Counting down to my triumphant return to Beijing

Sorry it's been a while since I've rapped at ya, a little more than a week it seems. Conor and I have been on a wild trip through the back roads of rural central China, and only recently returned to the relative comfort (besides the cold) of big city life in Wuhan. Though the weather was rainy and cold, and the museums were closed because it was Monday, I rather enjoyed wandering around Wuhan. The place is remarkably modern, and it has a really unique feel, largely I think because it is split in two by the Yangtze River and because of it's concession-era past. For the former, the quickest way across the river is by ferry, which weaves among the huge barges carry quantities of who-knows-what up and down the Yangtze; in it's dirtiness and inefficiency, it's basically a mainland version of the Hong Kong Star Ferry. For the latter, the city, especially on the Hankou, or northern, side of the river, is riddled with European-style buildings from the early 20th century. It gives the city a cosmopolitan feel it perhaps doesn't really deserve.

The really fun parts of the trip, however, were in rural Guangxi, Guizhou and Hunan provinces, where we were before riding the expressway and later a new high-speed train (max 211 miles per hour) across Hunan and up into Hubei. Words won't give several places we went the credit they deserve, so you'll have to wait till I put up pictures. The first stop was in Chengyang, an area of several Dong minority villages in Guangxi centered on a really cool wooden bridge, called the Chengyang Wind and Rain Bridge. We spent a day wandering around the countryside, entirely avoiding the tour groups and a huge group of German students that had shown up in our guesthouse. Also, the food there was amazing, grown by the owner of the guesthouse himself, even the rice. Possibly the best meals I've ever had in China.

Next was a series of hops that linked up some long bus rides. First was a night in Zhaoxing in Guizhou, which was another Dong minority village, set in some larger mountains. From there, we managed the impossible and took a series of three buses over 12 hours to Fenghuang in Hunan province. Fenghuang was horrid, packed as full of Chinese tourists as Lijiang, but without any of the residual charm or beautiful scenery. Or like a Lijiang full of KTV clubs blasting music until midnight. Though city itself, with some old city walls and hanging over a river, was kinda cool, but every inch was full of tourists and so we high-tailed it out of there north to the Wulingyuan national park at Zhangjiajie.

Wulingyuan is a pretty incredible place, with natural scenery like nothing I've ever seen before. The park is basically a limestone plateau with a basin in the middle that has been eroded to leave these crazy spires of rock that rise hundreds of feet in the air. Words can't really describe it. Though there were lots of tourists we managed to pretty immediately slip off the tourist route and hike for hours through parts of the park without seeing a single other person. It seems that the place is so totally geared toward tour groups that anything off the main path the guides takes is slowly falling into disrepair. But luckily not the steel platforms bolted to sheer rock faces hundreds of feet over the valley floor that we ventured onto. Luckily those were still in decent shape.

From there we went to Dehang, a small village tucked away in some pretty spectacular karst peaks. Unfortunately our visit coincided with a festival held by an online club of outdoors enthusiasts, but outdoors enthusiasts in the Chinese style. This means that they were enthusiastic about walking on a paved path to China's tallest waterfall, playing Mahjong, getting wasted on Miao rice wine and sleeping in tents in the parking lot. Many of the attendees were also members of an SUV-drivers club called FBlife. According to one sticker on their heavily stickered and uselessly outfitted SUVs, the FB in FBlife stands for "Freebase," no joke. These people were largely assholes, loud and obnoxious and constantly shouting "hello" at us, especially considered that they had to be fairly wealthy to afford their Mitsubishi Pajeros and club memberships. But even with them around we managed some good exploring in the villages around.

So now it's heads down on my last week on this trip. We need to decide tonight how we're going to get up the Yangtze to Chongqing, because the idea of taking a three-night, still quite expensive Chinese tourist boat where we are the main attractions does not sound appealing. But we do still want to have a bit of an experience in the Three Gorges, besides cruising through them at high speed in a hydrofoil. We'll see. Then it's exploring Chongqing, a city I've wanted to see for a long while, before I probably fly back to Beijing.