I opened my draw a while ago to find some (not much) American money. It was just lying there, having not been touched in quite a while. I picked and thought that they were just funny—funny shaped, funny colored, funny everything. They seemed awfully long in comparison to their width and way too green for their own good. It made me realize that though I’ve been here only for three months, it’s been enough to make me reevaluate my norms and see that I’ve not really talked about money here in Hong Kong.
By money, I don’t mean business. There’s enough of that here. I mean the nuts and bolts. I mean the greenbacks and the buckaroonies. I remember my first week here, I found myself with a wallet full of coins. I thought it was ridiculous how many coins I was carrying and when I emptied it out on my desk, I found about $60 HKD worth.
The funny thing is that they only divide the dollar into tenths here, so in theory I should be getting less change here than back in the States, being that back there we divide the dollar into cents. Yeah, here they divide it into cents as well, but the smallest coin is worth ten cents. Prices quoted in cents get rounded to tenths and in Cantonese, they would actually count ten cents as one unit (一毫), or one ten-cent unit.
I actually went running around my early days here calling ten-cent pieces dimes, because that’s what you’d call it back in the States. Pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters are what’s in common circulation, right? Here, in coins there are ten-cent, twenty-cent, fifty-cent, dollar, two-dollar, five-dollar, and ten-dollar pieces. On a quick side note, I learned that talking about coins in American terms is not understood properly by other English speakers. They would say ten-piece instead of a dime, for example, and though words such as nickel can be figured out if you sit down for long enough, I’ve more than once gotten blank stares at my coin calling. But back onto everything else.
So there’s a funny collaboration of reasons for why I end up with more change here than back home. For instance, one USD is equal to almost eight HKD (fixed) here, so in some funny way, maybe the fact that I have to pay more in raw numbers combined with the fact that coins have higher raw face value here gives me that increase. I think though that the main reason is that back home, I hardly deal with notes and coins.
I deal with credit cards. Swiping for things is the easiest way back home. Most places have it integrated into the system, and for many purchases under like ten dollars or something, they’ve stopped asking you to sign the receipt. Here, I’ve seen people use credit cards. It takes forever. There are very few if any registers here that have integrated credit card capabilities. Clerks have to do it through the separate machine and enter the dollar amount separately, and the receipts print out funny. They look like sheets off the pads waiters write on at restaurants. In short, it’s not worth it here to use a credit card.
However, the Octopus card is in vogue instead—and it’s here to stay. It’s really quite a good system. It’s in essence a debit card without a signed contract. You can store up to $1000 HKD on the card and deposit money at a plethora of locales. You’re also allowed to go negative up to $35 HKD in one transaction, so if you’ve forgotten, chances are it’s not a big deal. It’s taken everywhere as well. Except for the taxicabs, I’ve hardly seen a place that takes money but not Octopus Cards.
The name is a different issue though. In Cantonese, the name is 八達通, which means something along the lines of “eight arrivals card.” The name was chosen during a competition, and has good vibes with eight being an auspicious number and all in Chinese. However, the only connection between the Cantonese name and the English name is that the first word in the Cantonese name is eight, and octopi have eight legs (or tentacles or whatever).
I guess I’ve got money on my mind though because I’m on a mission to collect coins for my brother’s currency collection. So a lot of non-Europeans don’t know this, but the Euro, while legal tender in the Eurozone, is minted by the individual countries. I’m not sure about the bills, but the coins at least (one-cent, two-cent, five-cent, ten-cent, twenty-cent, fifty-cent, euro, two-euro) are all produced by the individual countries and as such have state symbols that allow the currency to maintain national identity in the face of universality. These coins float all around the Eurozone, so while we were in France and Italy this past summer, he tried to collect as many as he could (a daunting task).
So I’m collecting for him. So far, I’ve got a full set of Thai Baht and some Chinese Yuan (though I think he might already have a set of that). I’m also trying to get a set of the modern Hong Kong Dollar coins (with the bauhinia flower) as well as a set of the pre-handover coins (with Queen Elisabeth II). My roommate who goes to Macau a lot has retrieved me most of the Macau Pataca. In addition, I’m trying to squeeze other currencies out of my fellow exchange students. In short, my little brother should be happy.
Back on to term paper writing!
Copyright © 2009 James Philip Jee
This work may not be reproduced by any means without express permission of the author.
Showing posts with label money. Show all posts
Showing posts with label money. Show all posts
Friday, November 27, 2009
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Pride and Prejudice
Do you ever wish life were easier? When I was little, I definitely did. Why did it need to be so complicated? It all seemed like farce to me. I thought as I advanced in life, maybe complexities would either become simpler or maybe I would be able to deal with them better.
I used to hate politics. You know? It’s complex and winds around and around until you’re sick in the head as well as the stomach. If you were to ask seventh-grader me what I think of politics, I’d tell you that they’re useless and stupid. I’d say something like, “You suck up to someone and you kiss of another.”
In some ways, I wasn’t wrong. In many more aspects, I never realized that in my banter against politics, I was speaking more to my views on social convention and my desire (probably more common than not) to be different. I wanted to stand out from the crowd in some way, I suppose. Minus the killing, I felt like l’etranger, but in my introverted world, I suppose I could not see past myself and the society that invisibly bound me.
Many of us are still like that. I personally found that my being self-centered led me to droop my head more often than not, and that in the quest to become your own, you just commute from one norm to another.
But this post is about my anthropology slash sociology class, Traditional Chinese Society. It begins with a lively discussion, climaxes at a professor’s realization, and ends with a request.
In Chinese society (traditional, modern, or whenever you want to place it), there’s always been the very conscious concept of face. There is a whole array to describe the concept and another set of words to describe the various processes and actions required to (properly) attain face.
