This week my mother, jie jie (elder sister) Shelley and I spent a wonderful holiday in Yangshuo, 2 hours flight south of Beijing, and realised that tourism in China is alive and well, and that it is also illustrating my growing sense that there are two China’s.
Apparently 95 million Chinese went on holiday last week, during May week, but not all had got home as Guilin and the riverside city of Yangshuo were extremely busy. Airline tickets are sold on a reducing price over time basis, starting at a published rate of RMB1790 (US$237) each way to Guilin and then being available at RMB740 the day before the flight. In contrast to most countries where customers buy flights cheapers by going direct to the airlines, in China agents are able to secure significant discounts, and so we used a company to buy ours on Hainan airlines leaving on Saturday.
Guilin city is 2 hours south of Beijing and the flight was full with Chinese tourists. In our hotel room a selection of items was available in the mini bar and bathroom. One that caught our eye was a pair of underwear in a cigarette-size pack with the promising label “uncomplimentary 10 Yuan (RMB)”. The pack stated “High Quality Antisepsis & Healthy Pants Common Size” and as if that would ensure success, added “Condominclosed.” Needless to say for 10 Yuan the promise seemed good value.
Guilin is on the Li Jiang (river), a wide flowing river that runs 84km southwards to Yangshuo through the Karst scenery that typifies Chinese paintings. Han Yu (A.D. 768 – 824), a Tang Dynasty poet, composed the classic description of the Li river, “The river is a blue ribbon of silk. The hills are hair pins of Jade.” The river gives life to the tourism trade, and we contemplated taking the 4 hour boat ride to Yangshuo which would cost as much as an expensive Jade bracelet at an unseemly RMB500 (US$62.50), or half the price for a Chinese guided boat, but felt it prudent to take a RMB16 (US$2) coach ride which took 1.5 hours.
Yangshuo is one of the prime China tourism sites, with stunning limestone scenery, a wending river, and an increasingly lively nightscene and an education in entrepreneurial endeavour. One evening while having dinner, a wisened old woman, with hunched back and lively eyes, implored us to buy 2 cm Chinese calendar plastic trinkets, decorated pink ping pong balls and other necessary items. Using my basic mandarin we learned that her sons sent this 70+ woman out to sell trinkets. Before she could ably complete negotiations 3 young women swooped and uplifted her basket, ignoring her entirely, while telling us that they were students from a nearby town sent by their teacher to “interrupt foreigners and practice their English.” The wares of the old hawker provided the perfect foil for their need to study and they frog marched her away into the throngs of tourists in search of unsuspecting Europeans.
On Friday the map bounced out of the basket of the tandem that Mum and I were riding, and in our lost state we happened upon the “Outside Inn” some 30 minutes ride from Yangshou. This Inn was set up by a Dutchman who had fallen in love with China in 1997 and who had negotiated with 25 local farmers to rent their old buildings in a crumbling village, with the vision to convert them into a romantic hideaway. “The farmers at first didn’t trust the Dutchman because they couldn’t believe anyone would want to stay in their old homes,” commented the well spoken Chinese lad who showed us around the 12 room courtyard which cost US$5 a night. “These people left here 5 years ago and all moved to the city to enjoy new buildings, and they can’t understand why anyone would want to live this way.”
Foreigners, much the bemusement of these farmers, pay good money to sleep in the rooms these people spent a lifetime trying to leave. Leaving the world was one resident of Yangshuo, their coffin preceeded by family members in white muslin with red spots on their forehead who walked backwards, facing the deceased and the four dragons who kept away the evil spirits. Paper money was cast in the path of the procession, only to be swept away by road cleaners before it might unsettle the business of the trinket salesmen lining the streets.
The countryside around Yanshou held a fascinating contrast for me, the simplicity of the rural existence that is idealised by those of us who live in the ‘always on, always connected’ world, and the aspiration of those who live in the ‘rural poor, someday wealthy’ hinterland of modern China. In a way the name of the “Outside Inn” represented what is happening in rural China – the outside world is coming in, and turning their insular world outwards. Billboards for Olmeida language colleague posted on the sides of mud huts showed blond, blue eyed models and shouted “Learn English, Enjoy Life.” As we cycled down pebble laid paths and gave way to oxen tended by barefooted children who said “Hello,” it became increasingly clear that communicating in English is seen as a path out of rural poverty and into a wealth generated by tourism.
One of the featured attractions in Yangshuo is that of paying rural people to enact their former activities under floodlights and to music. Cormorants, a black diving bird the size of large duck, are uniquely trained to gather fish for a man perched on a bamboo raft. In Yangshuo some of these men have taken to posing for photos instead of taking to the river, earning RMB5 for a photograph, more than they would for 100gm of fish. I wondered at what stage it becomes better for a person to be paid to show what they used to do, than to actually do it for real, and what changes this would bring to these people.
Returning to Beijing with bamboo baskets, farmers’ hats, and a fish trap, Mum, Shelley and I were the subject of fascination. As we got out of the taxi outside the high rise apartment, a middle aged overweight woman picked up the bamboo pole and threaded it through the rope of the basket, and placed it on her shoulder, making as if to go to the fields; her young son looked on in total bewilderment, her action demonstrating a generation gap as wide as the Li Jiang river.
