Yuening called and told me we were going somewhere with her friend, Lan Wen Ming the next day, and that I would get a chance to see the rural areas in SW China. We say "countryside" because rural has a double-R, a "no-no" for everyone except me.

My first trip to the rural areas was reasonably benign. The driver, another of General Yuening’s Lieutenants, was a young electrical engineer from Nanning whose wife was a doctor for the Guanxi Police. We drove to a small town (about 80,000 people) that had been the hometown of Yuening’s parents many years ago; it was about 1 ½ hours from Nanning.

When traveling in China, it is probably best to describe your journeys in the metric of time, rather than distance. It can make a difference in the accuracy of measurement. To get to the older folks stomping ground, we had to traverse what passes for a major cross-country highway here. It is mostly paved in what we sometimes call chip-and-seal; small gravel laid down and covered with thick oil that hardens to an asphalt-like surface; the same as the rural secondary road to my house. My road probably averages a car every 2-5 minutes, and therefore can well handle the occasional large truck that takes the hilly, curvy and many-small-bridged, country road. The road  we drove from Nanning was something quite different. The traffic was heavy and constant and made up of pedestrians, all types of bicycles, scooters (2 and 3 wheel), cars and heavy gravel and sugar cane trucks that took their half of the road out of the middle. For good measure,  a few slow-moving ox-drawn carts were thrown in fat sporadic intervals. Just to make things even more interesting, heavy dust and pollution reduced visibility to less than 100 meters much of the way. The trucks had beaten any smoothness from the path and every few kilometers the pavement either disappeared altogether or was traversed by a partially filled trench for water pipes, or anything else that anyone with a shovel wanted to see planted. The way was lined with 2 to 3-foot diameter trees every 10 yards or so on both sides. These were carefully whitewashed to a height of 4 feet or so. The shoulder, such as it was, consisted of about 6" of dirt preceding a ditch of varying depth and width. I would normally drive such an avenue at about 25 miles per hour – we bounced down this thoroughfare at around 50-60, and a rough transit it was.

I have mentioned that the general state of repair for most Chinese vehicles is somewhat poor; this was an understatement. I have ridden in very few that seemed safe. Mostly, the problem seemed to be related to worn suspensions, beaten into shards by the constant abuse forced on them by hurried drivers and moon-crater roads and streets. Almost everything I rode in, or on, sounded like something was ready to fall off and kill some unsuspecting cyclist or ox-cart driver. My knowledge of automobiles is limited but, as Agatha Christie's Poirot once said, "I know little of these automobiles, but I do know that they should have four wheels and that these should be firmly attached." I heard body panels flapping, ball joints that rattled like the front wheels were in imminent danger of separating from the car and doors that were so loose I held tight to the handle to feel somewhat safe from falling out. It isn’t that these things occur that is unusual, is that they are all but ubiquitous here.

We arrived in the small town, Shiang Aiao Chen, after about an hour and a half traveling past rice, sugar cane, banana and vegetable fields tilled by oxen, walk-behind tractors and by hand. This place of about 40,000 people is a sugar town and they’ve got sugar cane like Iowa’s got corn

The sugar mill burns something (maybe cane after the sugar is extracted?) in its processing, and the pall of black smoke, mixed with pollution and dust from the dirt roads, is so thick as to limit visibility severely. Large tandem trucks loaded w/cane rumble and rattle down every road and street. Some of the cane is cut into 2-3" diameter by 1" thick wafers to be dried on the road when sunny. These hockey-pucks of sugar are sent to distilleries to be made into liquor. The whiskey must taste like diesel fumes instead of oaken barrels here. I doubt 12 years of aging will clear that up much.

After lunch, we took a short walk through a market that made the smelly crowded markets of Nanning look like Safeways in the U.S. Another assaultive ride back to Nanning and we are back in Nanning for the evening.

Ning-Ming, Our Second Rural Outing

Click below for pictures accompanying this portion

 PICTURE GALLERY #3 - THE NING-MING RIVER TRIP 

Our second foray to the countryside was quite different. We boarded a very clean and well-turned-out train to Ning-Ming, another sugar town of about 80k people, near the Vietnam border. We rode second-class for the 150-mile trip; this level is called "soft seat" for some unfathomable reason. The seating is 3 people sitting facing 3 other people across a small table, this on each side of the aisle. The "seats" are straight-backed wood benches covered with ¼" of foam rubber and a cloth seat cover; almost as comfortable as a church pew. When my watch chimed 0800, the wheels turned like  a switch had been flipped – the Swiss got nothing on China Rail. Stewardesses come through hawking candy, nuts and drinks about every 20 minutes. These goods are reasonably priced (about 1 ½ times the street price) unlike the U.S., where anything bought in transit or at a terminal is 3-6 times the normal price. Altogether, this was a very smooth and comfortable trip. Trains are the way to go in China.

When we got to Ning Ming, transportation got a little different. Our companion, Lan Wen Ming, led us to her brother on the platform. Apparently, in Ning Ming he is the "fix-it" guy - the Arranger. We were directed to what passes as a taxi in rural China – I call them cycle taxis. These are 125cc small motorcycles with the back wheel hacked off and a 2-wheel covered cart  welded on its place. The cart has a bench on each side that will fit 3 Chinese people, with 8 chickens in baskets, 2-50kg bags of rice and a pig on the floor between them. Ours, being reserved by Ming’s brother, held only the 4 of us. We were taken to a restaurant for noodles and fried peppers – yummy. We returned to the waiting 3-wheeler and were taken about 5 miles down a dirt road. My Chinese was not good enough to have the vaguest idea of where we were headed so, like most of our outings, I just rode along until we got there. Forrest Gump was right, life in China is like a box of chocolates, each bite a surprise – this one was a doozy.

