Below Belief

Rise to more Western food and feel ever so slightly ashamed at pampering ourselves. We head out to enjoy the sun and blue sky which has graced us for almost the first time on our trip. In the streets, I select and then fail to enjoy a rather novel Chinese ice-cream: corn-on-the-cob flavour with real bits of corn. Mmm. But the afternoon is successful, if a little expensive, with plane tickets to Hong Kong for our final departure in nine days time, bus tickets to Dali for tonight and at last, a successful phone call home. For dinner we celebrate by eating a local speciality ‘Across-the-bridge-noodles’ a famous kind of boiling soup in which you cook your own meat, vegetables and chillies. A thin layer of oil on the surface keeps the soup hot and the name comes from a wife who learned how to keep her hermit-husband’s food hot when she carried it over the bridge to the island where he preferred to live in isolation. Millions of restaurants worldwide serving up cold soup could benefit from the technique.
In the cramped sleeper bus where we have a 5’10″ long single bed-sized bunk to share between us, it is 8.30pm and we are still in the bus station. We thought the bus left at 6.40pm and we’ve been sat here with our fellow travellers since then. Perhaps Kunming’s grown-up tendencies and semblance of order has given us higher expectations than we should have had. This is still China, these are still Chinese people and this is Chinese time. There are two middle-aged American travellers with us. One a ruddy loner in a red T-shirt, the other a journalist, a thin and weedy Woody Allen with bushy hair and an haiwaiian shirt. In them I see travelling spirits gone cold. They moan at the delays, raise their voices at the driver who doesn’t speak English and let the situation get to them more than they realise. This is how age takes you unawares. This is the ugly vulgarity of boys grown old, trying to enjoy what they perhaps wanted and should have done twenty years ago, their tolerance and patience turned to stone along with their free spirit.
Llew and I lie back on the bunk, relax and go with the flow. Who cares if this journey gives us some hardship or takes two more hours than the twelve it should: the other Chinese passengers are not complaining. They are lucky to be on a bus at all. We use the two angry souls as fuel for our own amusement and we know by watching them handle this, we can handle it better. We’ve done it before and we’ll do it again.
I smile out of the window at a young girl with solemn eyes and a bright smile in the bus next to ours. Even in the smelly, noisy, frustrating bus station, human moments like this are special. And then we are gone. Swept into the night like a box full of voluntary battery chickens, the bus takes its slumbering cargo down its own bumpy and tortuous route. The road to Dali is not built yet, so we’re driving over the sand foundations. Chinese driver. Chinese time.

A thoroughly tortured and alternating hot and cold nights sleep gives way to a grey dawn. I brave the toilet for the first time and it proves to be an entirely unpleasant experience even without inhaling throughout. I dearly hope that yesterday’s chilli is not ready for a second appearance. That would be really undesirable. What keeps me from being appalled by the journey is the breathtaking scenery outside the window.
Suddenly we have been transported to the roof of the world – a narrow cutting dipping in and out of tunnels in the side of enormous steep hillsides, every last inch of which provides for rice paddies farmed on terraces by the village communities below us in the valleys. I am amazed this limestone scenery is not more famous. It reminds me of the lake district back home but is twenty times larger, more stunning and more impressive. We are passing through real China now: villages connected only by footpaths and the occasional train. We have hot water on tap from a large wood-fuelled samovar at the end of the carriage and so we make more tea. Sitting here reading and watching the scenery flash by it could be Sunday afternoon back home.