The specifics of the discussion centered on those specific processes. One anthropologist made the discovery that in her anthropological case study in rural China, she discovered that there were some five steps in creating good face with others. With the ultimate objective of creating good face being benefit, frankly, she applied this to how someone of a lower status would get favors out of someone of higher status by following a pretty set process. It would involve the presentation of gifts and invitation to dinner. The only way that it would work out would be through mutual benefit, otherwise there would be no reason to take action.
The professor began to tell his story about his happenings in Chengdu. Originally from Canada, he moved to Chengdu (in China) to teach. There, he encountered the socialist system of human capital organization that had started being dismantled. The people were happy to be switching to an economic system wherein they could buy goods with money. This is because before, they found themselves dealing with their relationships with others. To get rice from one party, you’d have to trade for something else. In this sense, you had to constantly maintain complex relationships with a large number of individuals. My professor said that some people had trouble sleeping because maintaining good face with others was just so stressful.
He had the audience at attention I think. It’s funny how we’re always told about how Chinese people strive to maintain face, so far to the point where they might seem cold to those they don’t know. I think that because we’re told that, and because they tell themselves that as well, face is a topic that interests us because it is one of the most visible.
People were throwing questions at the professor left and right. He answered all of them logically and most of them definitively. The thing that I noticed, though, was that I could have answered all of the scenarios and situations that were being presented. What’s more was that understood all of the concepts being discussed so perfectly to the point where I could see them in action in everyday life—not just here in Hong Kong but also back home in California.
I guess I’m no real stranger to this world being discussed though. Last year at UCSD, I did take those two sociocultural linguistic anthropology classes that largely talked about the concept face, saving face, and creating face using language and linguistics as mediums for doing so.
I guess for me, this class of thirteen students was being a little too enthusiastic. Something smelled funny, so I decided to just throw out a statement to the professor to see how he and the class would treat it:
“So we keep talking about face in this really foreign way, like none of us do it, like it’s an exotic concept that none of us have seen before. But the thing is that I see this stuff happening every day.”
And I really had. To add on to that statement, I gave the class an account of how face still exists and always will exist. It had to deal with social convention and how I became mad because he failed to play his part and didn’t even try to mitigate the presence of the clear fact that he did what he did to put himself alone at an advantage. With social convention playing into (the creation and maintenance of) face, roughly termed guanxi in Chinese, my story had true relevance to the topic and possibly also showed how when we exoticize concepts, we lose track of their true importance and how close to home they actually exist.
My story began in Taiwan. One of the friends who I was traveling happened to start a chain of events that would lead to his production of bad guanxi and my current dislike of him.
We landed at Taipei Taoyuan International Airport and needed to get usable money out before leaving. In the airport, there were but two ATMs for us to use. I personally use my American HSBC account for financial matters overseas. Though the checking account has a small monthly charge, I get free use to all HSBC and Hang Seng Bank ATMs as well as favorable exchange rates (unlike those banks that adjust the rate to make a profit margin).
This friend happens to have a similar setup. He has a Hong Kong HSBC account (which does charge for ATMs outside of Hong Kong) as well as Bank of America. Since Bank of America has a sizeable stake in China Construction Bank (though they don’t fully own it as he implies), withdrawals at China Construction Bank ATMs are free.
Neither of the two ATMs at the airport belonged to any of the banks listed above. I sucked it up and pulled out money anyways. You know, when you need money, you’ll take it as you get it (and I would later find out that for the $100 USD that I withdrew in Taiwan dollars, I was only charged a total of $5 or $6 USD, so it was pennies on the dollar). My other friend pulled out money as well.
However, the first friend decided that he couldn’t eat the ATM fees, and borrowed several thousand Taiwan dollars from the second friend. His intentions were to find an HSBC and repay that money sooner rather than later.
It’s fine, right? We need to borrow money off of each other from time to time. It’s always done in good faith—physical contracts never cross our minds. It is assumed that everyone involved will be equitable. Since person A borrowed money off of person B, it is assumed that that money will be paid back in a timely manner, and since B did A a favor, it would also behoove A to pay that favor back to B in some way.
It was lost on my friend who borrowed money. As the days began passing and HSBC was nowhere to be found, my friend was still borrowing money on a whim and without thought to whom he was borrowing money from. He still thought that we an HSBC popped up somewhere, he would withdraw the appropriate amount of Taiwan dollars and pay it back. By now though, we only had a few days left, and what good would it be to get Taiwan dollars right before leaving Taiwan?
What was worse was that he refused to pay it back in something useful, like Hong Kong dollars. So because of this, we forced him to use the ATM, because he was either going to pay up in TWD now, or HKD later. Reluctantly, he went to the closest ATM.
After that, though, he found that he used up his TWD and began borrowing again. Not wanting to subject himself to those ATM fees again, he agreed to pay the end sum back in HKD after much prodding and poking.
When we got back to Hong Kong though, we found him negotiating the exchange rate for TWD to HKD, trying to pay as little as possible though he basically got a free service from my other friend and could be so courteous as to at least agree to a favorable rate.
And on a different issue, when the plane landed, we went to baggage claim to pick up his bag. Since he checked a bag in and I didn’t, he let me put my liquids in his bag so I would be able to bring them back with there being the limitations on such for carry-on luggage. I was glad that he let me, and I wanted to express my gratitude by taking his bag back for him, as we were taking different modes of transportation back to the dorms, mine being the faster.
Upon my offer, he became offended. His tone suggested that it was completely inappropriate for me to take his luggage back for him. Undoubtedly, he was paranoid about stuff getting stolen, but instead of politely declining my offer, he lashed out at me.
