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Friday Wuzhou to Guiping

Took a taxi from the New World Hotel to the bus station on the edge of town where we caught our bus to Guiping. On arrival in Guiping we were accosted by two young English students: Harold and Fernando. They were both students in Yulin (Jade Forest) a town some 170km away and were at the bus station because Harold was waiting for a bus to Yulin. Fernando offered to help Gerry find a hotel and so the two went off together leaving Jan to guard the bags and chat to Harold. The converstaion was going fine, when Jan asked him what time his bus left. At this, Harold looked at his watch and shot out of his seat to go and catch the bus.

Gerry returned having successfully found a hotel, suitably called the Guiping. With Fernando’s help we were to get two sidecar trikes to take us and our luggage there. Fernando had invited us to visit his house, so after getting agreement from Jan, Gerry suggested he first go and get his mother’s permission and if she agreed to come back and pick us up at the hotel at 2:30 p.m. He agreed and said goodbye.

At the hotel, Jan checked out the rooms on offer and turned down a two-room suite with a small double bed in favor of a regular twin bed room. The room was bright and comfortable, but the bathroom alas, had no tub or shower basin or shower curtain, so a shower soaked the whole room! And, another sign of a poorer community, hot water was available only from 5p.m. until 8 a.m. The worst of it all was the temperature in the room which was freezing. Yet everybody insisted when we asked that heating was not available because it was not needed in a warm place like South China!

We ate lunch in the hotel dining room, which was also very cold and worse, extremely noisy. There were several tables of people drinking lots and playing scissors, paper, stone in great shouts. They were obviously having great fun, but it did rather stifle our conversation. After lunch we went for a short walk and bought some fruit to take as gifts to Fernando’s house. We weren’t sure what good etiquette required, but figured apples, tangerines, and a pomelo could not be too far off.

Back at the hotel, Fernando arrived right on time and with the help of two sidecar trikes took us over to his house on a side street of the main drag a five-minute walk from the center. His family was obviously expecting us and greeted us warmly. They were his mother, his father, his sister, and her baby son. We were invited into the main front room of the house, which had very large wooden doors, that were half-open but no windows. To one side was a comfortable couch and coffee table, laden with fruit and sweets. We were served tea and spent a very pleasant couple of hours learning about the family and answering questions about ourselves. Not long after our arrival, a girl friend of Fernando’s arrived to share in the opportunity to speak English. She was high-school classmate and now was studying at a university in Nanning. At the end, we took some pictures and gathered names and addresses (see below) so that once developed we could send them to them.

Liang Zhu, Fernando 
Liang Yaosen Father
Li Kaihua Mother
Liang Dongyong Daughter
Lu Zhe Nephew
Lu Yanqiu, Stella Friend

Addresses:
Fernando’s sister’s address at the school where she teaches
Liang Dongyong
Guangxi, Guiping Shi, 
Chengxi Xiaoxue,
537200
Stella Lu Yanqiu,
Guangxi University for Nationalities #6
 

Saturday Jintian, Jintian Cun and Taiping Tianguo

After breakfast in the hotel dining room, we walked over to the bus station where we arrived and caught the bus to Jintian for Y3 each. On arrival we asked the bus conductress about getting to the Taiping site and she indicated that we were in Jintian town and not Jintian village (Cun) as we had thought. Kindly, she helped us hire a taxi to drive us to the village for Y5. The ride was about three or four kilometers out of town and the museum and other stuff there is amply described by Gerry’s photos.

While in the museum, a young man arrived and kindly turned on the lights for us so that we could see the displays better. It turned out later, that the man was a farmer and taxi driver and had probably come to see what he could earn from us. But he was very friendly and when he found that we could speak one or two words of Chinese tried his best to share what he knew of the place. Imperfect as our communication was, he did add some to our understanding and enjoyment of the place. After we had finished walking around the site, he insisted we let him take us on his trike to some other place that perhaps was the home of one of Hong Xiuquan’s assistants. We never got there, because the route he wanted to take was too covered in mud, and we called the whole thing off, gave him a ‘gift’ of Y5 and after buying some fruit in lieu of lunch, set off on a walk in the countryside.

We spent about one and a half hours walking away from Jintian Cun (Golden Field Village) towards the mountains and a pass that was visible in the distance. We didn’t quite make it to the pass, but did get close enough to see the dam that meant that the river bed we were mostly following was almost dry. We passed through a couple of villages and saw villagers drying the local delicacy, a very long thin yam-like root vegetable called Tu Chang in Chinese. We had eaten this dried vegetable at the Liang home having first been told it was a dried fruit and only learning its true status by using the Chinese English electronic dictionary.

After our walk in the country, we walked half way back from Jintian Cun to Jintian town when Jan pooped out insisted that we take a ride the rest of the way. Gerry agreed but asked that we get out and walk along the main street of town to the bus stop, which we did. Back in Guiping, we had intended to eat at the hotel again, but allowed ourselves to be tempted by individual-size rice hotpots that were on offer across the street from the bus station. They were piping hot and delicious and at Y5 were a great bargain as they came with a nice broth with lettuce in. The only small detraction from the meal was an awful VCD of a young woman playing dreadful music on an electric organ with travelogue scenes in the background. In our view it just seemed like noise, of which there is far too much in China.