For what seemed like eons, I wanted to travel with Kitty. She's my best friend in China, and she seemed keen on the idea, but generally Chinese women "just don't do that" (they're supposed to always be "protected" by family) and she's got more strings tied to her than anyone I've ever met. Still, she made it work at the last available chance, and we spent a lovely five days in Fujian together, going to the 土楼 Tulou and 武夷山 Wuyi Shan. In my mind, the friends you travel with are your friends for life.
We took the Gao Tie due to Gao Kao break time constraints and Kitty's abhorrence of the slow train. But, there were mini busses, city busses, taxis, dddache cars, even random cars we picked up on the side of the road (can we call it hitchhiking?) and something resembling a tuktuk. The D trains were actually better than the Gao Tie, as each window seat had an unshared shade, even though they were a bit slower.
We spent the first night in north Xiamen, due to train schedules, and ate bitter melon and fish. This hotel turned out to be the most comfortable, and they gave us cute little nail clippers as a prize for no apparent reason. Early the next morning, we scarfed down porridge for breakfast and headed on. (Note that once in the train station, Kitty actually requested to eat KFC - "I want to eat Kentucky" - the laobeijing roll. I tried for the Chinese fast food, but failed.)
Just what are tulou we visited? Round and square fortified earthen and wooden huts dot the verdant hills of the southern Fujian landscape, unique examples of successful communal living. They have traditionally been inhabited by the Hakka and Minnan minorities. Whole clans could live inside (some older members still do), with the huge structures organized into apartments, kitchens, ancestral altars (now doubling as motorcycle parking), storage space for grain, and the like - even schools! A single large gate, lookout balconies, and outer windows on upper floors only, protected against outside intruders. About 3,000 tulou survive, now enjoying UNESCO protection and charging entrance fees. Some still say "毛主席万岁" Mao Zhu Xi wan nian, meaning, "Long Live Chairman Mao" (literally, "Chairman Mao 10,000 years."). They are out in the remote countryside and are rather complicated to get to, involving multiple methods of transportation, a private car, or strong legs and all the time in the world.
The tulou were amazing in a dialou sort of way. As could have been predicted, the most interesting and impressive were the ones we stumbled upon by accident, decorated with traditional red lanterns, peppered with communist propaganda, laundry dangling from the rafters and animal parts for the day's meals strewn about the courtyard near the wells. Only dogs and a few suspicious souls wandered about these in the afternoon, wondering why we had stepped into their house. The tulou on the tourist bus trails, such as 和贵楼 (he gui lou) and 怀远楼 (huai yuan lou), cool though they were (with concentric circles and stone temples in the middle, and the upper floors converted into tea rooms with a view), just didn't have the same mysterious aura. The latter now have guest rooms seemingly without bathroom walls.
Our second stop was 武夷山 (Wuyi Shan mountain). Our hotel was not the best (close to the airport and therefore noisy, but not close to food and therefore inconvenient) but it had comfortable beds and instant hot water. All around were little garages filled with bags of dried tea leaves, which ladies sorted by hand.
In the end, we didn't actually go to the scenic area of the mountain. We were waylaid by a persistent conman who drove us to some tea plantations (of the local 大红袍 dahongpao variety) on the lower slopes instead. In reality, this was ok, because Kitty's knee had been having issues, I usually regret climbing mountains, it was cheaper than the park, and it was a beautiful area by a bubbling stream - and hey, they were tea plantations! (Perfect to see with Kitty, the Tea Master.). In fact, we met the owners of a tea shop out on a photo shoot, and they brought us (along with their friend the photographer-professor, whom we'd previously run into, and who was once a Chairman Mao impersonator and still looks it) to sip tea in their shop. We tried the local dahongpao (a red tea) and several others. We had a big round table lunch with the tea ladies, Grandpa Mao, and some of their friends, tasting yellow liquor and local mushrooms along with a plethora of other delicious dishes. It was just the sort of thing I could never have pulled off traveling alone or with other foreigners - we would have just gone to the official ticket booth or been totally ripped off. Kitty has a special way of making things like this work out.
In the afternoon, one of the friends took us to a lovely wooden Guanyin Temple and a scenic overlook with a view of tea mountains in the distance. We then had tea again (rather expensive varieties for free, mind you, such as 曦瓜岩茶 xi gua yan cha) in the office of the Impressions show manager. He gave us a big discount on tickets, and we enjoyed a beautiful show blending scenic illusions with the history and process of tea production, all the while sitting on rotating bleachers. If you thought the tulou had a lot of tea, Wuyi Shan takes the cake.
We had two days in Wuyi Shan. The second morning, we took a bamboo raft down the Nine Twists River, famous for hanging coffins. Kitty and I got to sit up front, because we were the shortest. We passed impressive rock formations and peaceful scenery, drifting serenely with the occasional burst of a small set of rapids. (Everyone had to wear life jackets, of course, even though the slow, calm water was only three feet deep and likely no one wore a seat belt in the car on the way over.) A lady in our group was friends with the boat captain, so he gave us better explanations and recited more poetry, along with adding in more photo stops. There was a couple from San Francisco on our boat, the man an ABC and his wife a Chinese. They seemed to be honeymooning.
When the boat ride was over, we had a multi-cultural breakfast of American-style coffee, cappuccino, egg tarts, and duck feet at an English cafe, then hailed a random car and hiked up a waterfall in a slight drizzle. It was blissfully uncrowded, as we were there in the off-season. We passed tea mountain after tea mountain - Kitty needs to buy one and call it "Kitty's Tea Kingdom." We stopped at a tea plantation to taste again before having more bamboo, mushrooms, and fish for lunch, followed by a long siesta back at the hotel (we got up at 6 for the rafting, and were anticipating the late night/early morning arrival in Hengyang).
The slow train at the end was, actually, pretty awful. We had hard seats on a holiday. Kitty lost her ticket just as we were about to board (luckily, got on anyway), the man across from her kept picking at his feet and then making food, a woman fainted in the bathroom. It was a midnight train, no less, so we had to wake up Cindy's dad when Kitty and Boston dropped me off. But hey - we got to go. So all is well.
I learned a few things with a Chinese friend as a roommate for several days. 1) Along with not shaving and not using tampons, Chinese women apparently don't need to use deodorant, either. Kitty caught me putting it on in the hotel room one morning, and was utterly confused as to what on earth I was doing (note that she never smells bad, even in the hottest weather). 2) The red-underwear-every-12-years thing Pei Pei told me about is true. 3) When Kitty had to poop, she would say, in a very medically-correct sort of way, "I will have a loose bowel." I taught her "number one" and "number two," and she taught me "小厕" xiao ce and "大厕" da ce ("small toilet" and "big toilet."). 4) When I'm with Kitty, I don't need to wear insect repellent. Mosquitoes just like her more. It's great - for me.
Of course, it was all too short. We were just getting started when time ran out.
No comments:
Post a Comment