Travelling in China – Part II

 

Don’t be deceived by the newly updated Lonely Planet, websites, taxi drivers, who want to overcharge the tourists or bus companies.

 

The bus drives from the main bus station in Guilin, which is 5 minutes away from the train station, many times a day directly to the village Xing Ping. The bus doesn’t stop and you don’t even have to change buses in the city Yangshuo as the locals first wanted to convince us.  The trip lasts about two hours. Pictures of this village are on the banknote for 20 juans and has 3000 people. You can walk through it in 15 minutes. Xing Ping is 600 years old and lies by the river Li. 

 

The wish to see the Chinese countryside came true after a long morning walk and a breakfast. We made a deal with the lady who made the best dumplings and offered also a bike rent. We hired her son and two bikes for 100 juans (13 euros) for 4 hours. Cycling through the fields, chickens in front of the bikes, crossing the river with a boat, visiting the hidden Buddhist monastery, chiseled into a rock and a guide with a great body that we rested our eyes on gave us power and confidence to spend the afternoon by ourselves and went hiking over the mountain to a fisherman village. 

 

 

The hike should last about 2 hours but we were scared to meet a snake and a tiger and walked there in one hour. The village didn’t have anything to offer but an experience with an old local, who jumped from the bushes in the middle of our hike, gave us a fright and an urge to make our plan B happen – the plan to escape. Everything he wanted is to promote his raft. Rafts that should be made from bamboo sticks are today modernized. The bamboo bottom of the raft was changed by plastic pipes. They kept the named just for promotion.

 

We finally agreed to take a ride after seeing the village. Bargaining for the price is a must in China and here was too, so we could safely come back to the village Xing Ping. After some advice, that we definitely had in mind, the service has to be payed for after it’s finished. In this case it was a little bit different. Old man has pushed us from the shore when we got on his bamboo raft that was actually plastic without turning on the engine. He wanted money from us in the middle of the river, which was very weird. The flow of the river has slowly been taking us away and we were arguing about money on the raft. We indulged and paid him the money. But the fox got us to the shore with help of his stick and tied us. We noticed that the engine doesn’t turn on. We had to discuss what we are going to do, since we had only 40 juans to get to the hostel, which wasn’t enough to pay someone else to drive us to our village The engine finally turned on. We drove to the north. 

 

 

The honesty of this old man wasn’t really his virtue as he dropped us off at the opposite site of the shore and not where we agreed. Luckily we were there a few hours before with our new cycling friend, so we didn’t have any problems crossing the river by a boat. But the ticket price was higher since we weren’t with a local.

 

We stayed for two days, which was enough to visit the market, local attractions, to hike, go rafting and cycling. On the third day the receptionist of the hostel This Old Place told us, that we don’t have to travel four hours to Guilin and change the taxi to the bus. 

 

We crossed Chinese countryside off our list and couldn’t wait to get to the biggest Chinese city by population, to Shanghai. A few hours with the night train and there we were. Driving from Beijing to Gulin taught us that we changed beds to the middle ones and made some older Chinese happy, who smiled and thanked us the whole ride.

 

 

The trip from the train station to Captain Hostel was really fast. If you ever visit Shanghai and are searching for a cheap accommodation, clean rooms, I certainly recommend this hostel. It is located a few minutes from the main events at Bund and 10 minutes from the shopping street East Naning Rd.

 

The city lies on the west riverbank of the river Yangtze and is 40 kilometres away from the river mouth to the South China Sea. River Huangpu divides the city centre on two parts, to the Pudong quarter, where you can find a business centre with the highest skyscrapers in Asia and to the old part Pixi on the other side of the river, where there is Waitan quarter, known as Bund, which was business, commercial and social centre of the city in colonial times. The coastal area is covered with 50 buildings in European architectural styles (neo-Gothic, neo-Romanticism, classicism, neo-Renaissance...) so it is also called Chinese Wall Street.

 

Shanghai has the status of municipality and a province, as three cities in China. People from west refer to Shanghai as eastern Paris or the queen of Orient. We were charmed by the city. 

 

 

Two whole different stories are told at night and in day, but at the end, they are put together and make a whole of these slightly European city. The city never sleeps, it plays with light at night and with shadows of skyscrapers through the day. The first impressions were fantastic! The city has charmed us and we have forgotten that we can’t draw any money from ATMs. We had more luck the next day and after few phone calls with the representatives of our banks, we finally got the money. We started spending on black market and bought some gifts for our families. We also took a closer look at the city with help of HopOn and HopOff buses, which we strongly recommend if you don’t have time to explore. 

 

We finished each day with a beer on Bund. Chinese tourists disturbed our peace with taking photos of us. While drinking beer they photographed us from every angle. We got our first bill in Shanghai, while buying beer in a local shop. 

 

 

We hope we drew you the atmosphere of mighty China. Maybe you will visit it too?