Adventures in Guangzhou!

Off we went, on a very small minibus to the ancient city. In order to get to the old section we had to go through the newer section which happened to be holding its county fair. David explained that in rural areas of Hunan, every town holds a county fair about twice a month which basically entails an enormous live market, a few token rides for the kids, and people hawking every good imaginable. When you don't have a local "Park & Shop" supermarket, this is apparently the next best thing. It was impossible for the bus to get through the hordes of people so we had to walk through the mass. My first thought was it was an H5N1 extravaganza just waiting to happen. Everywhere I looked there were people holding multiple chickens, ducks, and geese. Oh boy.

I asked David if they were aware of bird flu and he said that they most likely knew about it but were unconcerned. I could see his point--if your entire livelihood is based around selling chickens or eggs, you are going to be unlikely to get rid of your stock. Obviously this can have dramatic consequences but for these people it's the only option if they want to survive. Sad, but true.

As we approached the ancient city, I could see immediately that it was extremely rundown. There was a ton of garbage everywhere in the new town and it continued right up to the old section. We payed for our tickets and an old man took us in as tourguide. I was surprised to see that there were actually people living inside. It would be like people living inside Monticello--it would never happen in America. David asked the tourguide for me and he actually told us that the government had planned to have everyone out by 2004 in order to make the place more of a tourist attraction but that resistence from the residents had made it difficult. I suppose I'd be a little annoyed about being told to leave my home as well. I don't know if the government has given up but the relocation and refurbishment plans still appear to be years away from completion.

All I can say about the old town is that it was dirty. Extremely dirty. Chickens, dogs, and goats all roam the old streets doing their business wherever they see fit. People blatantly toss their garbage out their front doorway and the wind creates garbage drifts. We passed by a kid about 7 or 8 who was urinating in the middle of the street, apparently unaffected by the presence of tourists or a foreigner. Gross.

The garden outside the west gate was quite nice, but apparently used to be one of the best in all of Hunan Province. What happened, you might ask. Well, during the Great Leap Forward of '59-'61, residents were forced to chop down all of the 1000+ year old trees to create fuel for the fires that were burning all of the local metal down to fit quotas. These deposits proved to be useless in the end so the trees were destroyed for nothing. Tragic. There were some very interesting rock formations though that all had stories, some about dragons, some about old magistrates, and some about rival clans which were very cool.

After the tour we walked back into the new section to find a restaurant and toilet. The fair was dying down but there were still hundreds and hundreds of people around. After about fifteen minutes of searching, we finally found one restaurant. As we walked in though you could see that everything in the place was covered in some sort of grime. The chairs, tables, dishes, and walls all had some sort of grossness on it and I decided that I needed to put my foot down on this one. As I gently vetoed the place David responded that he was very glad, that it seemed too dirty. Thank god.

So we hopped on a minibus to head back to the comforts of Feng Huang. On the bus there was a woman with her child who was carrying an enormous vat of cooking oil. I didn't think too much of it until we went around a sharp turn and the oversized jug spilled everywhere. It spread so fast that despite my being six rows away, it still got all over one of my boots. That was the least of my concerns, though. The two-inch pool of oil on the bus was creating the most awful stench that was unescapable. We opened up all the windows but there was nothing that could overshadow the smell. The woman herself was covered all the way up to her waist as she tried to salvage what was left and soon began dry-heaving. Before I knew it she had both her head and her child's head out the window so that both of them could vomit. This lasted for another 10 minutes until we pulled into the bus station. Gross.

As I slid off the bus back on to solid ground, I was struck by the thought that I never imagined I would miss the cleanliness of Guangzhou. Though I consider GZ a pretty dirty city, it now seemed like the complete opposite. Compared to Huang Si Chiou I'd eat off the GZ sidewalk! It was nice to get back to the old city in Feng Huang for the afternoon. We ate a huge lunch at the same place we had dinner the night previous and then wandered around for a bit by the old city walls. One thing that was starting to bother me was the incessant horn-honking. Everywhere we went there were cars, buses, and trucks all blasting their horns at all times. Even when there was nobody on the road except for a single pedestrian 50 meters away, a driver would lean on the horn until he passed the guy. Such noise pollution!

We decided to head back to Jishou for the night so we went back to the bus station yet again. I shook my head at the huge oil stain on the ground from our other bus and got on to a much cleaner minibus. I thought it would be smooth sailing until a man got on to the bus with two live chickens... and a goat. I thought it might have been a big joke or something but no--this was not the twilight zone, the guy was actually transporting these things back to Jishou. And lucky me! I got to sit next to him. He was the last one on and the only available seat was across the aisle, so I got to share leg room with a goat. Hey, at least it didn' t spill oil on me or throw up. It was actually pretty quiet for the entire ride!

Jishou was a welcome sight and I was glad to have a home to return to. We dropped our stuff off at Lisa's apartment, walked back downtown, found a restaurant, and ordered up a feast. Midway through the meal some random girl came over and asked in English if she could join us. Sure! David and I sort of ended up telling a lot of inside jokes as this girl practiced her English with us, but we were exhausted from a long day and just needed to unwind a bit. She seemed entertained by us and wasn't put off by our ridiculousness at all. Good for her! After a long meal replete with good conversation and about dozen pots of tea, we retired back to the apartment and went to bed.