The only minor annoyance is that every time we go into a tunnel, which is about every 30 seconds, the lights extinguish and reading becomes a tiresome challenge of chasing dark words around the page. Llew returns from the toilet looking drawn and haggard, clutching a rather out of place roll of pink toilet paper, his face wincing. Clearly yesterday’s chill has made a re-appearance bringing new meaning to the eye-watering term ‘red hot ring’. The rest of the journey passes without too much incident apart from when a mug of what I presume is tea is flung carelessly from a window further down the train and neatly soaks us through our open window. Almost as bad as being spat on. In Kunming, after a bus ride to challenge even the most crowded in London, we arrive at our hotel, the ‘Camellia’ which has cheap dormitories for travellers. We meet Natalie, a 10-month traveller about to go back to Britain to begin life as a lawyer, but in the meantime desperately enjoying the sights of the world and her own freedom. She has travelled the world alone, except for South America, and clearly loves it. Not too mad either.
Kunming is a great city. It is strangely Western, much more ordered than elsewhere (cars actually stop at traffic lights) and I guess for all these reasons is a place where other travellers conjugate. We enjoy our first Western food – burgers – for many days and like it so much we go on to have pizzas at ‘Wai’s Place’ an almost legendary travellers hang out which is empty by the time we find it. We return to bed full, satisfied and just the slightest bit drunk on excellent Dali beer.

We dock in Chongquing, our final river destination, at 10.30am. At 6,300km long, the mighty Yangtze is the third longest river in the world and it sure feels like we’ve travelled a good proportion of its length over the last two weeks. Here at Chongquing, we leave the silty waters behind us and turn from them to the train to carry us onward.
But for now there are more pressing needs like breakfast: great noodle soup from boiling cast-iron pots. Then we part with Peter and friends, somewhat reluctantly because now we know we’re on our own again, and head for the station. The only thing we were without while with them was freedom to do as we pleased. And I did miss that. At the station we know we have a challenge on our hands; this is the first time we’ve tried to purchase long-distance tickets in earnest. Our first problem is choosing which counter to go to. This soon proves academic since all of them are shut for lunch. We’ve done it again.
So we spend a while outside talking and being stared at until the time comes. Having dumped our bags and feeling mobile once more, we pick a long queue at random and hope for the best. Deciphering Chinese symbols we think we’ve seen a suitable train on the printed timetable above the kiosks: the 19:32 to Kunming. We have all the details scripted in beautiful Chinese characters dutifully copied from the book. Expecting to be turned away instantly with ‘méi you’ (no) we are at once surprised when our piece of paper does the trick and we are rewarded with two tickets as required. Just over £10 for a 23 hour trip. Feeling incredibly proud that in the face of all this potential confusion we have come away with exactly what we wanted within 25 minutes, we stride confidently away from the staring crowds and towards the centre of town.
One thing as a ‘paleface’ you can always be sure of in China is being the centre of attention. It suits us well. Centre of town turns out to be a good two miles away in the heat, but we are both glad of the exercise after four days of restless inactivity. Here we find a post office and telecoms centre, great for stamps but less useful for telephoning home since chargecards don’t seem to work here. But Chongquing holds another delight: a bookshop stocking a selection of English fiction. Never missing an opportunity, we buy five hardbacks at knock down prices to read on the train. Suddenly all is roses. Avoiding the tempting KFC we head, instead, to a traditional Sichuanese restaurant. Sichuan is famed for its hot foods and extensive use of chilli. We are not disappointed. Our three dishes are, without exception very very hot with chilli-oil as their base ingredient. It is tasty but desperately painful. I try to hide my flushing face and the beads of sweat on my brow from the amused on-looking gazes of the waitresses around us. It is not as if we have not had time to get used to chilli – almost every food we have eaten here contains it – just that they use it here with such ferocity it leaves my mouth gasping for iced water. Beers actually have the same effect, as we discover, and so it is that at 6pm we stagger out onto the streets, belching painfully and just slightly merry, to do some supply shopping and hail a cab for the station.
Our train is really quite acceptable – open carriages with three tier bunks. It is clean, uncrowded and comfortable in hard sleeper, unlike hard seat hell which is probably raging only a few carriages away. We sit back, stow our bags, sip our green tea to which I am becoming strangely addicted, watch the scenery flash by and even in light of the fact we will lie here for the next 23 hours, are quite content with this travelling thing. Chongquing has been very good to us and with only ten days to go, it seems that despite it’s frustrations, our experience of China is running out on us. I know I must make the most of it now, China will not stay the same for long.