He wanted to know why I offered to take his suitcase back for him, and I explained that it was the appropriate thing to do and a nice gesture after he carried my stuff in it. He misunderstood this reciprocating of favors, and told me that I could take my stuff out now if I wanted. Since he didn’t understand my point in offering, I told him to forget it. This infuriated him, and he threw a fit.
Fine. His lack of ability to maintain face, by at least declining my offer politely, made me dislike him. Though initially this offense was subconscious, the fact that I’ve now consciously analyzed it hasn’t changed my opinions of him.
And the professor agreed that we were exoticizing such a fundamentally human concept, and a universal one at that. He said that sometimes it’s fun to approach a subject matter like that and see it from the outside. And I agreed, but then came the roll of hands that showed a new (mis)understanding and perhaps grounds to set the facts straight before heading out to outer space to look down on our blue planet.
People were most all surprised now that face wasn’t exclusively a Chinese concept, in short. They were surprised that they engage in these practices as well. The professor explained that the reason these concepts are so easy for westerners to understand was because these are universal concepts.
The lecture ended, and as the professor left the hall, one student asked for an extension on his project because he treated face as an exclusively Chinese concept.
The complexities have come as they’ve come. As I advance as a person though, my challenges increase at the same rate. Although I like to challenge myself (that in itself being a big part of the increase), I really don’t mind the complexities any more.
Now that I’m older, I find solace in intricacies; I delve into complexities and enjoy undoing what I’m given. If I remember correctly, you often get more out of the journey than the actual destination.
Copyright © 2009 James Philip Jee
This work may not be reproduced by any means without express permission of the author.
I used to hate politics. You know? It’s complex and winds around and around until you’re sick in the head as well as the stomach. If you were to ask seventh-grader me what I think of politics, I’d tell you that they’re useless and stupid. I’d say something like, “You suck up to someone and you kiss of another.”
In some ways, I wasn’t wrong. In many more aspects, I never realized that in my banter against politics, I was speaking more to my views on social convention and my desire (probably more common than not) to be different. I wanted to stand out from the crowd in some way, I suppose. Minus the killing, I felt like l’etranger, but in my introverted world, I suppose I could not see past myself and the society that invisibly bound me.
Many of us are still like that. I personally found that my being self-centered led me to droop my head more often than not, and that in the quest to become your own, you just commute from one norm to another.
But this post is about my anthropology slash sociology class, Traditional Chinese Society. It begins with a lively discussion, climaxes at a professor’s realization, and ends with a request.
In Chinese society (traditional, modern, or whenever you want to place it), there’s always been the very conscious concept of face. There is a whole array to describe the concept and another set of words to describe the various processes and actions required to (properly) attain face.
The specifics of the discussion centered on those specific processes. One anthropologist made the discovery that in her anthropological case study in rural China, she discovered that there were some five steps in creating good face with others. With the ultimate objective of creating good face being benefit, frankly, she applied this to how someone of a lower status would get favors out of someone of higher status by following a pretty set process. It would involve the presentation of gifts and invitation to dinner. The only way that it would work out would be through mutual benefit, otherwise there would be no reason to take action.
The professor began to tell his story about his happenings in Chengdu. Originally from Canada, he moved to Chengdu (in China) to teach. There, he encountered the socialist system of human capital organization that had started being dismantled. The people were happy to be switching to an economic system wherein they could buy goods with money. This is because before, they found themselves dealing with their relationships with others. To get rice from one party, you’d have to trade for something else. In this sense, you had to constantly maintain complex relationships with a large number of individuals. My professor said that some people had trouble sleeping because maintaining good face with others was just so stressful.
He had the audience at attention I think. It’s funny how we’re always told about how Chinese people strive to maintain face, so far to the point where they might seem cold to those they don’t know. I think that because we’re told that, and because they tell themselves that as well, face is a topic that interests us because it is one of the most visible.
People were throwing questions at the professor left and right. He answered all of them logically and most of them definitively. The thing that I noticed, though, was that I could have answered all of the scenarios and situations that were being presented. What’s more was that understood all of the concepts being discussed so perfectly to the point where I could see them in action in everyday life—not just here in Hong Kong but also back home in California.
I guess I’m no real stranger to this world being discussed though. Last year at UCSD, I did take those two sociocultural linguistic anthropology classes that largely talked about the concept face, saving face, and creating face using language and linguistics as mediums for doing so.
I guess for me, this class of thirteen students was being a little too enthusiastic. Something smelled funny, so I decided to just throw out a statement to the professor to see how he and the class would treat it:
“So we keep talking about face in this really foreign way, like none of us do it, like it’s an exotic concept that none of us have seen before. But the thing is that I see this stuff happening every day.”
And I really had. To add on to that statement, I gave the class an account of how face still exists and always will exist. It had to deal with social convention and how I became mad because he failed to play his part and didn’t even try to mitigate the presence of the clear fact that he did what he did to put himself alone at an advantage. With social convention playing into (the creation and maintenance of) face, roughly termed guanxi in Chinese, my story had true relevance to the topic and possibly also showed how when we exoticize concepts, we lose track of their true importance and how close to home they actually exist.
My story began in Taiwan. One of the friends who I was traveling happened to start a chain of events that would lead to his production of bad guanxi and my current dislike of him.
We landed at Taipei Taoyuan International Airport and needed to get usable money out before leaving. In the airport, there were but two ATMs for us to use. I personally use my American HSBC account for financial matters overseas. Though the checking account has a small monthly charge, I get free use to all HSBC and Hang Seng Bank ATMs as well as favorable exchange rates (unlike those banks that adjust the rate to make a profit margin).
This friend happens to have a similar setup. He has a Hong Kong HSBC account (which does charge for ATMs outside of Hong Kong) as well as Bank of America. Since Bank of America has a sizeable stake in China Construction Bank (though they don’t fully own it as he implies), withdrawals at China Construction Bank ATMs are free.
