’t understand. She says she wishes she had my eyes and my nose. She doesn’t like her own.

Noon, I’m walking through the crowded streets of Dongmen—the discount shopping district in downtown Shenzhen. I clutch my bag close to my body as to avoid being easy prey for thieves. My friend Meaghan and I wait at the bus station for the number 103 bus to the beach. The 103 comes. It’s too crowded for us to squeeze onto. Luckily another 103 comes minutes later, and we even manage to grab a seat for the 40 minute ride. I look out the window at the crowds pushing their way into various shops. My God, I can’t believe this is a communist country with its hordes of shoppers and shops.

Later on the bus back from the beach, Meaghan and I stare out the window at more masses of people. Meaghan: “There are so many damn people here.” I agree. Then we hypothesize that much of Chinese culture is shaped by the fact that there are so many damn people. Meaghan: “Democracy could never work here. Can you imagine 1.3 billion people voting?” Me: My mind flashes to Orwell’s 1984 and the term “groupthink,” then to Mao, then to a comment made by my contact teacher Elli—“We don’t get to vote. We just watch what happens on our television.”

Wandering through “The People’s Park,” we come across a huge bust of Mao Zedong in a red and green pagoda. People are taking pictures by the statue. I think, why not, it seems like a very Chinese thing to do. I ask one of Autumn’s friends—Mabel, a soft-spoken Chinese girl with glasses—to get in the picture with me. First words out of her mouth: “I don’t like Mao.” Suddenly I feel ashamed. “I don’t like Mao either,” I say. We take the picture anyway.

Early morning, maybe 7am. I’m awoken by a jackhammer and a drill somewhere in the vicinity of my apartment. I fall back to sleep somehow. I’m startled out of a deep sleep again by the sound of a jet engine flying over my school. I have the unsteady notion that it’s a fighter jet and my stomach twinges with fear. Half awake, half dreaming I imagine a sky full of fighter jets like an old World War II movie clip. Suddenly I’m awake, and all I can hear is the drill.

1 pm: I’m lying on the rocky sand beach under a hazy afternoon sky. I glance around at the other people on the beach. I see a few men wearing bathing suits, but most people are fully clothed. Then my glance falls on a middle-aged Chinese man about 100 meters away sitting with his wife and child on some steps. In the next moment he has a camera to his eye pointing it directly at me and my friend Meaghan as we lie on our towels in our bikinis. I look away and pretend not to notice. Meaghan waves. I wish I had her bravado. Then again she’s been here for a year, and she’s learned to deal with the attention in her own way.

Around 10am, I walk into Starbucks for some coffee. It is filled with Westerners. I pretend not to notice them, and they pretend not to notice me. No matter how hard I pretend, I can still feel their presence. My coffee is ready. Real coffee is a nice break from the instant stuff. I walk out of Starbucks and back into China.

Standing in the Metro waiting for the train, I notice a middle-aged white man—balding, slight pudge, glasses, plaid shirt—with his arms around a Chinese woman. This sight is nothing new. I see it all the time—a white man, a Chinese woman. I think about how I never see a Chinese man with a white girl.

Speed walking through the metro station in my workout clothes trying to make it to Muay Thai class on time, a young Chinese guy walking towards me suddenly ducks down right in front of me and walks knees bent with his hand held over his head making fun of my height. No doubt my short workout shorts make me look even taller than normal, but really, was that necessary? I’m torn between bewilderment and anger. I suddenly wish I knew some curse words in Chinese. I don’t, so I ignore him and anxiously anticipate the two hour Muay Thai boxing session.

***

Just from last week, these images have stuck in my mind as possible pieces to a larger puzzle that I hope to put together down the road. For now, though, they are just images collaged in a haphazard manner on the wall of my mind.

A Breath of Fresh Air

Before coming here, I watched a few documentaries on the people and places in China, and reverberating in my mind since watching those films was a majestic scene of mountains with ribbons of rice terraces that made the mountains look like luxurious green and gold staircases to heaven. Of course, this image is all I could remember. I had no idea where this terraces actually existed, only that they did exist somewhere in China. Give me a needle and a haystack any day! So, a few weeks here and I had already pushed this image to the back of my mind figuring that it would be some time before I figured out where to find these rice terraced mountains.

So you can imagine my delight when, after talking to some newly made British friends during my holiday in Yangshuo, I discovered that these same long lost rice terraces were only a three hour ride by bus from Yangshuo! My friends and I immediately booked a trip with a local travel agency for a day trip to a town called LongJi in Longsheng County northwest of Yangshuo and its neighbor Guilin. I know little about it besides the brief brochure I grabbed at the Yangshuo travel agency and a few barely comprehensible comments made by our Chinese tour guide making her best effort to speak in English while we bumped along in our bus to LongJi.