The afternoon brings with it the news that the antics of yesterday caused more than just damage to the captain’s pride. The boat has been damaged irreparably and we are to limp into the next port, Fengdu, at half speed to decant to a new boat. To make things worse, using our interpreters we discover the second boat has no 2nd class rooms available and instead we are given a refund and told to find another boat for ourselves.
At 4pm we leave the boat and are saved the bureaucratic trouble of trying to find another boat by as strange a group of people as you could imagine. First there is Peter, a hugely successful but now retired, 69 year old Hong Kong business man who looks not a day older than 50. He speaks Chinese, Cantonese, Japanese, English and Korean and possesses an incredible and inspirational talent : people around him do anything he wants. Llew and I know a good thing when we see one so we agree to join his party, happy in the knowledge our lives will be made easy for a while. Second in the party is Patrick, a mad Chinese-Briton who seems to be part Welsh and served in the Hong Kong Royal army. He has the wackiest sense of humour I can imagine and starts discussing Welsh rugby songs with Llew. Third is a nameless Cantonese man who speaks English with a Nottinghamshire accent and used to own a Chinese restaurant in Grantham. The triplet are accompanied by three girls aged not much older than us. One seems to be a tart picked up by the restauranteur in Canton and apparently difficult to shift: he’s since caught tonsillitis from her. The other two are friends of the ex-soldier and seem intent on doing as much pointless souvenir shopping as they can.
Despite their weirdness, it is fun to be with them and it is soon Peter who takes centre stage in our exploration of Fengdu, the ghost city. Very quickly after arriving we have given up the immediate prospect of finding a boat and are installed on a private tour of the city, organised on spec, with a bus and a cable car to take us up the mountain. At the top are temples to ward off the devil. We are taken past statues of mythical demons – plenty of fire and brimstone – as well as the ubiquitous Chinese tat-stalls. After passing the bridge of helplessness and the bridge of ‘if you pass here you will become rich’, where I trip up the steps… we are soon walking up the stairway to hell itself. Inside, the legends and myths of hell are not far removed from our own. The Chinese have 18 levels of hell, all unpleasant and portrayed in rather graphic if somewhat seedy, detail.
Finally, we are granted a meeting with Satan himself who turns out to be a rather smart looking statue in gold with a neat moustache and distinctly lacking in the horns, fangs, talons and trident departments. In fact I can’t help noticing the rather ironic similarity between him and the Chinese Budda. We pay him homage anyway and walking slowly down the steps back to the living world, realisation dawns that on this trip we really have now been to hell and back. We retire to a Chinese restaurant having found our ferry departs at 8pm. Peter is on top form here too, ordering a multitude of tasty dishes and ensuring that warm beers are replaced with cold ones, dirty dishes are replaced with clean ones and the chicken dish is sent back when it proves to be too bony.
I am inspired by this man who says all those things people like me would say if only they didn’t dare cause a fuss. Our dogged guide is still with us, smoothing over any problems and clearly being tipped very nicely. We end up waiting for a delayed ferry in a seedy karaoke bar. It is walking to this bar through the muddy backstreets of this lively town in the pouring rain that I suddenly see China as it really is.
There are barbers shops and old men having their hair cut, families together eating in rooms open to the street, women and babies playing in the street. The special thing is everyone is smiling, says hello and seems pleased to see us as we stroll by with our packs. For a moment we seem to be not the tourists we obviously are, but just humans like they are and a part of their lives. They’re just happy to see us enjoying their country. China, despite all its problems, is about families, teamwork, living together and just getting down to life.
