East is Relative

Yangshuo: The Return of the Laowai

I thought “The PRC Strikes Back” was too negative a title, so I skipped straight to the third one.

Things I love about Yangshuo:

• My Corona is served with a lime.
• Hearing, “Oh, you son of a bitch,” in its natural habitat: a bar-room pool game.
• The only people staring at you are the other laowai.

I’m sure there will be more, since I’m not done here yet.

I arrived on Saturday afternoon to general good weather and sunshine. Can’t complain about that. I got the key to my hotel room, provided free of charge from Buckland, and set out to find myself dinner. I ended up eating at the Global Cafe – a place I’d taken a picture of in August, but never eaten at. I ordered cheese quesadillas and some coffee, which were amazing, and a chocolate sundae, which consisted of weird vanilla ice cream on top of watermelon and apple pieces with some chocolate syrup. Not altogether awesome. That night, I went to Bar 98 (the Australian bar) and hung out with some other laowai, shooting pool and playing Texas Hold ‘Em.

When I got back to my apartment that night, disaster struck. I slipped and fell on some water on the tiled floor and banged up my left toes something awful. This put me heftily out of commission for most of Sunday. I ended up sleeping most of the day until 3pm or so, then heading out on my bike (much less painful than walking) to a nearby restaurant, where I had jiachang doufu (home-style tofu) that was awesome. After that, I went back to the hotel and chilled out again. My toes were feeling much better, but I was still sore, so I just rested.

Today, I decided, toes be damned, I’m going into town and doing something. I went to West Street, ate a good lunch of green beans and cashew chicken, and then took a cooking class! Go me for being adventurous. We went to the market to check out vegetables and meats, and then learned how to cook Beer Fish (a Yangshuo specialty), Green Beans with Garlic and Chili, and Sweet & Sour Pork. I’m not a big fan of fish, but I will definitely be cooking the green beans and pork again later – they were very easy to cook and tasted amazing. I made my own sweet and sour sauce from scratch! I win.

After class, around 7pm, I went to dinner with Patrick and Ping, two Buckland employees. We had big giant bacon mozzarella burgers (regardless of the fact that I’d eaten about seven dishes since 1pm) and some dodgy chocolate milkshakes. We shot pool in the upstairs lounge on a fantastic table – probably the best I’ve played on in China. After that I went to Bar 98 and had some tea and read a new book I’ve started called River Town by Peter Hessler. He’s the author of Oracle Bones, another book about China I’m interested in, but so far in River Town, his experiences as a laowai teacher in a small town are parallel to a lot of my experiences; and different in a lot of ways, too. His small town has a lot more history and culture than my small town, for one. And his school’s staff went out of their way to welcome him and the other laowai teacher when they got there, something I didn’t experience.

I’m beginning to wonder if the wine-and-dine-the-foreigners experience is more likely for males than females. Part of the bonding experience in China is the social drinking of baijiu, or rice wine, and among men, it’s a competition to see who can drink the most. But it’s considered immodest for women to drink (or smoke, for that matter), so maybe the school didn’t take me out for big banquet dinners because they didn’t expect me to drink with them (which I wouldn’t – baijiu is horrifying).

Anyway, I’m really having a great time in Yangshuo – it’s an amazing place to reset. Tomorrow, if my foot is feeling up to it, I’m planning on taking a bike ride to Moon Hill, which is 8km south of town, and the Big Banyan Tree, which is near Moon Hill. Wednesday, I want to go around Yangshuo and focus on trying to get some really good pictures, and probably do the last of my touristy shopping stuff. Thursday I leave to go back to Changsha for Christmas.

I’ve uploaded new pictures under the name “Yangshuo: The Return of the Laowai,” so go check those out. They include pictures of my bruised-up toes. WARNING: I couldn’t bring myself to take pictures of the dead dogs in the market, but I do have some pictures of live animals like frogs and eels in their pools, and one picture of dead rats hanging in the market. If you’re really squeamish, look out for those, they’re in the middle of the batch.

I’ve also added two videos, one of eels swimming in their pool (whole and intact) in the market, and one of Christmas lights in Yangshuo, to the “China Videos” group, so look at those, too.