One Year on Earth

We’ve just emerged from a 600 year-old village in Southern China, where we climbed countless hills and took a truly embarrassing number of pictures (over 400 in one day!; here’s a link to some of the best).  Called Ping’an, the small-but-ever-expanding locale where we happily passed two days is situated on the main ridge of an engineering feat known as the Dragon’s Backbone Rice Terraces.  Farmers apparently started constructing these terraces, which wrap around the steep Chinese hillside like never-ending ribbons, as early as 1271.  Over 700 years later, they’re just now starting to show up on tourists’ must-see lists.

Ping’an itself is an idyllic little place where wooden buildings hug the hillsides and horses and cows wander the narrow, stone alleyways with basket-toting locals in tow.  It’s expanding now to accommodate the vast number of tourists who will soon swell its population.  Indeed, the whole town smells like the freshly cut wood that’s being used to construct the hotels and restaurants that are springing up everywhere.  An army of Yao women in fluorescent pink native dress greets travelers as they arrive, hoping to coax them into purchasing some local handicrafts.  (Yaos are a Chinese minority whose women are famous for their incredibly long hair, which reaches nearly to their knees.  Signs everywhere proclaim that Guinness has recognized the area as the “long-hair village.” Research didn’t substantiate that claim in its entirety, but it did prove that record for the world’s longest hair belongs to a woman who lives in the area.  But I digress….)

While we didn’t take advantage of any of the bargains that the Yao women claimed they were offering us, we did enlist Leun, a pint-sized Yao women, to be our guide for a day.  She had to have been at least 70 years old, and she couldn’t have weighed more than 85 pounds, but she had no problem leading us on a hilly, five-hour hike to Dazhai, a nearby town that our guidebook assured us would allow us to escape even the few tourists staying in Ping’an during this, the beginning of the low season.

With Leun in the lead, we climbed up and down the countless terraces between Ping’An and Dazhai.  It seemed that each was more beautiful and other-worldy than the one that came before it.  Cows lazily watched from the sidelines as we stopped every few minutes to take pictures.  A group of Yao women tracked us down on the trail and, for a small fee, took down their long hair so we could marvel, first-hand, at its incredible length.  We encountered far more farmers than tourists, and we finished the hike pleasantly tired and ready to devour some dumplings and sleep soundly in our $8-a-night hotel (which, itself, smelled of freshly-cut wood).

Ping’an is one of the handful of places we’ve seen so far that we feel compelled to recommend to everyone we know before it changes beyond recognition.  Hopefully, the pictures alone will be enough to convince you to make the trip!

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Wanting to see the karsts in their natural surroundings (i.e., not in the middle of a bustling city), we made our way to Yangshuo, an hour south of Guilin.  Our first order of business was to rent bikes and hire a guide who could show us the way off the beaten path.  We wound through the spectacular countryside, following dirt roads through rice paddies and small villages.  We climbed Moon Hill, one of the karsts in the area that has a hole near the top that is said to resemble various stages of the moon, depending on one’s vantage point.  We sailed down the Yulong River on a bamboo raft.

Yangshuo is a photographer’s dream.  Everywhere we looked, another National Geographic-worthy shot appeared.  We must have taken 300 pictures during the course of the day, and I’m pretty sure our guide developed a strong hatred for us and our cameras.  Here’s a link to some of our best shots.

Prior to our arrival in Yangshuo, we read about a nearby village, Shitoucheng, that was only for “adventurous, independent travellers.”  Clearly, we had to prove our worthiness as backpackers by checking it out.  After a series of trips on local buses (which we navigated mainly by miming, as we’re desperately unable to retain all but the most basic Chinese words), we commandeered two local men on motorcycles to carry us up the karst peaks to Shitoucheng’s new village.  One of the men stayed on to lead us to the old village and the ancient walls that we had come to see.  An hour’s worth of steep, rocky stairs later, we were hiking between the walls (whose history seems relatively unknown) and through fields of rice and chili peppers.  We took a look around a family home, which had no modern amenities in sight, and then wound our way back down to the new town, whose satellite dishes (even though attached to wooden shacks) seemed futuristic in comparison.

Later, we joined thousands of Chinese tourists for Impressions Liu Sanjie, a light show that featured 600 locals–many of them fishermen–performing on (yes, on!) the Li River amongst 12 majestic karsts.  The show was directed by movie maker Zhang Yimou, who is also in charge of the opening ceremonies of the 2008 Beijing Olympics.  If what we saw was any indication, everyone watching the Olympics will be in for a treat.

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After having dim sum with Wensi (our new friend in Guangzhou) and her husband, Andy, and daughter, Sunny, we took a short flight to Guilin.  For centuries, poets and painters have celebrated the beauty of Guilin’s natural surroundings.  A famous inscription in the town explains that its scenery “excels all in China.”  As we drove from the airport, we soon noticed giant, cylindrical mountain peaks jutting up from the ground.  These limestone “karsts” were thrust up from the sea many,many years ago and carved to their present-day configurations by centuries of erosion.

We had read several reports about the harm that had come to Guilin as it became famous.  We soon found these reports to be correct.  Thousands of tourists have flocked here in recent years to view the scenery.  With their new-found wealth, the Chinese are touring their country in droves.  Tour buses are everywhere in Guilin, and we constantly feared being trampled by a stampede of Chinese tourists wearing matching hats or shirts and following their flag-holding guide.