Karaoke is definitely something which should be outlawed. Forget censorship of the press, censorship of singing should be mandatory here. The girls, obviously well-practised, give it a try and spend hours crooning into an echoing microphone singing loud Chinese-pop. It’s all a bit samey and out of tune. Llew and I only narrowly escape singing thanks to the fact they have no English words. On the ferry, when it finally arrives at 10.30pm, and after a surreal trek across wet and moonlit pontoons, it transpires there are no 2nd class rooms on this ferry either. No problem, says Peter who moves in with relentless bargaining with the Captain to get us an upgrade to uncommon 1st class accommodation for half the price. If I am anything like as active, arrogant, persuasive or inspirational as Peter is when I am 69 (not to mention still young-looking), I will be monumentally impressed.
This man is God and we now have a two berth cabin with English TV showing ‘Allo ‘Allo. Unbelievable. A couple more beers, a shower and then glorious sleep.

A comfortable nights sleep is ended abruptly by the ships horn, raging at 7.30am, followed by a stop in a small port until 11am. We get up and wander out for breakfast. Without a map, we find ourselves in a small shanty town on the edge of the real city streets. The roads here are mud mires but there are plenty of appetising smells and places to eat. You might imagine the East End of Victorian London to have looked like this. Children are playing in the dirt, shacks are built from corrugated iron and tarpaulins. Huge pots full of noodle soup steam over charcoal stoves.
I notice that all the Chinese are impeccably turned out – in their uniform of flannel trousers and shirts for the men and floral dresses for the women. Whatever the living conditions of these patient people, they take great pride in their appearance. We fill our stomachs with two bowls of very spicy noodle soup and come back to the ship satisfied that if the journey is to be broken with such great stops as this, our journey will fly by. Incredibly, we both manage to go back to sleep until 3pm when we finally wake in the stinking heat and prepare to move. We spend the afternoon constructing a washing line outside in the wind, eating half a huge and tasty watermelon and planning Llew’s forthcoming birthday party which, like anything which reminds us of home, proves to be great fun. Remarkably we are not disturbed by our friends all day.
The scenery is beautiful and bucolic and with beers in hand we are able to relax perfectly. Everything is going swimmingly. Even the washing is drying. At 8pm we reach Yichang, a port where we collect another queue of hopeful passengers. Our cabin becomes home to two teachers who speak very rudimentary English and we communicate with them by writing sentences on paper.
Yichang is home to the existing Yangtze Dam and we have to pass through a lock of epic proportions to pass to the other, higher, side. We are courteously allowed out onto the deck to watch the elegant procedure. There is room for about eight ferries (and probably three sports halls, come to that) inside the walled boundaries of this huge lock. Insurmountable concrete blocks rise, 1984 style, to the moonlit sky above us, glistening with slime. We can reach out and touch the side as we float gently to the top. All too soon we are flung into the colossal Yangtze once more. It seems that we will pass at least some of the gorges under the cover of darkness.
Thursday 17th July
I wake at 2am to catch a moonlit glimpse of towering rocks on either side of us in a rather surreal waking dream. We are woken for real by a port stop at 6am. Outside the window is a bank of dense fog, shrouding any possible view of the gorge we must be in but soon it clears, rolling back up the gorge and leaving a patchy blue sky and some rather photogenic swathes of low-level fog against the rocky cliffs. For the next four hours we are to be held enrapt by the sheer beauty of this scenery. Rock faces and densely wooded hillsides, misty gorges stretching away on both sides, little fishing boats and houses perched precariously on cliffs. I shoot rolls and rolls of film but the lens tames the scenery, it never captures it for real.
The sights are made more impressive by the inevitability of the Yangtze Dam project which, in 2008 will flood these gauges to a height of 185m above sea level and create a lake 550km long stretching from Chongquing to Yichang. The hydro-electric power produced by the pent up energy of these waters will supply more than 20% of China’s demand. More significantly for us, in four months time all tourist traffic along the Yangtze will stop as the Chinese government prepares to evacuate some 1.2 million people from the affected areas where they currently make their living. Quite where they will go is never made abundantly clear, but their fate is unfortunately likely to involve urbanisation. Whatever our views on the ethics of the project, China have made it clear we are to be the few remaining Westerners who will ever set eyes on these beautiful gorges before they are buried forever under the Yangtze’s silty waters.
