Guangxi Province

Dragon's Backbone
Our last week in southwest China was a perfect way to end our trip. First we flew to Guilin and went a few hours north to an area called the Dragon's Backbone Terraces. The name comes from the endless terraces that cover the steep hillsides and wind their way around all the curves of the valleys.  (Look up a picture of "rice terraces" to get an idea of how cool this looks.) This is the off-season, when the fields are already harvested and cleared, but it was still incredibly beautiful and mind-boggling. Plus, there were far less tourists around. We stayed in a nice village called Ping'an for two nights and spent our time following the trails that follow the terracing.  The terracing is so huge that one day we walked 3 1/2 hours each way and were still constantly surrounded by it. The trail also leads through a few small towns the Zhong and Yao minority groups live. The Yao women are known for their long hair which they grow about 5 feet long!  The other interesting thing about these minorities is the way they construct houses--without any nails. Since harvest is over, we got to see a lot of this building going on. While the men built, women, some in their 60s, carried huge logs and materials on their backs up the hills. Overall it was a peaceful visit (although our 7 hour walk was strenuous) and we were definitely glad we made the effort to come.

Yangshuo
Our next, and last, stop was the town of Yangshuo. This backpacker town is touristy, but it was nice to end our time here. We stayed in a hotel that was one of our best this whole trip. We finally had a soft bed, a hot clean shower and  a big TV and free DVDs. It was awesome!  The land around the town is filled with huge karsts. These are rather bizarre looking mountains that rise suddenly from the earth. They almost look like stand-alone mountains that rise sharply like a cliff instead of gradually sloping up. But they're very cool and almost eerie looking. There are two rivers near the town, the Li and the Yulong, and it's popular to ride bikes around the area and in the fields or take boats along the river to enjoy the unique scenery.

After a day of riding bikes through villages and along the river, we had a Thanksgiving dinner of "beer duck" for Mr. Kuschel (because it was the closest thing to turkey) and fried eggplant stuffed with pork for me (because it sounded good). For dessert we got delicious apple crumble with vanilla ice cream to have something American. We stayed up late to wait for one of Mr. Kuschel's closest college friends, Brent, who lives in China and flew to meet up with us for a few days. It was awesome to see a familiar, friendly face and to have a chance to catch up with him. He also became our hero by bringing us much needed peanut butter, a cheesy Doritos snack mix, and real Tostitos.

We spent two fun, full days with Brent. The first day we went for a boat ride down the Li River. We stopped after an hour and a half at a small town and got lunch. Then we decided to hire another boat back to Yangshuo rather than take the bus. The second boat ride was even more peaceful than the first. We saw men using commorants (a type of water bird) to fish, an old tradition that's not practiced much anymore.  Our second day we rented bikes and rode along the Yulong River in the opposite direction than we'd gone before. We got lost many times but that just made it more fun. (Brent's fluent Chinese also helped keep us going in the right direction.) At one point we were able to cross the river at a shallow point at one of the dams. This landed us in the middle of the fields where there was no longer a path and we had to do some exploring to find a trail.   At night we stayed in to eat pizza and watched DVDs in our room. This was special for us because we haven't really had a "night in" while traveling. We always have to go out to eat and we've never been somewhere with a DVD player.

Goodbye to China
Sadly it is now time to leave China. Both of us have loved our time here and it exceeded our expectations. For the adults: We also loved taking note of their attempts at writing things in English. It is often funny, surreal, or just plain baffling (such as the title of this blog, for a luggage store). Some others include:

• No allowed to stay unkind things to other people and disturb their rest time after you drink beer (Rule #5 at guesthouse in Tibet)
• Removes horniness (on the label of a skin-whitening cream)
• Then the scenery is that frosty leaves in autum are redder than flowers in February, making visitors forget to leave (on a plaque)
• City branch network of large ants welcome (the only English at an internet cafe)

Now we're heading to Vietnam. From December 1-15 we will be in a small town in the hills north of Hanoi doing volunteer work so we will mostly likely not have access to a computer. We will update when we get back!