We pulled up to a quay on a green river where there was an excursion boat parked at the dock. Ming’s brother waved as he disappeared in a dust cloud and we headed for the boat, and right across it’s bow to a little wooden sampan that had been hidden from view.  Made of wood, about 20’ long and 5’ across, this covered craft looked like it would sink if I set food aboard – it didn’t, and was actually set up to seat 20, 10 to a side. The coxswain's hand cranked the smoke-belching outboard to life and we were off – I still didn’t know where. We cruised slowly down river between beautiful green mountains reminiscent of Guilin. They rose from the mist like monsters awakened by the raucous motor. After 1 ½ hours, I was starting to run low on film when we finally got to our secret destination which was a huge cliff wall covered in hieroglyphics painted red. Ming explained that it was reachable only by boat and was discovered about 25 years ago. The red paint was quite vivid and I was told that the drawings were about 2200 years old. Scientists are currently investigating the paint to see just what this stuff was made of that had been weathering for 20 centuries and was still bright. I am sure that we will see it on highways and other high-use areas soon. Made me wonder why I have to paint my house every 5 years. We walked around awhile, looking at the wall from a path cut into the mountainside, and then headed back up-river.

There were all sorts of activity along the waterway, kids playing, oxen plowing, women washing clothes and people fishing. All along, there were many square frames about 6’x6’ anchored and floating in the water. I asked what these were and was told that it was food for pigs. I guess grain here goes straight to the plate. Even the rivers are used for horticulture because land is so expensive; more about that later.                

When we arrived back at the landing, our cycle-taxi and Ming’s brother were waiting for us. The 4-hour boat trip and admission to the hieroglyphics park cost 100 RMB for all 3 of us – including the cycle-taxi fare both ways.

We walked along the main street of Ning Ming, dodging the occasional pig or shoeshine stand until we arrived at the restaurant for supper. I explained as well as I could that I wanted the luke-warm food on the buffet to be served hot. I always insist that everything here, especially meat and eggs, be well-done and hot in public eateries. This time it worked as well as any other thing I try here involving communication – it was so hot with red pepper I broke out in a sweat on the first bite. Of course, hot has two meanings and Murphy's law says that I will always communicate the wrong one. It was at dinner I found out that wee were taking a bus back to Nanning, and then I was really hot.

I’ve been on busses in China before, and from my experience they come in 2 varieties – bad and  really bad. There are double-deckers that have sleeping/reclining rocks on both levels. Single level ones that mimic Greyhound vehicles in a sad way, with seats, of course, to fit small Chinese derriers. These are usually dirty and in poor cosmetic and mechanical condition; their suspensions long ago given over to the Chinese roads. I am told that there are good busses here that are clean and of newer vintage, but have never seen such mythical things actually driven with passengers.

Along with the passengers, assorted freight, personal goods, fruit, livestock (alive or dead) and other things are stuffed around the passengers like packing a suitcase. The cargo, combined with hawking Chinese farmers spitting on the floor and depositing their banana and orange peels there, makes for an aromatic and sometimes slippery ride. Most of the cargo and passengers become rearranged as the apparently insane drivers blast along the rutted roads at least twice the safe or posted speed: They drive without lights at night, pass on blind corners and hills, tailgate and generally defy all reasonably common sense rules of safety while chatting with the pretty girl that usually gets the best seat next to the driver. Never take a bus in China if you can avoid it. The fare is comparable to the train and the trip will scare the bejesus out of you unless maybe your last name is Knievel, and I dare even old Evil to take this trip.

We arrive at the bus station and I am assured that we are not going by chicken bus, my term for Chinese busses that gets laughs from everyone. I am told we will take one of the fabled "good" busses – don’t worry. Thirty minutes after our scheduled departure, we were informed that our bus had had an accident and that there would not be another until morning – the day before my scheduled departure. Not only was my confidence not inspired by the wreck of our intended conveyance, the complications  of missing international flights were too much to even think about. I said we should hire a taxi or car as I must be back tonight to pack and prepare for my trip home. Ming’s brother left for a few minutes and when he came back he said there would be a bus in an hour. Mr. FIX IT.

As we were waiting, the room started to fill with passengers and cargo. Eventually, I was vindicated; 5 baskets, partially covered with burlap sacks, arrived on the floor. Wriggling and protruding from an opening in each was a cute little pig snout.

After a delayed departure, due to the combined effects of the driver’s hormones and the tight jeans on the front seat passenger, we started on our 3 ½ hour trip to Nanning. At 8pm the dirt and chip-n-seal road was crowded with pedestrians, bikes, cycles, cars, busses and trucks with the odd ox-or donkey cart thrown in for good measure. About ½ of the motor vehicles had no head- or taillights – or didn’t use them. Those that did use headlights kept them on hi-beam all the time. Combined with the Chinese drivers’ vision of getting anywhere before anyone else, putting all this in motion on a dark night with poor visibility seemed a disaster waiting for a place to happen. About ½ of this melee were trucks well over 20 tons loaded with sugar cane or rock.

This was the roughest ride I have ever taken – anywhere. I was literally bounced clear of the seat on the larger bumps. I stood for the latter ½ of the trip because my butt couldn’t take anymore. This part of the journey saw my head pounded against the roof when we hit the big ones - and they all seemed to be big ones. Most importantly, we made it to Nanning that evening, albeit with head – and butt aches. The whole day's adventure for the 3 of us cost about 380 RMB, about $47.50 US.