At 10am we are treated to an at-first alarming but then exciting incident as mid-meander, our boat lurches towards the left hand bank and sets a course for the rocky cliff with some considerable speed. Either the Captain is completely incompetent or the galley-boy has taken control for a shift. Whatever, there is the inevitable and violent jolt, followed by the sort of noise you get when four floors of passenger ferry are thrust to a standstill by large rocks. Our subsequent recovery causes a minor rockslide from the hillside and we leave some rather nasty blue paintwork on the bank.
There is first a moment of panic amongst the passengers as we all expect a rapid sinking, but the mood quickly turns to amazement and then amusement as the crew desperately try to back us up and carry on as if nothing happened. Spending a couple of days on the bank here, shipwrecked would have been quite fun and we favour our chances of survival over most of the yellow-capped Chinese tourist groups on board. At 11.30am the boat stops for five hours, enough time for real tourists to go on a smaller boat trip up the three ‘lesser’ gorges. How appropriate this title turns out to be, not because the scenery is unimpressive but because so many other negative factors contribute to making our decision to go and see the gorges a bad one. First, we have to fight for our seats, Chinese style, and then pay an extra 10 Y ‘Protection for foreigners’ which clearly goes straight into the pocket of the ticket collector. Second, the number of people on the boat and the number of tickets sold fail to match by one ticket. The Chinese operators, thinking the yellow-capped tour group are to blame, spend over an hour hunting for the missing ticket, only to find after considerable frustration that it was Llew who had not surrendered his ticket portion. Smiles all round, but these are Chinese smiles which mean ‘face’ has been lost.
So we head off on our bundle of laughs tour, already late and couped up in this tin box of a boat with 60 yellow-caps of the very worst breed. The internal tourist industry in China is patronised by those who can afford it: China’s new up-and-coming nouveau-riche. In old China, the only way to be materially successful in life was either to be a Party hack or have contacts in the Party or in shops prepared to do you favours. What a surprise to find then, that in describing the character traits of these nouveau-riche I might feel it no over-exaggeration to use words like: smarmy, arse-lickers, cheats and liars. We’ve got a boat full of them and their single, fat, over-attended kids. One of the great features of our boat is a roof which slides right back to give everyone the optimum view of the gorges rising above us. Unfortunately, the Chinese do not like being in the sun and so seem intent on closing the roof to keep the sun from their eyes. Whenever it is opened some fat Chinese woman orders it closed. My impression of their nation is further damaged, beyond reprieve this time, by the plethora of bottles and packaging they throw into the waters of the very river they have come to admire. Ask any one of them what condition the Yangtze is in and they will frown and say ‘vely dirty, vely dirty,’ but that very same person will toss his polystyrene food box, complete with chopsticks, over the side and watch it float away without concern.
We come away extremely dispirited with the whole affair, bogged down by mid-holiday blues perhaps, but almost hating the Chinese for their intolerant and irresponsible characteristics. At 8pm, we are back on the boat and I am in the shower, washing away the troubles of an arduous day. The day is not over yet though, for just as the soap gets in my eyes there is an enormous jolt and we are surprised, though not as much as the first time, to find we have crashed again. Our boat has inexplicably struck the bank once more, this time splintering the roof off a small fishing boat moored there and coming to a halt with a judder.
Needless to say, the village community who have just lost their only fishing boat are none too pleased and a huge argument ensues by torchlight from the dark bank. We sit beached for half an hour, presumably while compensation is paid and begin to wonder just what regulations are in place for the safety of passenger ferries like ours. Then we quickly realise the clever Chinese government has devised the ultimate way to eradicate illegal and dangerous ferry operators on the Yangtze: they will simply flood them all.