Neither of the two ATMs at the airport belonged to any of the banks listed above. I sucked it up and pulled out money anyways. You know, when you need money, you’ll take it as you get it (and I would later find out that for the $100 USD that I withdrew in Taiwan dollars, I was only charged a total of $5 or $6 USD, so it was pennies on the dollar). My other friend pulled out money as well.
However, the first friend decided that he couldn’t eat the ATM fees, and borrowed several thousand Taiwan dollars from the second friend. His intentions were to find an HSBC and repay that money sooner rather than later.
It’s fine, right? We need to borrow money off of each other from time to time. It’s always done in good faith—physical contracts never cross our minds. It is assumed that everyone involved will be equitable. Since person A borrowed money off of person B, it is assumed that that money will be paid back in a timely manner, and since B did A a favor, it would also behoove A to pay that favor back to B in some way.
It was lost on my friend who borrowed money. As the days began passing and HSBC was nowhere to be found, my friend was still borrowing money on a whim and without thought to whom he was borrowing money from. He still thought that we an HSBC popped up somewhere, he would withdraw the appropriate amount of Taiwan dollars and pay it back. By now though, we only had a few days left, and what good would it be to get Taiwan dollars right before leaving Taiwan?
What was worse was that he refused to pay it back in something useful, like Hong Kong dollars. So because of this, we forced him to use the ATM, because he was either going to pay up in TWD now, or HKD later. Reluctantly, he went to the closest ATM.
After that, though, he found that he used up his TWD and began borrowing again. Not wanting to subject himself to those ATM fees again, he agreed to pay the end sum back in HKD after much prodding and poking.
When we got back to Hong Kong though, we found him negotiating the exchange rate for TWD to HKD, trying to pay as little as possible though he basically got a free service from my other friend and could be so courteous as to at least agree to a favorable rate.
And on a different issue, when the plane landed, we went to baggage claim to pick up his bag. Since he checked a bag in and I didn’t, he let me put my liquids in his bag so I would be able to bring them back with there being the limitations on such for carry-on luggage. I was glad that he let me, and I wanted to express my gratitude by taking his bag back for him, as we were taking different modes of transportation back to the dorms, mine being the faster.
Upon my offer, he became offended. His tone suggested that it was completely inappropriate for me to take his luggage back for him. Undoubtedly, he was paranoid about stuff getting stolen, but instead of politely declining my offer, he lashed out at me.
He wanted to know why I offered to take his suitcase back for him, and I explained that it was the appropriate thing to do and a nice gesture after he carried my stuff in it. He misunderstood this reciprocating of favors, and told me that I could take my stuff out now if I wanted. Since he didn’t understand my point in offering, I told him to forget it. This infuriated him, and he threw a fit.
Fine. His lack of ability to maintain face, by at least declining my offer politely, made me dislike him. Though initially this offense was subconscious, the fact that I’ve now consciously analyzed it hasn’t changed my opinions of him.
And the professor agreed that we were exoticizing such a fundamentally human concept, and a universal one at that. He said that sometimes it’s fun to approach a subject matter like that and see it from the outside. And I agreed, but then came the roll of hands that showed a new (mis)understanding and perhaps grounds to set the facts straight before heading out to outer space to look down on our blue planet.
People were most all surprised now that face wasn’t exclusively a Chinese concept, in short. They were surprised that they engage in these practices as well. The professor explained that the reason these concepts are so easy for westerners to understand was because these are universal concepts.
The lecture ended, and as the professor left the hall, one student asked for an extension on his project because he treated face as an exclusively Chinese concept.
The complexities have come as they’ve come. As I advance as a person though, my challenges increase at the same rate. Although I like to challenge myself (that in itself being a big part of the increase), I really don’t mind the complexities any more.
Now that I’m older, I find solace in intricacies; I delve into complexities and enjoy undoing what I’m given. If I remember correctly, you often get more out of the journey than the actual destination.
Copyright © 2009 James Philip Jee
This work may not be reproduced by any means without express permission of the author.
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Guilin: The Two Sisters
We arrived at about 7:00 a.m. at Guilin Railway Station. Off the train and out of the train station shortly thereafter, we walked wearily though we were not overly tired. The forced early morning start was good in that we were now up and had a nice long, full day to do stuff.
Out of our group of six, three of us were going to catch the 9:25 p.m. train back to Shenzhen that night of that same day. Three of us, including me, were to stay overnight and catch the train back the next day. To this effect, we all went to the hotel that three of us booked, where we all put our stuff for the day.
The reception at the small hotel (named Guilin Riverside Hostel) was extremely nice, especially by Chinese standards, and helped us book our Li River Cruise the next day. As I was to find out, Guilin is really a tourist town (more like city), and many people are very nice as I ended up spending a lot more money than anticipated.
After stopping at the hotel, we went out to the main street to find bus number 11 to Seven Star Park. While we were walking though, a taxi driver offered to take us around the city for ¥30 CNY for the whole day to as many tourist sights as we wanted. When we made it clear that we would need two cabs since there were six of us, the cab driver brought over an additional cab driver, and the price for both sat at ¥50 CNY, all people included. It sounded unreasonably cheap, and I was a little weary of taking them up on their deal.
After a bit of group deliberation, we decided that it would be fine. Though they would be going off the meter for us, they were official cab drivers, legitimate and legal, and we figured that even if they upped the price on us at the end of the day, it would still be really cheap.
So we hopped in the cabs. Since we now had longer-distance transportation, we figured we’d see the sights farther out first. First on the list was breakfast, now Reed Flute Cave (芦笛岩), which sat on the outside of the city and was a considerable walk from the closest bus stop.
