This is the ninth in a series of articles and images from NDH correspondent, David Sand, on the road in China with John-Roger, John Morton and 108 traveling peacemakers.
August 24
Sorry to be a day late, but we were way out in the countryside in Guilin and couldn’t make any international calls from there.
Out of Shanghai today and into the remote countryside, to Guilin, home of those incredible steep mountains that you see in Chinese landscape paintings. My typing fingers are a little tired today so my sherpa, Clark Franke, wheels me through the airport.
A couple of parting shots of Shanghai as we go to the airport to fly to Guilin and some more shots of the crew in planes, buses, airports, etc.
A bus takes us from the Guilin airport on a two-hour ride into the remote countryside, and we have a short walk to lunch at the Foggy Hotel, right in the middle of one of the most spectacular landscapes in the world.
Views from the restaurant are amazing.
Someone comments that it feels like we’re on a movie set, which I guess is one of the highest possible compliments coming from media-drenched Americans.
The hotel is right next to a little village nestled in the mountains and yes, those really are water buffalo and Chinese people in the little straw hats, and yes there really are people working out in the rice paddies under those incredible mountains. It probably looks much like it did 50 or 100 years ago–except for the occasional motorbike, and of course the ice cream/soda/postcard stands set up for tourists, and the some of the younger people who dress like suburban American kids, and the tour guides with cell phones. They say there’s a 5000 room hotel complex going up soon.
It’s tropical-hot: humid jungle-heat where people are walking around drenched in sweat all day long. We hang around the pool most of the afternoon, a basketball game starts up between with some of the Chinese locals, and J-R finds a nice cool pagoda-perch where he can view the action.
It turns out that there are too many of us to fit in the Foggy Hotel, and some of us are relegated to a cheaper hotel down the road, which in the U.S. would more closely resemble a prison–cinderblock construction, bare tile floors, industrial-green metal doors with room numbers stenciled on them in red block numbers, no air conditioning in many of the rooms.
Your humble correspondent is assigned one of these rooms, with a hole in the floor for a toilet, and a shower that’s actually a pipe coming out of the wall (just out of view on the right of the picture) that turns the whole bathroom into a shower stall.
You may remember that in my last report I said I was ready for “change and adventure,” but I’ve been in MSIA long enough to be very careful what I ask for, and I added “with a minimum of discomfort”. So I’m able to negotiate and change to the Foggy Hotel, where rooms are a little rustic but still comfortable. Our air conditioning breaks down, but I get one of the night clerk/maintenance people, and in about 20 minutes he takes the whole thing apart and fixes it. It’s amazing how poverty and necessity can bring out people’s resourcefulness. Where in the U.S. could you call the front desk and get a hotel employee who could take apart and fix your air conditioner on the spot?
In the evening we’re treated to some dances by indigenous people (China is 95% “Han” Chinese and 5% tribal/indigenous peoples) who do all sorts of acrobatics and folk dances in native costumes. We’re so far out in the country that you can’t even phone outside of China, so this report won’t get sent until tomorrow.
Pamela Tarantine and Joan Witkowski have left the trip and are headed back to the States. Neither is seriously ill, but they were challenged enough that they felt they needed to leave. Please send them your Light, and of course send Light to our trip, to China, to all of us, and to all the Chinese.
Click here to view Children of China Special Feature
Click here to view Day 9 of the China Trip
Click here to view Day 8 of the China Trip
Click here to view Day 7 of the China Trip
Click here to view Day 6 of the China Trip
Click here to view Day 5 of the China Trip
Click here to view Day 4 of the China Trip
