The Journey South
My time is almost up! Only one day left in China! I am in Beijing now doing some last minute errands, shopping, and packing, and tomorrow I'll be boarding a plane back to Atlanta.
Since I last posted, I've been traveling non-stop. I had been planning to join a Vanderbilt field school in southern China for months, and as soon as I had finished entering my grades at the university in Weihai, I purchased my ticket to join the rest of the members. I flew from Weihai to Beijing and then to Guilin. In Guilin I met a lady who was returning to her hometown in Liuzhou, also my destination, and after talking with her on the airport bus into town, she accompanied and even pad for my ticket to Liuzhou!
Some views of southern China from the plane:
The field school was examining Urban Planning, Rural Development, Health Services, and English Education in Guangxi Autonomous Region. Guangxi is known for its geographic beauty-- limestone karsts situated along the Li River. I was originally assigned to the Education team, but unfortunately it had recently been completed. So, I joined up with a few members of the rural development team instead. Originally, the team had planned on conducting ethnographies and surveys and then using them to write a grant to provide assistance to the area. Unfortunately, the local government had blocked most of their proposals even though the Chinese consulate had previously approved them, so we could also do some informal observations about how some of the villages have been affected by tourism.
One of the first things I did in Liuzhou was visit a local winery:
An old gate to the city:
People dancing in a local park:
Most people have umbrellas attached to their bikes in case it suddenly starts raining. In the summer it rains almost everyday, and earlier this summer Liuzhou experienced several weeks of intense flooding that killed several people.
The central square in Liuzhou:
Eating some southern Chinese food with plastic gloves!
Some local karst scenery:
Guangxi is not exempt from Chinglish:
After spending a couple of days in Liuzhou, we took three buses to a small village called Ping'An, which is famous for its rice terraces. The next days we hiked five hours to the smaller, surrounding villages, and spoke informally with the village inhabitants. As more tourists come to the area, fewer of the townspeople must farm; up until six or seven years ago, however, the villagers ate almost only rice, so the tourism really has improved their lives, and no one we met said they preferred the village ten years ago the the one now. Of course, foreign money makes them happy, but it is nice to know that their economic development has also seen an improvement in their social lives.
This is the fattest baby I have every seen, on the bus to Ping-An. It also had diarrhea, so the mother had to change its underpants four times during the two-hour ride (she didn't have diapers). By the end of the trip, she had baby poo all over the front of her clothes. It was disgusting.
This girl was vomiting, probably partly from the baby diarrhea, and partly from the incredibly fast driving around the mountain with sheer drops offs the side of the mountain:
I don't know what this product is:
Men waiting to carry (lazy) tourists to the village:
The entrance to the village:
These guys really smelled:
Split pants!
Some Dong minority women in the village (that is their really long hair wrapped around their heads!):
Ping'An at dusk:
Workers around Ping-An:
Walking back to the paddies:
Some children idling the day away:
We could walk right through the paddies!
An old man who has probably lived and worked in these rice paddies his whole life:
Cock-a-doodle-doo!
Rice has been farmed here for centuries. I wonder how long this hut has been here:
After two nights in Ping'An, we took the three/four buses (one change included walking across a destroyed bridge and boarding another bus) for another two nights in Liuzhou.
Walking from one bus to another, across the bridge:
On the afternoon of the 14th, I took a 16-hour train to Guangzhou, followed by a two-hour bus to Shenzhen, followed by a one-hour train to Hong Kong. Hong Kong, like Guangxi, was another place I had hoped to visit since I came to China, and the fact that the Field School participants would be attending a conference in Hong Kong gave me added incentive to go. The conference focused on international social development, though a lot of the presentations focused on social work and social work education. Honestly, much of the conference was a little disappointing because a lot of the papers presented had too little quantitative data and too much fluff, but some of the presentations that focused on human trade and trafficking were excellent, as was Amartya Sen's keynote speech.
Aside from the conference, Hong Kong is a great city. As it has a European history, I thimk it will be a good transition back to America. It reminded me a lot of San Francisco, though no one else seems to agree with this evaluation. The city is situated around a harbor, has lots of skyscrapers and trams, and is very hilly, crowded, and diverse.
A mosque in Kowloon, Hong Kong:
Hong Kong from atop Victoria Peak:
And from the ferry at night:
Having recently surpassed Britain's per capita GDP, Hong Kong also has its share of the absurd that only comes with too much wealth:
Posing on a pink pearl panda:
A shopping street in Hong Kong:
Macau served as one final destination I had hoped to visit since arriving. An hour away from Hong Kong by a (very bumpy and nauseating--barf bags are frequently used) ferry, it made for a perfect day trip. It has a history similar to Hong Kong's, though it was in Portuguese hands, not British, until a few years ago. Much more so that Hong Kong, it has the feel of a European village, as the city has seen much less wealth than Hong Kong until recently and thus retains a smaller, older, and more intimate feel.
The street signs are written in Portuguese and Chinese:
Incense hanging from a temple in Macau:
The old city center:
The first Christian church in The Orient:
The ruins of St. Pauls's church:
And the grittier city center:
After finishing up the conference on the 20th, I flew back to Beijing for two more days to do some final shopping and packing. I'll be home the night of July 22 for those who wish to throw me a "Welcome Home" party.