The cabs went all of a block-and-a-half to get to where the drivers took us for breakfast. The place was in a backstreet and served really good Guilin noodles (桂林米粉), a big bowl for ¥3 CNY, which I later found out that you pour soup into
The city was quite dense, and though the air was not noticeably polluted, the traffic was often gridlocked, and it took us a while to get out to the mountains.
Guilin is famous for its mountains. They are unusually vertical and skinny for their height, and they noticeable pop up from relatively flat ground. Most are covered with vegetation, and some have temples built on top. The majority of them, though, sit grouped in formations that have led many a Chinese poet to muse over their beauty and uniqueness much in the same way they’ve marveled over Hangzhou and Suzhou. And with Mao Zedong on one side of the ¥20 bill, one particular scene from these mountains is printed on the other. They truly are one of the many prides of China.
We arrived at Reed Flute Cave and bought out tickets at what I thought was the entrance. Actually, we gave our money to the taxi drivers, who went up to the window and bought our tickets for us. After that, they drove us to the actual entrance, probably another half mile down the road.
The entrance, while not done up, was noticeably commercially centered, with an official gift shop selling goods and hawkers selling the same goods for less. Entering the cave was unlike any cave that I had been in before.
Yes, I’ve been in caves before—two to be exact, namely in the Jewel Cave in Black Hills, South Dakota (where Mount Rushmore is), and Mammoth Cave National Park in Kentucky. Each was about the same as the other. There were small caves to crawl though and generally a few larger caves. All of it was lit brightly to avoid accidents and considerably cooler than the aboveground weather.
Reed Flute Cave was pretty much the same actually. The main differences were in the way it was actually done up. The floors were all relatively wide and concreted flat with aggregate stone. The caves were lit with bright, alternating colors. Places were concreted to accumulate water to make the interior more picturesque, in which case tube LED lights would light the shoreline between the pond and the path.
I thought that while it was visually appealing (minus the visible LED tube lighting), it wasn’t what I felt nature should be. I’ve thought that nature is best left untouched—a concept, which I now know, I was taught.
Inside the caves, besides stalactite and stalagmite formations, were also some big turtles being attended to by staff members. Each was named by a sign saying “Thousand-year-old Turtle,” the validity, of which, I of course doubted. For each turtle (there were three total) you could pet, which of course, was as fun as petting any turtle, with the same fear that it could nip your hand off (though they were so lethargic that they probably didn’t care at that point in their lives). Two, you could buy pendants off their shells and one you could buy food to feed it.
Exiting, I used the bathroom, which reminded me of the infamous pooper stoopers that China is known for and the general lack of sanitary measures both on the ground and through the lack of soap next to the sink. For a country that’s so concerned about a swine flue pandemic, it would seem reasonable that more measures would take place to prevent the spread of germs, and by extension, disease.
Though the tour through the caves was guided, the path was clear, and most visitors, especially us for our lack of Mandarin comprehension, ended up wandering around by ourselves. By the end I forgot that there was even a guide to begin with. The taxi drivers met us at the exit of the caves.
Next on the journey was Yaoshan (瑶山), which is the highest peak in the range of mountains around Guilin. The park had a cable car going up, which we took. At the top, we got the classic frame of the beautiful mountains that Guilin is known for. Again, the cab drivers took our money and paid for the tickets. They said they needed to do so to get free parking for the taxis.
On the cable car ride and at the cable car stop, the view was not the best though, because though it was a sunny day, fog masked the clouds and all that was visible were faint outlines. From the cable car stop, walking further up towards the top of the hill, the view did not get any better, though the white members of our group kept getting asked by the locals to take pictures with them because I guess they don’t see white people that often. They didn’t mind, and I even ended up taking the picture.
Taking the chairlift half back down the mountain, you’re prompted to get off. As part of the round-trip ticket to the top of the mountain and back, there is a toboggan-style ride to get from midway down the mountain all the way to the bottom, believe it or not.
Unfortunately, I got few pictures of the ride itself, since I was told I couldn’t take pictures while speeding down the winding metal track. We were allowed to control our speed with a lever and warned that there’s a sharp curve at the very beginning that’s kind of nasty that we definitely need to slow down for. I was sure that many of my friends would just go for it at full speed, because, I guess, you only live once.
I, on the other hand, took my time. While in parts I did go fast for fun, I figured I was only going to go down the slope of this mountain once, so I would rather enjoy it. As I went down, there were a lot of safety personnel that I didn’t expect. Most stood on right before the curved sections to blow their whistle to prompt you to slow down if need be.
I could feel the fresh Guilin air through my hair I suppose. But while the ride was exhilarating, there was no real view involved with the track layout. It was fine, because, I guess, we’d already gotten the view on the top and on the chairlift.
At the foot of the hill, next to the visitor center, there were some small shops. We went to a small coffee shop hoping for a good cup, as some of us were starting to crash from the early start to the day, but it was exactly how it was in Beijing airport—noticeably “brewed” from instant and quite sub-par.
Meanwhile, the taxi drivers were booking tickets for us for the Four Rivers, Two Lakes cruise later that evening. The later came up to join us at the coffee shop, where we found I found out that they were sisters.
The time now was around 12:30 p.m., and the cruise was set for 4:15 p.m. So with hours to spare, we decided to check out the Ming Palace along the way. It’s officially called the Jingjian Princes City (靖江王城), and while it was never used as the main residence of the royals, it served as one point from where the ruler could do business.
Once again the sisters insisted on buying our tickets for us after we gave them our money. It became apparent that what seemed at first just a courtesy was actually a way for them to make money. For the price that we were to pay, it now made sense how cheap it was, and frankly, we were fine with it, because for the individual sites we still paid the listed entrance fee.
