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Gerry had already talked to the hotel people about taking a boat to Huashan to see the rock paintings and by the time we came back downstairs they had found someone willing to take us. We spent a few minutes haggling over price and settled finally on Y70 for two plus the cost of taxis to/from the boat. We picked up some bananas (Y0.5/pound) and tangerines for lunch and hopped into a tricyle taxi and off we went. The boat site was a little ways out of town by a trash-strewn village. As we walked down to the boat we came across a crew building a brand new boat.

The lady who had brought us, was as expected not to be our boatman. The man was probably her husband. After a little trouble starting the boat, he got it going and off we went to Huashan. The outboard motor was noisy, but once past the edge of town, the river was pleasant and in some ways reminiscent of the Perfume river in Hue, Vietnam. After about 20 minutes, the boatman asked us to come inside the boat where we could not be seen. We didn’t fully understand why, but probably he was avoiding some kind of checkpoint. That probably meant that what we were doing was illegal in some way.

Only ten minutes later, the motor started to act up and the guy pulled into the bank to try and fix it. After a while he asked if we had a mobile phone and we had to say no. Soon thereafter, a second boat happened by and he hailed it and asked the boatman to take us on to Huashan. The inside of the boat was already carrying four or five Chinese passengers so we parked ourselves right on the front of the boat which gave us a terrific view of the river and the mountains that the river was now approaching. The whole journey took almost three hours so about 3:15 we arrived at Huashan and everyone disembarked. However, the other passengers were only taking a toilet break and the boatman told us that he would come back and pick us up in an hour. Fine by us.

The rock paintings themselves were hard to find at first. They are all done in red and consist almost entirely of stick figures and some geometric symbols, circles, stars and the like. There was no English information and without a guide we didn’t even know how old they were. Nonetheless the site was gorgeous and we were happy just to sit around and read our books or gaze at the cliff side until we heard the boat coming back to pick us up.

The ride back was much less eventful than coming out. The boat was empty except for us and we motored back as the dusk slowly gathered. There was never any request to hide in the boat, so Gerry spent the whole return journey up front again, while Jan sat back and read for most of the trip, getting very close to finishing the Fairbank book on China.

When we got back to the town, we paid the boatman the price we had agreed for the first boat and wondered if any money would get back to the original couple. It was really bad luck for them that the motor conked out. Then we took a taxi to our hotel and then headed for dinner.