Arriving in Mainland China!

On Monday we arrived in Guilin, our first mainland China stop! I successfully made it through customs. Yay! We arrived at night and were nicely greeted by a row of neon light up palm trees. This theme seemed to carry on as we drove into the city and saw many other neon signs, trees lit up with bright colors, traditional buildings and bridges lit up with lights and searchlights swirling around the sky. This was our first and only real experience with Guilin as we headed to bed as soon as we got to the hotel and left for a lunch cruise early the next morning.
Tuesday’s cruise down the Li River brought beautiful scenery and new experiences. The Li river is surrounded by huge beautiful mountains and much of it goes through gorge like valleys. The wildlife we saw from the boat consisted of many water buffalo. As we rode the river many locals paddled along side us on small rafts made of bamboo (see photo). Every once and a while they would attach on to our boat and try to sell us things through the window. They sold everything from jade Buddhas to candles and Lychee fruit. Tiara bought some Lychee fruit and we enjoyed peeling and eating this grape like food.
We exited the boat right into a small market. We didn’t have much time at the market, but I managed to get some mango flavored gelato and a movie. After weaving through the market we got on to small electric cars for a rural village tour. This was an amazing experience. Up until this point, whenever I thought about China I thought mainly about big crowded, developed cities. However, this day opened my eyes to the huge rural population, which also makes up a significant portion of the population of China. China is not just big cities, but it is also beautiful mountains, flowing rivers and a huge rural communities.
After our day of exploring the beautiful scenery of Guilin we got on a 12 hour train ride to Wuhan. The girls all got enclosed sleeper cars (soft sleepers—how rich people travel) and the boys got open sleepers (Hard sleepers—how the normal people travel). See the pictures to compare. Sleeping on the train was really tolerable and the time went by quickly as we just watched a movie and slept. The only negative experience on the train was the bathrooms. Luckily, in the soft sleeper area we had a western style toilet, but we still had to hold your breath before you went in or even walked by. Apparently this was nothing compared to the horror stories the boys had about their squatter bathroom facilities.
So that was the second leg of my study tour, more still to come so check back soon…