Since I last posted, I've been traveling non-stop. I had been planning to join a Vanderbilt field school in southern China for months, and as soon as I had finished entering my grades at the university in Weihai, I purchased my ticket to join the rest of the members. I flew from Weihai to Beijing and then to Guilin. In Guilin I met a lady who was returning to her hometown in Liuzhou, also my destination, and after talking with her on the airport bus into town, she accompanied and even pad for my ticket to Liuzhou!
Some views of southern China from the plane:
The field school was examining Urban Planning, Rural Development, Health Services, and English Education in Guangxi Autonomous Region. Guangxi is known for its geographic beauty-- limestone karsts situated along the Li River. I was originally assigned to the Education team, but unfortunately it had recently been completed. So, I joined up with a few members of the rural development team instead. Originally, the team had planned on conducting ethnographies and surveys and then using them to write a grant to provide assistance to the area. Unfortunately, the local government had blocked most of their proposals even though the Chinese consulate had previously approved them, so we could also do some informal observations about how some of the villages have been affected by tourism.
One of the first things I did in Liuzhou was visit a local winery:
An old gate to the city:
People dancing in a local park:
Most people have umbrellas attached to their bikes in case it suddenly starts raining. In the summer it rains almost everyday, and earlier this summer Liuzhou experienced several weeks of intense flooding that killed several people.
The central square in Liuzhou:
Eating some southern Chinese food with plastic gloves!
Some local karst scenery:
Guangxi is not exempt from Chinglish:
After spending a couple of days in Liuzhou, we took three buses to a small village called Ping'An, which is famous for its rice terraces. The next days we hiked five hours to the smaller, surrounding villages, and spoke informally with the village inhabitants. As more tourists come to the area, fewer of the townspeople must farm; up until six or seven years ago, however, the villagers ate almost only rice, so the tourism really has improved their lives, and no one we met said they preferred the village ten years ago the the one now. Of course, foreign money makes them happy, but it is nice to know that their economic development has also seen an improvement in their social lives.
This is the fattest baby I have every seen, on the bus to Ping-An. It also had diarrhea, so the mother had to change its underpants four times during the two-hour ride (she didn't have diapers). By the end of the trip, she had baby poo all over the front of her clothes. It was disgusting.
This girl was vomiting, probably partly from the baby diarrhea, and partly from the incredibly fast driving around the mountain with sheer drops offs the side of the mountain:
I don't know what this product is:
Men waiting to carry (lazy) tourists to the village:
The entrance to the village:
These guys really smelled:
Split pants!
Some Dong minority women in the village (that is their really long hair wrapped around their heads!):
Ping'An at dusk:
Workers around Ping-An:
Walking back to the paddies:
Some children idling the day away:
We could walk right through the paddies!
An old man who has probably lived and worked in these rice paddies his whole life:
Cock-a-doodle-doo!
Rice has been farmed here for centuries. I wonder how long this hut has been here:
After two nights in Ping'An, we took the three/four buses (one change included walking across a destroyed bridge and boarding another bus) for another two nights in Liuzhou.
Walking from one bus to another, across the bridge:
On the afternoon of the 14th, I took a 16-hour train to Guangzhou, followed by a two-hour bus to Shenzhen, followed by a one-hour train to Hong Kong. Hong Kong, like Guangxi, was another place I had hoped to visit since I came to China, and the fact that the Field School participants would be attending a conference in Hong Kong gave me added incentive to go. The conference focused on international social development, though a lot of the presentations focused on social work and social work education. Honestly, much of the conference was a little disappointing because a lot of the papers presented had too little quantitative data and too much fluff, but some of the presentations that focused on human trade and trafficking were excellent, as was Amartya Sen's keynote speech.
Aside from the conference, Hong Kong is a great city. As it has a European history, I thimk it will be a good transition back to America. It reminded me a lot of San Francisco, though no one else seems to agree with this evaluation. The city is situated around a harbor, has lots of skyscrapers and trams, and is very hilly, crowded, and diverse.
A mosque in Kowloon, Hong Kong:
Hong Kong from atop Victoria Peak:
And from the ferry at night:
Having recently surpassed Britain's per capita GDP, Hong Kong also has its share of the absurd that only comes with too much wealth:
Posing on a pink pearl panda:
A shopping street in Hong Kong:
Macau served as one final destination I had hoped to visit since arriving. An hour away from Hong Kong by a (very bumpy and nauseating--barf bags are frequently used) ferry, it made for a perfect day trip. It has a history similar to Hong Kong's, though it was in Portuguese hands, not British, until a few years ago. Much more so that Hong Kong, it has the feel of a European village, as the city has seen much less wealth than Hong Kong until recently and thus retains a smaller, older, and more intimate feel.
The street signs are written in Portuguese and Chinese:
Incense hanging from a temple in Macau:
The old city center:
The first Christian church in The Orient:
The ruins of St. Pauls's church:
And the grittier city center:
After finishing up the conference on the 20th, I flew back to Beijing for two more days to do some final shopping and packing. I'll be home the night of July 22 for those who wish to throw me a "Welcome Home" party.
posted by Mysteries of The Orient at 2:16 AM
1 Comments:
"Most people have umbrellas attached to their bikes in case it suddenly starts raining. In the summer it rains almost everyday"
No. The umbrella holders on bikes are used as parasols. When it rains here an umbrella ain't going to help! When it rains, forget the bicycle!
And in the summer, it doesn't rain almost every day. Early summer, yes. Then we have weeks and weeks of drought.
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