Dinner is noodle packs again, the third meal in a row. Reluctantly preparing these bowls of dehydrated starch is a process of hopeful expectation followed by guaranteed dissatisfaction. They don’t actually taste so bad but they come nowhere close to a proper, hearty meal. Sleep comes easy after a beer and despite a very hot sticky night, we sleep right through from 10pm to midday.

Sleep is comfortable until 9am when a cold shower wakes me up for today’s ferry catching. We check-out and grab some food on the way to the port. I leave Llew with the bags eating breakfast while I trek off to do some brief supply shopping. Since we have such a long journey ahead of us, I decide to stock up, but carrying ten large bottles of beer in my arms, half a mile down a hot, dusty road proves to be a bit of a challenge. I am rewarded by a million smiling Chinese stares and all I can do is laugh and pretend I’m doing a deodorant ad for Lynx.
Our little incomprehensible friend on the 3rd floor of the backstreet ferry office has some bad news for us. His “felly engine ithe wlong[sic]” which we take to mean his ferry is inexplicably broken or else non-existent. Luckily he is prepared to refund us and apologises profusely but nothing he can say can reinstate our plans which now lie in tatters. Surprisingly unfrustrated – we’ve grown used to expecting the unexpected now – we catch a bus back to the other Pavillion port. Here we are lucky to get tickets on another boat leaving at 6pm tonight. It is even slightly cheaper than the first. We dump our luggage and aim to fill our afternoon at the Pavillion itself which was on our to-do list anyway. The Pavillion is another typically commercialised Chinese tourist place, consisting mostly of over-priced trinket shops and over-descriptive Chinglish. In the heat we fall asleep on benches inside the walls and while away the time that way. Later we head for a huge slap up meal which is superb.
We talk of home, day-dreaming of cool summer drinks in Cambridge, English food or rowing at sunrise – all thoughts designed by our subconscious to spirit us away from this world and keep our sanity intact. As we board the ferry I am sweating more than ever before – it really is very, very hot today but still the sun stays weakly behind its cloudy shroud.
We have decided to change our pre-planned route quite drastically once we reach Chongquing. Originally we intended to travel by train down through Guiyang, Guilin and Canton – three major cities on the route back to Hong Kong. But we are tired of cities. Tired of the dirtiness and the relentless building work. Also, the train schedule means we would get at most three days in each city – not enough time to get to see them properly. So we have changed our minds. Now we will travel by train to Kunming, Yunnan province in the south-west corner of China and then by bus to Dali, an ancient walled town and a mecca for travellers, still in Yunnan province but at the Tibetan foothills. There we can spend a week in more relaxing surroundings and meet some other travellers. Finally, to get us back in time we will fly out of Kunming to Hong Kong. It’s a more expensive option but not by much and it will be far more enjoyable.
The ferry is a bit scabby but we have a sink and air-con – all the necessities. It seems pretty empty. As we set off we sit on two beds facing the window with the last of our unreplenished stock of English books and the sweat running off us in rivulets. At least now we know we can relax totally for three days. And the scenery? Reeds, flat reeds as far as the eye can see.
Doing our washing in a huge bucket on the foredeck, we bump into a young Chinese lad who speaks some English. We soon realise any thoughts we had of peace and quiet are to be nullified by this one lad who hopes to spend the next three days with us practising English. Oh thank you lord. He is nice enough, but it is late in the evening and neither of us is really in the mood for small talk. His pronunciation is terrible – “Lolls Loyce” being his most memorable phrase, leaving us puzzled for minutes in a conversation on high-class cars. Later, he returns with five student friends of his, three girls and two more lads, all travelling together on our boat. They would provide an interesting insight into Chinese student life I’m sure, if only I could keep my eyes open and concentrate on asking them profound questions.
