August 09, 2007

Longsheng (CHINA)

A Visit to Longsheng's Famous Rice Terraces

Late last night I booked a bus ticket to the China-Vietnam border, so today is my last day in China - for this trip, at least. I decided to spend my time visiting the famous Longsheng rice terraces, which are a four hour bus ride from the city of Yangshuo. Sadly, I had to break my travel principles and sign up with a tour group for the journey as time is working against me. It isn't just an elitist mentality that steers me away from tour groups (although backpackers are more fun to be around than those pampered few who have the luxury of traveling with a suitcase), but tour buses scream "We are short on time and loaded with money." This is a magnet for trouble.

Sure enough, when our bus neared Longsheng the tour operator announced we would be making an unexpected stop in a traditional village to see a local performance. Predictably, the 70rmb (roughly $10USD) fee for the performance was not included in the transport fee for the day. There was no way I was about to pay such extortionist prices to see a "long-haired performance" (the local women have hair roughly 1.5 meters), so I spent 45 minutes walking a nearby trail. Although the views were nowhere near as good as what would come later in the day, it felt good to be off on my own and away from the "I'll pay whatever you want, so long as I have stories to tell from China" crowd.

By noon we had climbed halfway up the mountain leading to the villages of Longsheng. We all stopped for lunch at a local restaurant pointed out by the tour agent. Invariably, a portion of the inflated lunch prices went into the agency's pocket, but I figured I was already stuck in this mess so I might as well be a tourist for the day. Being in a group of 35 people meant it took 45 minutes to get my food and by then I had lost all interest in eating. The only saving grace for the ordeal was that I met up with a Dutch student who just completed a six month internship with Beijing's Hyatt Hotel. We had a good bit to talk about, and his plans to work in the Asian hotel industry could prove to be yet another useful contact down the road.

After eating, we continued climbing up a small path through quaint villages until we reached the summit at 2pm. The viewing platform was full of other tourists - both foreign and Chinese - but the views were nothing short of remarkable. Here are a view different photographs I took from the day...

As is evident from the pictures, I arrived at the right time of the year and the lush greenery and piece-wise farming techniques are quite famous in China. Although it was a real hassle getting out here today (as is obvious from all my complaints) the views made everything worthwhile.

We were all to be back on the bus by 4pm, but it wasn't until 5pm that the last of the stragglers made it back. From Longsheng, it was a two hour bus ride to the city of Guilin where I would catch a 10pm bus to the Vietnam border. I spent the intermediate time catching up on all-things-Arsenal (the Premiership season starts in a few days) and sending off emails at a local internet cafe.

I boarded the Vietnam-bound bus with a Korean student, Jin Dong Chen, who is a political science student at China's renowned Peking University. Although he was born and grew up in southern Korea, he speaks fluent Chinese and is an avid baseball fan - he was wearing a Boston Red Sox hat when I met him. We were forced to stand for the first hour on the bus, but eventually we grabbed a couple seats and did our best to fend off the Chinese every time the bus made a stop.

At 3am we alighted from the bus and waited in the underbelly of a bus depot for a 4:30am bus that would take us the remainder of the way to the border. Fortunately, Jin had speakers with him, and he plugged them into his Samsung mp3 player (it is touch-screen, and much cooler looking than the iPod), so we rocked out the parking garage for the long wait.