Notwithstanding the mass tourism, there are a few sites worth visiting in Guilin.  After renting a couple of bikes and slurping down a noodle soup breakfast in a local dive, we rode to Seven Star Park.  The park was opened as a tourist destination around 600 AD!!!  That’s right, tourists were flocking here over a thousand years before America was even founded (sort of puts things in perspective…).

The park consists of seven peaks and includes several caves, including the gorgeous Seven Star Cave, which we had all to ourselves after we convinced the guard at the entrance to let us enter even though it was temporarily closed.  We also walked open a small zoo housing two giant pandas.  Despite some alarming heckling by a few of the visitors, the pandas were content to doze away the afternoon.

We also visited Solitary Beauty Peak, a karst in the center of town that, after requiring you to climb several hundred stairs, rewards you with a great view of the city.  All in all, Guilin offers tourists a great way to spend a couple of days.  If only so many of them didn’t take it up on its offer…

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If Derek and I weren’t going to be on the road for the next eleven months, I’d say there’s a fair chance that, sometime during the last four days, we would have adopted a Chinese daughter.  We’ve just returned to Guangzhou from the Social Welfare Institute of Yangxi, an orphanage in the southeastern part of China.  I’m not sure that we’ve digested everything that happened during our time there, but perhaps we never will.

We found the Institute through Mindy Sontag, a dear friend in Nashville whose niece Maggie was adopted from there four years ago.  When Mindy learned that we wanted to do some volunteer work during our time in China, she asked if we would be interested in stopping by.  We responded in the affirmative, and she and her family, along with Derek’s parents and the parents of another little girl – Carly – who was adopted from the same place, offered up a very generous amount of money for us to use to purchase whatever the orphanage needed.  (We’ve posted a picture of Maggie and Carly below).

We arrived in Yangxi on Wednesday with pockets full of Chinese yuan.  We literally showed up on the orphanage doorstep and–with much gesturing and thumbing through our very cursory Chinese phrasebook–announced “we’ve come bearing gifts…let’s go shopping.”  And so we piled into a minivan with a bunch of the Institute’s higher-ups.  In a prelude to the incredible hospitality that the staff would show us over the next few days, our first stop was a hotel, where the orphanage director negotiated a rate for us that was 1/5 of the one posted.   Then we were off to the market, where the staff selected a bouncy chair, a blender, 200 baby bottles and some plastic baskets.  Our next stop was an appliance store, where a washing machine and a bottle sterilizer were purchased in rapid measure.  Later, the director placed an order for 90 onesies (for those of you without kids, that’s a kind of baby clothing…), which should arrive next week.  We found ourselves wishing that Mindy and family were there to witness the shopping spree.

Having obtained permission to volunteer  atthe orphanage for a couple of days, we arrived on Thursday morning and spent a couple of hours folding what must have been thousands of cloth diapers.  And then we got to meet the babies.  Here’s the part we haven’t digested yet.

In our estimation, the Institute houses about 60 babies, 58 of whom are girls.  (The remaining two are boys who appeared to be mentally and physically challenged.)  This incredible gender disparity is a product of China’s one-child policy.  Adopted in 1979 with the goal of limiting population growth, this policy restricts all urban Chinese families to one child apiece.  Rural families are allotted two children, and the eight percent of the population who qualify as minorities are exempt from the policy altogether.  Traditional thought values boys over girls, and so families with a limited number of opportunities to try for a boy sometimes abandon newborn girls.  For obvious reasons, I really struggled with this.

Because I’m entirely unfamiliar with orphanages in general and Chinese methods of child-rearing in particular, I’m finding it very difficult to write an objective report of the babies’ living conditions.  It seems that their basic needs are being met.  The appear to be well-fed.  Their diapers and their clothes are changed on a regular basis.  The institute is clean.  I’m not sure how much more one could legitimately expect.

With that said, the babies spent the great bulk of their time in small cribs made of metal bars and rough, wooden planks.  (Yes, they sleep on wood.)  They often have only a towel for a blanket.  We saw a lot of open sores and runny noses.  We saw no mobiles, no stuffed animals, no books.  We saw neither soap nor baby wipes.  My heart ached every time I entered the rooms where the babies lived, and I found myself wanting to hold each one long enough to instill in her the memory of being touched.  It was not easy, and we left with heavy hearts.  We also left on a mission to purchases a mattress for each crib.

Wensi, a kind woman here in Guangzhou who works at this area’s umbrella adoption agency and speaks fluent English (hooray!) gave up her Saturday today to help us with this task.  All day today, our Chinese guardian angel helped us to navigate this city’s busy streets and its many baby supply stores.  She also helped us to understand a lot of what we’d seen at the orphanage.  For instance, she explained that many Chinese babies sleep on wooden boards because their parents believe that it promotes bone growth.  She also assured us that all of the orphanage’s healthy babies eventually get adopted (not so for the not-so-healthy ones; they often remain institutionalized).  Her agency processed 2,200 adoptions last year alone.  Wensi told us that most Chinese people endorse the one-child policy as a way to prevent food shortages and other pitfalls of over-population.  We left her with a better understanding of how the American lens through which we view the world perhaps made a difficult situation appear even more dire than it actually was.  The perspective she offered was invaluable.

We’re meeting Wensi and her daughter in the morning to discuss over a dim sum brunch the mechanics of procuring crib mattresses (not American-style thick, but with a Chinese-acceptable level of padding) from a nearby factory.  We can only hope that, someday, she’ll visit us in the US so that we can try to repay the incredible kindness that she’s shown us.