I do know from these two sources that the terraces were constructed during the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1386), and that LongJi is home to the Yao ethnic people. From my tour guide I think I learned that the Yao women are famous for having a Guinness Record for the village people with the longest hair. Apparently once the women reach a certain age they never cut their hair again. Single women must wear their hair up and wrapped around their head; married women can wear it down if they wish, but most don’t because it would be impractical; and pregnant women wear their hair in a special square-shaped bun placed just above their foreheads. The women are also famous for their communal hair washing in the river. The strangest thing I think I learned from my tour guide is that pinching a Yao person’s back is a no-no for both sexes because for men it means that you intend to marry them and for women it means that you must stay and work for the men. I am not taking responsibility for the accuracy of this information since I had a hard time understanding my tour guide even when she tried communicating simple things such as “because of holiday traffic the bus ride may take five hours instead of three” because it came out more like “maybe boose wide fi houws beca hole-i-day cas an twaffic.” I can’t complain because her English is way better than my Chinese, but that didn’t make communication any less difficult.

The bus ride to LongJi was one of misery because it did take us five hours instead of three because of the holiday traffic, but it was worth all five of those hours. LongJi was a breath of fresh air from the sometimes kitschy Yanshuo with its crowded streets full of tourist shops and restaurants, and it was especially a breath of fresh air from the concrete, tile, and glass industrial feel of Shenzhen. Like everywhere else in China during the National holiday, Longji had its fair share of crowds, tourists, and tourist vendors; but once you walk past all of this chaos at the bottom of the mountain and climb the hundreds of stairs it takes to get to the top, you emerge in a peaceful, simple setting painted by the natural brown of the wood-framed houses, the gray of the stone-lined walkways, the yellow of drying corn, and especially the autumn-gold of the rice terraces. Every once in a while a red lantern or a red banner splashes into the scene and reminds you that you are in China and that Chinese people actually live in this natural painting, and then suddenly you actually see a Yao person walking down the street or standing in the doorway and the brilliant blues, reds, pinks, and purples of their clothes provides a shocking but satisfying contrast.

A painting would not do the place justice, however. I loved the camp-fire smell of the burning bamboo as the locals slowly roasted the hollowed plant, which they would later use to cook their famous bamboo chicken. The smell drifted easily in the high altitude’s light air and constant breeze. The silence seemed to be a sound itself after the constant noise of the city. The noise that did exist consisted of a few chickens walking around under the wood houses, some small streams running down the hills, and the occasional passerby. Finally, the feeling that no painting or photograph can ever capture no matter how hard artists try, is the breathtaking vastness when looking out from the top of a mountain over the scenery below. I found myself breathing more deeply; then came the dizziness as I tried to absorb the scope of the view in front of me; and finally the feeling of clarity arrived, and I felt like I was a part of the scene.

For the first time I felt like I was finally in the China of my imagination—the China that has formed over the years in my mind as I read books, watched movies, and heard stories. I was finally able to link a picture of China that existed only in my head to the actual sights, sounds, and feelings of something real. It is not that Shenzhen does not feel like China. It does with its street vendors selling food that only Chinese people would eat, its huge neon billboards with Chinese characters, and the millions of Chinese people chatting in Mandarin around me. But LongJi gave me a sense of history that finally grounded me in the Chinese culture in a more intimate way than any Chinese modern city could ever hope to do.

I Left my Heart in Yangshuo

Before I left for Yangshuo for the week long National Day holiday, I was told by various veteran foreign teachers that it was beautiful but annoyingly touristy. I was told that I would be bombarded by foreigners from all over the world who would think they knew everything about China and the world just because they had spent a few weeks travelling in various locations. I was warned to avoid these people and to stick to the outskirts of the city where I could experience Yangshuo without the foreign contamination. I thought this was strange advice since I myself am a foreigner, as are my advisors, so I ignored it and booked a hostel in the heart of the city right across from the infamous West street—a place filled with tourist-trapping shops and Western style restaurants.