Entering, the complex looked small and unimpressive with the exception of the lone mountain the middle. To get to the mountain, we went through building upon building, ranging from dining halls to bedrooms and throne rooms, and the cave under the mountain.
After coming out of the cave on the other side of the mountain, we realized that we’d missed the path to the top. It ended up being on the west side of the hill, and when we got to the foot of the steps, the path that we were about to climb became visible and clearly steep.
All things considered—namely how long the day had already run—the climb wasn’t too bad. It was taller than it looked and the view of Guilin from the top was pretty good. There were a few buildings at the top, as well as a place to buy drinks, of course. From there you could clearly see the way that the city formed on the flat land around the mountains.
I guess you could say I’ve got a thing for getting the bird’s-eye view of a city. In Rome, it was as simple as the roof terrace of the hotel. In Paris, it was the Arc du Triomphe (because we didn’t go up the Eiffel Tower). In Hong Kong, the view I got was from the Peak. Chicago—Sears Tower (now renamed). Both the Ferris wheel and Taipei 101 did the trick in Taipei.
At this time, we still had a couple hours before the cruise, so we got lunch. The food was good, though we had to eat around of the odd-sized bits of bone with the lamb.
After walking around a local supermarket for a bit and checking out what was there to be offered, we went over the center of Guilin, where the famous pair of pagodas stands.
The cruise was supposed to go for an hour and a half, but ended up going for about an hour. The usual route was not taken for a couple reasons. First the normal course would have run straight past Elephant Trunk Hill, a symbol of Guilin that has been effectively monetized by strategically planting trees to block views from the street and charging ¥30 to get into the park. In addition, according to the taxi drivers, the water level when we went was too low, so many boats by design cannot wade through those waters.
Waiting for the cruise to board, another group of locals insisted on getting a picture with the white people in our group. I took a photo as well.
We got a good picture of Guilin, though. It was very obvious which edifices were historical and which ones were new development. Many of the hills that we saw were covered with climbers and hikers. At the end of its course, right before turning around, there was a well-kept historical-looking area whose name we never found out.
By the time we met up with the taxi drivers again, it was nearing 6:00 p.m., and with half of us getting on a train in just three hours, we decided it would be best to just grab dinner. Anyways, one of my friends wanted to go see the “Dream of Li River” show, which was to begin at 8:00. The cab drivers helped us book us tickets and later picked them up for us.
We asked the sisters to take us somewhere local to eat—and I would find out, it was a little too local for me. The menu had all sorts of exotic things listed. Absent were beef, pork, or chicken dishes, since I guess we weren’t taken to a touristy restaurant.
So we tried it. There was a plate of snails, a plate of Li River shrimp, some soup, some sort of fried rice, and white rice. I ended up with some fried rice and a whole lot of white rice. I tried the soup, and I while I could see why others like it, it just didn’t suit my taste.
Also, I tried the Guilin Li River snails. One actually was enough for me. The snails were small, as were the shrimp, and I found myself trying to get the meat of sorts out of the shell with a toothpick. Once that was successfully done, I put the object into my mouth, aiming to look as little as possible at it, which was easier said than done. I chewed a few times and it was notably mushy, with a little crunch at the end. I took a picture of the animal’s now empty shell and that was the end of that experience.
On the other hand, one of my friends took quite a liking to those snails and ended up eating most of them. With his plate of empty snail shells in front of him, I dubbed him the snail master. Another one of my friends were showing everyone how to peel the shell off cooked shrimp in his mouth and without hands, causing me to be impressed and others to look away. With his plate piled high with shrimp shells, I dubbed him the shrimp master.
The sisters ate with us as well, and they ate a bit of everything really. I guess it fits since they were probably from Guilin and were accustomed to the local food. The whole day, they had been really helpful to us—offering advice about where to go and helping us get tickets, so the group treated them to dinner.
From there, we went back to the hotel for them to get their bags. There we decided that we were each going to chip in ¥20 CNY each for the cab, which added up to ¥120, which was more than the ¥50 they asked for, because, well they deserved it, and ¥20 per person for the whole day is really not that much money (about $2.90 USD). From the hotel, our cabs split in different directions. One went to the train station.
Mine went to the “Dream of Li River” show. It wasn’t that it wasn’t impressive, but for someone who’s already seen most all of the acts of that show done in different places, with more skill, it was kind of a letdown. Similar in the ballet-based show we saw in Beijing, “History of Kung Fu,” as well as to the shows I saw in 2007 in Beijing and in Xian, in addition to the show I saw at the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza in 2006, I was kind of disappointed at their lack of originality.
Though that day ended on a low note, the overall activities that we got accomplished in that first day well overcame the mediocrity of the evening ballet-style show. The sheer volume of events that we did made me feel like the morning we arrived was a full day earlier.
Guilin was really more than I expected in the atmosphere that I got from the city, though the scenery was a bit of a let down through the choking fog. Little did I know of the beauty that was to come but the next day.
Copyright © 2009 James Philip Jee
This work may not be reproduced by any means without express permission of the author.
Out of our group of six, three of us were going to catch the 9:25 p.m. train back to Shenzhen that night of that same day. Three of us, including me, were to stay overnight and catch the train back the next day. To this effect, we all went to the hotel that three of us booked, where we all put our stuff for the day.
The reception at the small hotel (named Guilin Riverside Hostel) was extremely nice, especially by Chinese standards, and helped us book our Li River Cruise the next day. As I was to find out, Guilin is really a tourist town (more like city), and many people are very nice as I ended up spending a lot more money than anticipated.