Talking to them is made even more difficult by the need to cope with their never-ending flow of compliments for us. Flattering though it is to be constantly told we are strong, tall, handsome and beautiful, we can hardly reply. Although these students are our age, they seem remarkably innocent and immature. I guess it is the result of over-extensive censorship on everything they are told and a very careful policy to ensure children grow up slowly. The difference is very noticeable. When I ask them whether any of them have girlfriends or boyfriends, they look at their feet very shyly and then shake their heads. At University, girls and boys sleep separately in bunk dormitories of twenty or more in what must be rather worse than an extension of English boarding school-style life. I can’t help feeling sorry for the lack of privacy they must endure during some of the most important years of their adult lives. However, the legal marriage age in China is 20 for women and 22 for men, so I suppose there is no rush.
Another very clear example of censorship comes when one of the girls asks us about the Tiananmen incident while reading our guide book. We read out and explain the story as it is written in our book including the rather tragic part where Chinese tanks drove through and over groups of student demonstrators. Our Chinese friends have obviously been only told a fraction of the truth since they claim there were no tanks and no deaths – only arrests. Even when we describe our personal memories of watching the tanks squash one particular demonstrator on BBC news at the time, they are unable to believe our story. In the end they agree on a compromise between the two stories but seem to have been so heavily brainwashed into thinking the Chinese news agencies publish the whole truth and nothing but the truth that they are unprepared to believe anything different. I had no idea censorship could be that effective. Llew and I hurriedly try to usher the conversation onto topics free from content we could be arrested for divulging.
Eventually, with promises to return tomorrow, they all go to bed and we collapse. We enjoy speaking to Chinese people for the stories they have got to tell, but it always seems such an effort to make conversation.

The beds here are coconut or bamboo matting and surprisingly comfortable. This morning we are headed for the docks, a convenient 100 yards away, to catch a ferry to Junshan Island which supposedly has much to offer us sightseeing chaps. On our way we are nearly bowled over by a bunch of what we now call “Sampan Lamma?” ladies – always a bad sign in China. They are trying to sell us a ride to Junshan on a small boat for 60 Y when we know the large ferry can get us there for 15 Y.
Just coming off the large boat is a one of our fellow Lau Wai’s – an American who looks just as keen to see us as we are to see him. We agree to meet up later for dinner. The 45 minute journey by boat is relaxing if not very exciting. We both day dream of home in quiet contemplation. Thoughts reconciled. Junshan, like many places of particular interest in China, has fallen foul of the tourist trap. They charge us 30 Y just to get off the boat onto the island – we are the ultimate captive audience. The “attractions”, a mixture of temples, statues and bizarre fairground sideshows, are all signposted in lavish Chinglish. However once away from the crowds the leafy peaks and views over the lake and tea plantations are quiet, peaceful and relaxing.
We have eaten only an ice-cream all day and kind of expected there to be somewhere to eat on the island. By 3.30pm we are pretty desperate, but no enterprising Chinese have taken advantage of the hungry crowds and the only thing on offer seems to be more ice-creams or noodle packs. These are definitely to be reserved for emergencies only so we return, hungry, to Yueyang.
We meet Matt, our American friend, for dinner. He turns out to be a Geology masters student at Michigan University and has been to Hong Kong like us and then Guilin, Guiyang and Yangshuo all on our pre-planned route. He is heading home in a couple of days. It is his first time travelling outside the States and he seems fairly naive in his habits but learning fast. He is the stereotypical loud-mouthed American, and clearly having travelled on his own he is glad of the chance to speak to other Westerners. We get a good ear-bashing from him but Llew and I were running out of things to say to each other anyway.
We pick a new restaurant and enjoy friendly service and some excellent dishes. And some less excellent ones like whole-fish stew. Nice and savoury, if a little grotesque and bony. The spicy bean curd is surprisingly good. After some more beers we retire to our room. Our grand topic of conversation for the evening is working out that using our student, commission-free travellers cheques in association with the preferential Chinese exchange rate we could actually make money changing pounds to Yuan and back again. In our slightly merry state we can’t see any catch and resolve to raise a million pounds and do it regularly.