I had my doubts about my Yangshuo decision since I had experienced some hostility towards other foreigners the weekend before when a few of us gathered in Nanshan for a friend’s birthday. Nanshan, a district located about 30 minutes to the Northwest of my location in Futian, is home to Sea World, Subway, Papa Johns, TCBY, and loads of ex-pat families. It has a Disney World feel with its brick sidewalks, amusement parks, and themed Western restaurants from Mexican cafés to Irish pubs. When I arrived in Nanshan near Sea World and the location of the restaurant where we were celebrating my friend’s birthday, I was shocked by the number of foreign faces I saw everywhere. It seemed like every fifth person was a foreigner, and instead of feeling comfortable with the familiarity of other faces like my own, I felt a little hostile. I was so used to being the only foreigner around that I began to feel territorial. Their white faces meant that my white face was not as unique or as valuable. I was just normal again, and I’m somewhat ashamed to say I didn’t like it. Even if the stares do get annoying, they have become a part of my identity here, and losing that identity was an uncomfortable feeling.

My feeling of uncertainty, however, was soon outweighed by my feeling of excitement as I heard stories of Yangshuo and the surrounding area as one of the most famous areas in China celebrated for centuries by poets and painters. Apparently several U.S. presidents have visited the area, and the famous Li River (Li Jiang) and the unusual limestone peaked mountains are even pictured on the 20 Yuan bill. On the map Yangshuo looks relatively close to Shenzhen. It could still be considered South China when looking at the Chinese map as a whole. So I was a bit surprised when I found out it would be at least a ten hour bus ride. The size of China never ceases to shock me. I think all these years I have grown up with the subconscious impression that China and the United States are relatively the same size, but now I know just how skewed my world vision was by my American-centro thinking.

So, one eleven hour overnight sleeper-bus ride later (an experience worth writing about itself), three friends (Megan, Shedisha, Ranjana) and I arrived in Yangshuo at dawn just in time to watch the sunrise above the village and the limestone peaks. While trying to find our hostel, we wandered around the town for about forty-five minutes avoiding a Chinese man trying to sell us tour guide services, grabbing some steamed buns (mantou) from a street vendor, and taking in the sleepy town before its streets filled with tourists. We finally stumbled across our horribly named hostel—Yanshuo Senior Leader International Youth hostel—a name I and nobody else who stayed there could ever fully remember. It’s a charming place with an eclectic international feel—colorful throw pillows and couches, exposed brick and wood trim, and handmade signs and notes left by former lodgers.

By the time we arrived at the hostel it was about 7:45 am, so we dropped our suite cases off at the hostel, headed back onto the streets to purchase our return bus ticket from the ticket office that opened at 8am, and looked for a real breakfast. On our way to the bus station we phoned one of the CTLC program leaders who had brought another group to Yangshuo as well to see what he was doing for the day. He said he was taking the group mud-caving. Anything involving mud and a cave sounded like a splendid idea to us, so after purchasing our bus tickets we proceeded to the nearest shops to purchase mudding apparel. We succeeded in bargaining for some Teva sandals, which are probably fake and which we probably still got ripped off for despite our best bargaining efforts. Next we purchased the Chinese version of men’s bathing suits—something akin to volleyball shorts or really short biking shorts—to avoid ruining our own shorts. Tops were a bit harder to find so we risked our own swim suit tops for the occasion.

Bus tickets, tevas, and swim suit bottoms successfully bought, we made the exquisite discovery that they serve Western style breakfasts in Yangshuo. After weeks of eating noodles and rice porridge for breakfast, I’m not ashamed to say that it was wonderful having bacon, eggs, French toast, and real orange juice. I never realized until this trip just how much I miss Western food. I’ve never considered myself a picky eater, but, while Chinese food isn’t bad, it doesn’t have the same variety as Western food. Eating Western food that we cannot find in Shenzhen became one of our main activities in Yangshuo. While there I ate two burritos (Mexican food is by far the hardest type of food to find in China), a hamburger, a banana crepe, and apple crumble. We were not totally taken in by the Western food. We did sample the local beer fish, which is one of the most famous dishes in the region. Although we did pass on the stir-fried snake, fried rat, and dog stew, which were the most expensive dishes on the menu.

Our tummies satisfied by our Western breakfast, we purchased mud-caving tickets from a local tourist agency called Fairyland Travel with the help of an excellent, English-speaking, Chinese tour guide whose English name is Jack and whose adorable dimple-cheeked daughter shyly smiled at us while we made our transaction. I won’t go into the details of our mudding excursion except to say that if you have never hiked through a cave to bathe in a huge puddle of mud the consistency of melted chocolate, you haven’t lived.

