Our travels began with mountains in New Zealand and scuba diving in Indonesia. We immersed ourselves in nature to slowly refill our wells – wells that were running low after a long, hard push in DC and Michael’s scary battle with amoeba last year. At the mid-point of our four-month trip, we are finally rejuvenated and ready to throw ourselves completely into the unknown.
Both of us lived in India before we dated – and loved it. Our captivation with China grew from that experience. India is so vast, so unique, so diverse, so crazy that it utterly bewilders travelers that pop in for just a short trip. China strikes us as in the same category – it demands a big chunk of time. And, it is changing fast. Dedicating our last two months to China feels like it will make the most of what makes the sabbatical so special: extended time. With stunning landscapes, incredible food, a fascinating political and economic backdrop, and a rich culture all its own, we know it will spark our sense of wonder again and again.
Once we decided to spend two months in China, we immediately knew we wanted to learn at least a bit of mandarin. This is partly just a survival instinct: there are many parts of China where absolutely no English is spoken and signs are entirely in Chinese characters, making navigation especially challenging. But we also think China will be way more meaningful if we can speak even just a few words. When Robynn spoke Hindi in India, it immediately infused warmth into every interaction. We aspire to achieve some small version of that in China as well, though we have no illusions of mastering this tricky tongue.
After two months on the road, we are also hungry for just a little sense of home. On the road, we spend time each day packing up our bags and figuring out where we will sleep each night. For a few weeks, we want to leave our bags unpacked, get to know a neighborhood more deeply, and greet familiar faces.
Yangshuo in Guanxi province jumped out at us as a great place to kickstart our time in China. Yangshuo is home to Omeida Chinese Academy – which gets rave reviews online for its classes geared toward foreign travelers. With its striking karst landscape, Yangshuo is also known as a hub for cycling and rock climbing. And, its pollution levels are far far below that of major cities like Beijing.
So, on the morning of July 6th we traveled from Hong Kong into mainland China – a whole new world. We booked the trip by high-speed rail to see a bit of the countryside on our way to Yangshuo. The trick was a transfer in Guangzhou that required changing not only trains, but also train stations.
When we arrived from Hong Kong into the Guangzhou East railway station, we waded into an enormous churning river of humanity. Since we knew exactly zero Chinese at this stage (and there are no less than four railway stations in Guangzhou), we were not optimistic that a taxi would get us to the right place. So, we made a last-minute decision to take Guangzhou’s top-notch metro across town. The metro was clean and easy to navigate with English subtitles on all the maps and signs. We were feeling quite impressed with ourselves for navigating China so seamlessly on our very first day – that is, until we realized that the metro – with its many stops – would leave us an an extremely tight connection for our second train.
The metro pulled into Guangzhou South railway station just ten minutes before our next train was scheduled to depart. As we ran through the train station searching for our gate, our train’s scheduled departure time ticked past. Realizing we’d missed our connection, we had our first truly anxious moments in China.
Unlike in the Guangzhou metro, the signs in the Guangzhou South train station are exclusively in Chinese. The help desk personnel were patient and friendly – but spoke only Chinese. Our pleas to random passers-by also proved fruitless. And, the SIM card we picked up in Hong Kong struggled in China – so, we didn’t have the cellular data we needed to power our many translation apps. We knew to expect relatively little English in mainland China, but the switch from the Guangzhou metro to the train station was surprisingly abrupt nonetheless.
So…we missed our train, and were no longer feeling quite so saavy. Now what?
We knew that the high-speed trains to Guilin were relatively frequent, but we had no idea whether there was any availability later that day, or how to get new tickets. The train station had a huge ticket sales room, with dozens of windows, each with long queues of people, and each with a different Chinese label on bright LED boards.
Lacking any better plan, we jumped the shortest line and waited. With a little help from one of our translation apps, which had temporarily revived itself, we managed to communicate our basic situation. The ticket clerk spoke no English, but pointed to another line. At the front of this second queue, we found, much to our relief, perhaps the only English-speaking staff member at Guangzhou South Station. Then, in a stroke of even further luck, she told us there was availability on another train in a few hours, and that our existing tickets could be exchanged free of charge. Woohoo!
With our travel plans repaired, we settled in for a few-hour wait at the station. True to all the stories you hear about Chinese infrastructure, the Guangzhou South railway station is huge, attractive, and clean, with nice waiting areas, and plenty of good restaurants. For more budget-oriented travelers, it also offers an amenity we’d never seen before: hot water fountains that many of the waiting Chinese families were using to “cook” small bowls of pre-packaged raman.
Recharged by a little lunch and a short rest, we finally boarded our Guilin-bound train. Compared to Amtrak, the ride was something out of a world’s fair display. Zipping through the countryside at 250+ km per hour, the high-speed train was immaculate, on time, air-conditioned, and it offered clear announcements in both Mandarin and English at each station. Needless to say – with no beggars or food wallahs boarding at each stop, no standing packed between sweaty bodies – this was a world away from India, which we can’t help but use as a constant point of comparison.
As the train picked up speed, Guangzhou’s urban landscape faded into more pastoral scenes of small villages and farmers working small, irregular rice fields. But even in these more rural areas, we often saw cranes erecting multi-story concrete towers, and the roads and train stations were big, and brand new. As we approached our destination, the famous karst peaks of Guanxi province sprung from the ground.
From the end of the railway in Guilin, we took an hour-and-a-half taxi ride into Yangshuo. It was dark by the time we finally reached our hostel. The city lights up the nearby karsts at night, offering us an impressive display for our arrival. At such a late hour, most of the restaurants nearby were closed or closing. We found one that was still seating customers, and muddled our way through our food order in Chinese by pointing to the dish being eaten by the only other patron. It was, thankfully, a pretty simple soup of pork and lotus. At least that’s our best guess!
Tomorrow we start our lessons in “survival Chinese,” a course title we now have that much more appreciation for.