July 23, 2010 - Guilin, Guangzi, China

"I often sent pictures of the hills of Guilin, which I painted, to friends back home, but few believed what they saw."
~Fan Chengda (Song Dynasty)


This morning I left our National Consortium for Teaching about Asia (NCTA) group in Shanghai to set out on a 19-day solo adventure.  I'm nervous.  It's the language.  I've traveled extensively in countries with languages rooted in Greek & Latin, so even if I don't have training in the Indo-European language I can usually make it up and come out successful.  However, there's no faking Mandarin.  

There are four tones in Mandarin determining a word meaning.  Ma, for example, can mean mother, horse, or hemp - depending on the tone. This morning I told the cab driver my airport destination; he said no because my desired destination was too far away.  With help from a local, we realized my 'tone' was incorrect and the airport a mere 10 minute drive.  

My best tonal pronunciation is shui, meaning water.  This is good since it's hot and I need to drink lots of water.  I'm feeling anxious about shui.  It's raining and flooding everywhere, people are dying and missing.  Guilin is located in Southeast China on the Li River, but flooding is minimal.  

After frantically traveling for the last 2 1/2 weeks, I needed today to decompress.  Upon arrival in Guilin, I took a long midday nap in the raging heat, while thunderous rain poured from the sky.  With the increase in China's middle-class, everything has become a tourist trap.  In the late afternoon, a short run took me to Elephant Trunk Hill Park, which is basically a hole in a rock that kinda of looks like an elephant trunk.  The best part of climbing the rock was encountering tiny 1 centimeter long frogs jumping everywhere, bird sized butterflies, and beautiful purple orchids - this feels like Southeast Asia.  

Guilin means "forest of sweet Osmanthus" because of the native Osmanthus trees within the city.


In the late evening, I finally experienced a China-rolling-blackout, probably due to high head and the strain on demands for air conditioning.  

Yin Lion

Yang Lion