Mud-caving was one of three travel agency planned excursions that we ventured—the other two being a white-water drift and a trip to the Longji rice terraces. When I say travel agency, I don’t want to give the impression that we found some professional agency to help us with planning. Travel agencies in Yangshuo are like Starbucks in New York, they are on every corner and every street, and they are all offering different versions of the same thing. The difference is their prices vary depending on how much they think they can rip you off without you protesting, and the equality of experience is not guaranteed. We planned this trip Chinese style meaning we had no plan and decided moment by moment what we wanted to do next. So, we left our fate in the hands of these travel agencies and the advice of those we met along the way.

One example of this advice came the first night after our mud-caving adventure while we were at a little bar called The Blue Lotus. We met up with a couple of friends from the other CTLC group in Yangshuo. By coincidence, one of our friends, who is British, bumped into another British guy who actually lives in his town back home and works for his mother, or mum as the Brits say. So we all got to talking and soon found out that they are teachers as well but in Guangzhou. They told us about an excursion they were going on to the Longji Rice Terraces in a couple of days and the travel agency where they booked the trip. The next day we booked the trip with their agency, and two days later we were on a bus with our new British friends to the terraces and my favorite excursion of the trip.

Another example came when we were getting some tea at a little restaurant that same night just before we headed to the bar. We started talking to our waitress, a beautiful Chinese girl named Sunny, who spoke decent English, and we found out that she had just moved there to practice her English and take classes at the University. Thirty minutes later we had Sunny’s cell phone number, and she had ours so we could contact each other once she got off work. True to her word Sunny called us and we met her and some of her friends at a bar where she knew the owners and could get us free drinks. A surprise that shouldn’t have been a surprise considering it was Yangshuo, was that one of Sunny’s good friends was a French girl named Lindsey who also lives in Yangshuo. Lindsey was incredibly nice and danced the night away with us. Our British friends joined us again later that night completing our international party.

After that first night, I no longer feared the foreigner contamination. I embraced it with open arms. It was amazing being in one town in China and having so many nationalities converging to enjoy the same sights and sounds of Yangshuo. Yes, Yangshuo may now be more like an international backpackers’ paradise rather than a small Chinese village, but there is something surprisingly beneficial about this new identity. I never experienced the old Yangshuo before it was overrun by thousands of tourists, Western restaurants, backpackers, and street vendors, and I’ll admit that it was extremely frustrating sometimes trying to squeeze my way down West street that was packed shoulder to shoulder with other National holiday travelers. However, there was also something comforting seeing people from all over the world struggling down the same streets in the same pursuits of simple pleasures like eating, drinking, and shopping.

We all were there to see Yangshuo, but we were all there to see each other as well. I can’t count the number of times Chinese tourists asked to take pictures of us, or better yet would randomly photograph us or start video taping us. One girl with me was Indian-American and another girl with me as Jamaican-American, and they were an especially hot commodity in Yangshuo. Chinese tourists were constantly throwing their babies at them to hold and take pictures with, and grown Chinese men would stare and start photographing them as soon as we passed by them. My other white friend and I were not as interesting since there were numerous other Europeans and Americans there, but many Chinese liked taking pictures with all four of us since we represented several ethnicities.

Our differences also helped us to make friends. We returned to the Blue Lotus one night for dinner once we discovered they also served burritos, and while eating dinner a group of Chinese people sat down beside us. After we ordered our food the waitress told us that the owner wanted to buy us free beer. This offer of free beer had already happened to us once already when we were at one of the dance clubs on the first night. We had no idea who the beer was from, but we assumed the owner because as soon as we arrived and started dancing loads of other Chinese people started coming in and dancing with us. So, again, we weren’t sure why, but we accepted the free beer as a means of introduction. We quickly realized the owner was one of the men sitting next to us in the Chinese party. Soon, as he poured us our beers, we were all talking in the little broken Chinese we knew and the little broken English they knew. We managed to introduce ourselves and tell them that we are teachers in Shenzhen. They managed to get across that the three of them besides the owner were just visiting Yangshuo. A few minutes later a pregnant woman arrived who knew the group sitting next to us, and she spoke English extremely well. We found out that she actually lives in Yangshuo and she studied English in the University. She translated for a bit, and before long we were all playing a popular Chinese game found at almost every bar similar to the card game bullshit but with cups and dice.

I love the fact that in Yangshuo your differences make you more appealing and actually bring people together instead of pulling them apart. There are very few times and places that you can find so many different nationalities sitting at the same table laughing and enjoying each others company. Yangshuo is the ideal microcosmic world without the politics, the wars, and the focus on cultural differences. If we all could look at the world like the people in Yangshuo look at themselves, we would see that we are all equally visitors and hosts who just need to buy each other a beer once in a while.