After stopping at the hotel, we went out to the main street to find bus number 11 to Seven Star Park. While we were walking though, a taxi driver offered to take us around the city for ¥30 CNY for the whole day to as many tourist sights as we wanted. When we made it clear that we would need two cabs since there were six of us, the cab driver brought over an additional cab driver, and the price for both sat at ¥50 CNY, all people included. It sounded unreasonably cheap, and I was a little weary of taking them up on their deal.
After a bit of group deliberation, we decided that it would be fine. Though they would be going off the meter for us, they were official cab drivers, legitimate and legal, and we figured that even if they upped the price on us at the end of the day, it would still be really cheap.
So we hopped in the cabs. Since we now had longer-distance transportation, we figured we’d see the sights farther out first. First on the list was breakfast, now Reed Flute Cave (芦笛岩), which sat on the outside of the city and was a considerable walk from the closest bus stop.
The cabs went all of a block-and-a-half to get to where the drivers took us for breakfast. The place was in a backstreet and served really good Guilin noodles (桂林米粉), a big bowl for ¥3 CNY, which I later found out that you pour soup into
The city was quite dense, and though the air was not noticeably polluted, the traffic was often gridlocked, and it took us a while to get out to the mountains.
Guilin is famous for its mountains. They are unusually vertical and skinny for their height, and they noticeable pop up from relatively flat ground. Most are covered with vegetation, and some have temples built on top. The majority of them, though, sit grouped in formations that have led many a Chinese poet to muse over their beauty and uniqueness much in the same way they’ve marveled over Hangzhou and Suzhou. And with Mao Zedong on one side of the ¥20 bill, one particular scene from these mountains is printed on the other. They truly are one of the many prides of China.
We arrived at Reed Flute Cave and bought out tickets at what I thought was the entrance. Actually, we gave our money to the taxi drivers, who went up to the window and bought our tickets for us. After that, they drove us to the actual entrance, probably another half mile down the road.
The entrance, while not done up, was noticeably commercially centered, with an official gift shop selling goods and hawkers selling the same goods for less. Entering the cave was unlike any cave that I had been in before.
Yes, I’ve been in caves before—two to be exact, namely in the Jewel Cave in Black Hills, South Dakota (where Mount Rushmore is), and Mammoth Cave National Park in Kentucky. Each was about the same as the other. There were small caves to crawl though and generally a few larger caves. All of it was lit brightly to avoid accidents and considerably cooler than the aboveground weather.
Reed Flute Cave was pretty much the same actually. The main differences were in the way it was actually done up. The floors were all relatively wide and concreted flat with aggregate stone. The caves were lit with bright, alternating colors. Places were concreted to accumulate water to make the interior more picturesque, in which case tube LED lights would light the shoreline between the pond and the path.
I thought that while it was visually appealing (minus the visible LED tube lighting), it wasn’t what I felt nature should be. I’ve thought that nature is best left untouched—a concept, which I now know, I was taught.
Inside the caves, besides stalactite and stalagmite formations, were also some big turtles being attended to by staff members. Each was named by a sign saying “Thousand-year-old Turtle,” the validity, of which, I of course doubted. For each turtle (there were three total) you could pet, which of course, was as fun as petting any turtle, with the same fear that it could nip your hand off (though they were so lethargic that they probably didn’t care at that point in their lives). Two, you could buy pendants off their shells and one you could buy food to feed it.
Exiting, I used the bathroom, which reminded me of the infamous pooper stoopers that China is known for and the general lack of sanitary measures both on the ground and through the lack of soap next to the sink. For a country that’s so concerned about a swine flue pandemic, it would seem reasonable that more measures would take place to prevent the spread of germs, and by extension, disease.
Though the tour through the caves was guided, the path was clear, and most visitors, especially us for our lack of Mandarin comprehension, ended up wandering around by ourselves. By the end I forgot that there was even a guide to begin with. The taxi drivers met us at the exit of the caves.
Next on the journey was Yaoshan (瑶山), which is the highest peak in the range of mountains around Guilin. The park had a cable car going up, which we took. At the top, we got the classic frame of the beautiful mountains that Guilin is known for. Again, the cab drivers took our money and paid for the tickets. They said they needed to do so to get free parking for the taxis.
On the cable car ride and at the cable car stop, the view was not the best though, because though it was a sunny day, fog masked the clouds and all that was visible were faint outlines. From the cable car stop, walking further up towards the top of the hill, the view did not get any better, though the white members of our group kept getting asked by the locals to take pictures with them because I guess they don’t see white people that often. They didn’t mind, and I even ended up taking the picture.
Taking the chairlift half back down the mountain, you’re prompted to get off. As part of the round-trip ticket to the top of the mountain and back, there is a toboggan-style ride to get from midway down the mountain all the way to the bottom, believe it or not.
Unfortunately, I got few pictures of the ride itself, since I was told I couldn’t take pictures while speeding down the winding metal track. We were allowed to control our speed with a lever and warned that there’s a sharp curve at the very beginning that’s kind of nasty that we definitely need to slow down for. I was sure that many of my friends would just go for it at full speed, because, I guess, you only live once.
I, on the other hand, took my time. While in parts I did go fast for fun, I figured I was only going to go down the slope of this mountain once, so I would rather enjoy it. As I went down, there were a lot of safety personnel that I didn’t expect. Most stood on right before the curved sections to blow their whistle to prompt you to slow down if need be.
I could feel the fresh Guilin air through my hair I suppose. But while the ride was exhilarating, there was no real view involved with the track layout. It was fine, because, I guess, we’d already gotten the view on the top and on the chairlift.
At the foot of the hill, next to the visitor center, there were some small shops. We went to a small coffee shop hoping for a good cup, as some of us were starting to crash from the early start to the day, but it was exactly how it was in Beijing airport—noticeably “brewed” from instant and quite sub-par.
