So I arrived well in Guangzhou around noon and luckily found a nice quiet place to park in a backyard. Again my e-bike proved to be invaluable as it enabled me to go for a first quick city exploration tour. I quite liked what I saw. The city has still quite a few old relics to admire especially in the area that used to be reserved for the foreigners. What I also liked was the many little streets with markets or series of shops selling the various foodstuffs of the Chinese cuisine like spices, chilis, mushrooms, etc. It is unbelievable the variety available. Shops specialize and so you also find shops with a dozen different kinds of rice.
People of Guangzhou also like their food fresh which means that fish and crabs are still alive in little basins at the stores or at least somewhat alive. Chicken and ducks are in little cages squished together and not making pleasant noises. As soon as a customer decides out they are picked and slaughtered at the spot so the customer sees that the product is fresh… I can't say, I liked that but fascinated I was. And also here: the variety available is unbelievable.
And there is also a large Dr. Sun Yat-sen memorial with quite a nice documentation of his life. And the landmark of Goagzhou is the 4 Ram Statue which I had to visit as it was near the museum of the tomb of Emperor ZaoTuo who was buried there and his untouched grave was only discovered 1983 when digging for the foundation of an apartment block. This indeed was very interesting not least due to the gruesome detail of 4 concubines and 11 servants who had to die also to be buried with their master….
After that I couldn't help but again driving through the shop areas; the most impressive was a street maybe 6 or 700 m long with nothing else than wedding dress shops on both sides of it! Where would you find that anywhere else on this planet? I never will understand the Chinese custom of concentrating the same kind of shops in one area thereby creating an incredible competition. If you wanted to get married you had to come here from all over Guangzhou as I don't believe that in any other part you could buy a wedding dress… Aside from clothing, which you find everywhere, other specialty shops will be in one area and if you don't know that area chances are you would not be able to find that product.
Next stop was Guilin, a lovely little town in the middle of those famous steep but rounded and covered in trees mountains China is famous for. The drive up there prepared me for the sight but it is still impressive if in the middle of town all of a sudden steep hills are springing up. I found a pleasant place for the night at a shopping center and proceeded the next morning to a 'bamboo boat' tour down the Li river and then by bus to Yangshou and back to Guilin by bus too. The 'bamboo' in realty are about 7 or 8 steel tubes tied together to form a raft on which 2-3 benches can take up to 6 passengers behind whom a boatman is dealing with an incredibly loud diesel engine which propels the contraption up and down the river. The views are impressive and each mountain (and there are many) has a poetic name referring to its appearance which I immediately forgot. If the motors were electric one could get romantic but with the noise I ultimately was glad to be back in the bus…
Yangshuo again is a tourist town with all its disadvantages. But it is nice enough and has a market that mostly sells kitsch. But only mostly, in between there actually were islands of reasonably good taste when looking at the textiles…
Ultimately I was glad to be back in Guilin and my 'Datcha'.
The next morning I took a quick tour around the former imperial palace, or what is being 'sold' for that. Most of it is reconstructed and for most of its time was used as regional administration center. Impressive though is the big boulder rising behind the 'palace', about 200m high and accessible by stairs and providing a nice view over the otherwise not very attractive town. But it was good for my fitness at least…
I left with the target of Longsheng and the Dong minority villages nearby. First they didn't want to let me drive there as my car is oversize but then they relented. The road was very 'Austrian' in the sense that it was a typical mountain road but well kept and no problem for an Austrian. In effect the architecture of the Dong has similarities to ours as it is mostly of wood with 'Alpine' roof shapes, quite pleasant. On the way I even saw Dong girls presenting their about 1m long hair to tourists at the river while they were winding it to a knot. The village I visited was Ping An which was at a little over 1000m altitude.
The Chinese are masters of marketing their sites. To get there one had to pay about EUR 10 and once I arrived I had to pay another EUR 2.50 for parking, but that's ok. But when you get there you walk up the mountain for about 1.5 kms though endless rows of souvenir stalls. Some admittedly not so bad as they show at least, how the textiles are woven or how the comps are cut from horn. The restaurants, however, are not bad and quite reasonable. I had some chicken rice prepared in bamboo which was quite nice. The real attraction though are the famous rice terraces, really beautiful to look at. Unfortunately my pictures aren't as nice 'as in the book' as the whole day it was quite hazy, my suspicion is that the haze was a result of the heavy pollution in the whole area.
Longsheng, nondescript, was my night stop in a quiet side road, quiet save for a very loud family dispute about midnight….
The drive there and on to Guiyang was insofar 'interesting' as first I had to pass a bridge with a width limit of 2m but my car is 2.15m. I checked and went through as there was plenty of space left. A little later I met a height limit of 2.9m, ok, the car is 2.85m but when shortly afterwards I read a sign and had to pass a height measuring bar across the road reading 2.8m I got a little uptight. Well, it worked without scratch… Luckily at several places the road had been damaged by mudslides or broken off but was passable. When I reached the motorway I had to think about our Tauernautobahn as the similarity was striking at times…
On the way I wanted to see a covered bridge but although they claimed to have an English speaking guide or at least a brochure nothing was available. So I took a picture from a distance and went on without paying the requested EUR 10, this was clearly vastly overpriced!
I spent the night at the center of Guiyang which was a nice but not quiet place to park as the inner town is one huge 24hrs (re-)construction site and the trucks kept passing through. Nevertheless I slept soundly.
The next morning I continued towards Zunyi the place where during the Long March in Jan 1935 Mao emerged as the leader of the Communist Party after a meeting of the leadership in a building in the middle of the town. Considering the historical importance of the place it was remarkable that there was not a single sign or description in English save for 'no smoking' and 'keep off the grass'. Lesser important houses where other people stayed at that time were much better in this respect.
I managed to get to Chongqing before the evening. I wanted to stay at a hotel and had picked the one and only that seemed to have outside parking but it didn't. Luckily, as I was about to give up a legal space across from the hotel became available. Originally I had hoped to do a short '3 Gorges' excursion from there but as it was drizzling I decided it was not worth it and went on, even more so as Chongqing does not have to offer much old substance as it had suffered during the Sino-Japanese war. It was the temporary capital of China as Nanjing had been captured by the Japanese. But also here redevelopment everywhere…
My target were the famous Dazu Rock Carvings. They were breathtaking! Although there are several in the area 2 are made available to tourist (against a small charge, naturally…). I first went to the ones in Bei Shan which were very impressive. But the real hit are the ones at Baoding Shan. They simply are mind blowing from quality and quantity and are from the 12th and 13th century and amazingly well preserved and quite rightly a Unesco World Heritage Site. A real high point of this trip… It was too late to visit the inside of a very nice temple next door but the outside was impressive enough… It was getting dark as I returned to Dazu where I spent the night in a side street very peacefully…
Unfortunately due to the problems mentioned the pictures will have to wait as it is too complicated due to the 'Chinese Wall'…
My next stop was Chengdu. The city didn't impress me very much as there is little to see except a huge Mao statue he raising his arm as if hailing a taxi and a very Chinese looking mosque and a Buddhist monastery. The only real attraction is the Panda Research Center a little outside of town. It is practically a very large zoo specializing in Pandas and is done very nicely. Thanks also to their work the Panda population is increasing and the extinction at least for the time being is no longer a danger.
This is it for now so there is something for you to read. I am meanwhile already on the Northern Silk Road but this will be in my next contribution…
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