Meanwhile, the taxi drivers were booking tickets for us for the Four Rivers, Two Lakes cruise later that evening. The later came up to join us at the coffee shop, where we found I found out that they were sisters.
The time now was around 12:30 p.m., and the cruise was set for 4:15 p.m. So with hours to spare, we decided to check out the Ming Palace along the way. It’s officially called the Jingjian Princes City (靖江王城), and while it was never used as the main residence of the royals, it served as one point from where the ruler could do business.
Once again the sisters insisted on buying our tickets for us after we gave them our money. It became apparent that what seemed at first just a courtesy was actually a way for them to make money. For the price that we were to pay, it now made sense how cheap it was, and frankly, we were fine with it, because for the individual sites we still paid the listed entrance fee.
Entering, the complex looked small and unimpressive with the exception of the lone mountain the middle. To get to the mountain, we went through building upon building, ranging from dining halls to bedrooms and throne rooms, and the cave under the mountain.
After coming out of the cave on the other side of the mountain, we realized that we’d missed the path to the top. It ended up being on the west side of the hill, and when we got to the foot of the steps, the path that we were about to climb became visible and clearly steep.
All things considered—namely how long the day had already run—the climb wasn’t too bad. It was taller than it looked and the view of Guilin from the top was pretty good. There were a few buildings at the top, as well as a place to buy drinks, of course. From there you could clearly see the way that the city formed on the flat land around the mountains.
I guess you could say I’ve got a thing for getting the bird’s-eye view of a city. In Rome, it was as simple as the roof terrace of the hotel. In Paris, it was the Arc du Triomphe (because we didn’t go up the Eiffel Tower). In Hong Kong, the view I got was from the Peak. Chicago—Sears Tower (now renamed). Both the Ferris wheel and Taipei 101 did the trick in Taipei.
At this time, we still had a couple hours before the cruise, so we got lunch. The food was good, though we had to eat around of the odd-sized bits of bone with the lamb.
After walking around a local supermarket for a bit and checking out what was there to be offered, we went over the center of Guilin, where the famous pair of pagodas stands.
The cruise was supposed to go for an hour and a half, but ended up going for about an hour. The usual route was not taken for a couple reasons. First the normal course would have run straight past Elephant Trunk Hill, a symbol of Guilin that has been effectively monetized by strategically planting trees to block views from the street and charging ¥30 to get into the park. In addition, according to the taxi drivers, the water level when we went was too low, so many boats by design cannot wade through those waters.
Waiting for the cruise to board, another group of locals insisted on getting a picture with the white people in our group. I took a photo as well.
We got a good picture of Guilin, though. It was very obvious which edifices were historical and which ones were new development. Many of the hills that we saw were covered with climbers and hikers. At the end of its course, right before turning around, there was a well-kept historical-looking area whose name we never found out.
By the time we met up with the taxi drivers again, it was nearing 6:00 p.m., and with half of us getting on a train in just three hours, we decided it would be best to just grab dinner. Anyways, one of my friends wanted to go see the “Dream of Li River” show, which was to begin at 8:00. The cab drivers helped us book us tickets and later picked them up for us.
We asked the sisters to take us somewhere local to eat—and I would find out, it was a little too local for me. The menu had all sorts of exotic things listed. Absent were beef, pork, or chicken dishes, since I guess we weren’t taken to a touristy restaurant.
So we tried it. There was a plate of snails, a plate of Li River shrimp, some soup, some sort of fried rice, and white rice. I ended up with some fried rice and a whole lot of white rice. I tried the soup, and I while I could see why others like it, it just didn’t suit my taste.
Also, I tried the Guilin Li River snails. One actually was enough for me. The snails were small, as were the shrimp, and I found myself trying to get the meat of sorts out of the shell with a toothpick. Once that was successfully done, I put the object into my mouth, aiming to look as little as possible at it, which was easier said than done. I chewed a few times and it was notably mushy, with a little crunch at the end. I took a picture of the animal’s now empty shell and that was the end of that experience.
On the other hand, one of my friends took quite a liking to those snails and ended up eating most of them. With his plate of empty snail shells in front of him, I dubbed him the snail master. Another one of my friends were showing everyone how to peel the shell off cooked shrimp in his mouth and without hands, causing me to be impressed and others to look away. With his plate piled high with shrimp shells, I dubbed him the shrimp master.
The sisters ate with us as well, and they ate a bit of everything really. I guess it fits since they were probably from Guilin and were accustomed to the local food. The whole day, they had been really helpful to us—offering advice about where to go and helping us get tickets, so the group treated them to dinner.
From there, we went back to the hotel for them to get their bags. There we decided that we were each going to chip in ¥20 CNY each for the cab, which added up to ¥120, which was more than the ¥50 they asked for, because, well they deserved it, and ¥20 per person for the whole day is really not that much money (about $2.90 USD). From the hotel, our cabs split in different directions. One went to the train station.
Mine went to the “Dream of Li River” show. It wasn’t that it wasn’t impressive, but for someone who’s already seen most all of the acts of that show done in different places, with more skill, it was kind of a letdown. Similar in the ballet-based show we saw in Beijing, “History of Kung Fu,” as well as to the shows I saw in 2007 in Beijing and in Xian, in addition to the show I saw at the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza in 2006, I was kind of disappointed at their lack of originality.
Though that day ended on a low note, the overall activities that we got accomplished in that first day well overcame the mediocrity of the evening ballet-style show. The sheer volume of events that we did made me feel like the morning we arrived was a full day earlier.
Guilin was really more than I expected in the atmosphere that I got from the city, though the scenery was a bit of a let down through the choking fog. Little did I know of the beauty that was to come but the next day.
Copyright © 2009 James Philip Jee
This work may not be reproduced by any means without express permission of the author.
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