My Chinese New Year’s Eve was lonely. Upon checking in at the hotel the day before, I was (somehow, the staff did not speak English) notified that no breakfast would be served, for my entire stay, due to the encumbing Holiday. Later on, 2 liter size (one quart 3 ounces) waterproofed cardborard drums of liofilized noodles soup were delivered to my room, it was the first time in my life I considered eating such. And it wasn’t bad, after I added the boiling water from the in room electric kettle, I had a total of 6 in 4 days.

On the internet, I had looked at flights to somewhere warm, reformulating my entire plan: it seemed I could get a reasonably priced flight to Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia) and then from there I could do the reverse of the itinerary I had planned: take a train to Southern Thailand, go to the little frequented Islands near the border, in the Andman Sea and then onward to Bangkok, Cambodia, then Vietnam. I tried communicating with a travel agent whose office was in my hotel. Naturally it was impossible to engineer departure on the afternoon New Year’s Eve, in spite of the very helpful disposition and communicative skills of the agent, who did not speak English, but understood my quandary and started making calls right away. After trying the bus station (in vain) for a ticket to Vietnam the following day, I had a gala dinner by myself, in a luxury restaurant specializing in Macau Cuisine. I ordered only two plates, but the food kept coming: “On the house” they kept signaling, they must have felt sorry for me being in a private room (that’’s all they had) prepared and decorated with all trimmings of a banquet for 10, while being all alone. And the waitresses kept knocking on the door before entering, every 3-4 minutes. They insisted on applying the same courtesy of knocking even to my desolate room, as they did with the abutting banquet rooms, which sounded boisterous and festive. By 8.20, when I left the restaurant, all customers had gone, probably to blow up firecrackers and fireworks, judging from the ensuing citywide pandemonium. The restaurant staff ran after me to give me back the tip I left on top of my $ 4 tab, refusing to take it when I insisted. I dined alone on the most important Chinese holiday, in spite of my naturally convivial dispostion; I am not surprised nobody invited a deaf and mute stranger around their table, I hadn’t met anybody in Guilin anyway, in fact I am grateful to the Macau restaurant, for their kindness and for being next door to the hotel I was staying in.

The explosions of New Year’s “war” had started around noon of the eve and went on in a continuos crescendo to the wee hours of the night; around midnight, the air in my room was smoky and it wasn’t possible to see anything outside the windows, other than thick clouds of acrid smoke seeping in, occasionally punctuated by flickering lights. The noise was deafening all along, but I was navigating away, virtually, on the in-room wi-fi connection; I knew that sleeping would be impossible. There was a brief truce, possibly between 3 and 6, although skermishes were carrying on sporadically. Then things started again till past noon New Year’s Day.

But the official display, which was on the night following (and I would have missed it, had I been able to leave as planned), was spectacular: it went on for 45 minutes and had fenomenal formations and assortments of graphic explosions that I had never seen, including a high up waterfall with sparkle that would hover in the air over 10 seconds. And the grand finale kept not coming: in stead of the paroxysm common in the US, there was a level of sustained excitement, a conitnuum that seemed a continuous grand finale, until a quiet, champagne waterfall of sparkle was followed by vividly colored beamed lights clearly signaling the end. Difference in culture, one portraying the male orgasm, the other the female, more or less consciously? Naturally I was without charged batteries and just as well, I would not have been able to do the display justice, due my limited 6^th floor view, and luckily my windows were facing a side where I could see it. Perhaps my camera’s shortcomings conditioned me into thinking it is impossible to photograph fireworks properly, but it would have been nice to make a video. Though setting is everything: if one doesn’t have a point of view with recognizable landmarks and proper framing, it is impossible to give a sense of scale, and even then it is hard. Not to mention the colors, the tendency of light to streak… And in retrospect I remember several frustrating 4^th of July experiences. Not in detail, just the notion of their existence; all these reflections make me feel less sense of loss for not having been able to immortalize the spectacle and glad to have witnessed it.

Nanning... Cold Nanning

Cold weather continued in Nanning, to my shock and dismay, as it lays well South of the Tropic of Cancer. Because these are places that are supposed to be hot year round, even luxury hotels (like the one I was staying in for $ 30) don’t have heating, the rooms are cold, the city itself seemed rather cold, everywhere but in shopping malls and the food market below my windows. Nanning is a city of 2.5 million people that seems to have raised overnight: all buildings don’t seem older than 20, the landscaped avenues have multiple aisles barren of urban texture, good for military parades, and all important looking bulidings (each grandly spaced at least one kilometer from another) have Chinese and red flags galore. Part of it is New Year’s (it is the augural color for the occasion, much more so than in the West), but it also seems PR’s for the ruling elite. The architecture and the planning are charmless, the scale crushing; the impression is of a city not planned with people in mind, just as the expression of a crass, glitzy, unevolved idea of grandeur. The only concentrations of people I found were, naturally, around the many shopping malls. It drizzled and rained the three days I stayed, with a high of 10 C (50 F). Stayed against my will, I should add: I tried to leave on New Year’s day, once the madness, subsided, but it was impossible: I went to the bus station and found it closed, I had to return to my room, after checking out of it. The only thing I wished for was to be somewhere hot, but this yearning may persist, as I am learning more about the Tonkin Gulf climate: I read the term "cold monsoon" which sent even more shivers down my spine, as apparently I am just on time to catch the tail end of it, it can appear until March...

On the train to Nanning, the day before New year’s Eve (another 6 hours trip for 250 km, 150 miles) a delightful and shy little girl was getting frustrated trying to probe her limited English. I encouraged her as much as I could, her proud parents were nudging her to overcome her embarassment. It turned out she is an artist and after much cajoling she showed me her book, but not before she made a very fast line portrait of me, making me look really sweet. Her name is Dan

And it turned out that whom I though was her older brother, was unrelated to the family, another traveller, a stock brocker travelling from North China (a very long way away) to visit his family for the holidays. He stayed on after Dan and her family got off the train, we had a long conversation on topics of politics and economy, including my pet peeve of not being able to start my blog and how useless that is to mantaining power and how bad for public relations. He did not contradict me, neither did he forcefully endorse what I was saying, though he seemed to agree.

South China, on the way to Vietnam

I had duck enthrals and rice and greens and a miso concotion with gelatinous and short algae, it was somewhat tasty. I was ducking (from the cold) in a local fast food restaurant that tries to aim for the macdonald’s experience while cooking single servings of traditional chinese specialties, served at the table by one hapless teenage waitress, probably a student, like most everybody else in the joint, including chef and manager. The meal was good and it cost less than $ 3, though I had to buy chocolate to consolidate caloric values against the cold, and eventuakky also what seemed a fresh loaf of bread, made “Chinatown style”: with dough that is both sweet and salty, as I have experimented in my neighborhood in New York. On the whole, except for the weather, Guilin was not unpleasant, if far from the beauty the guide books described: the Karst formations that made me think of scenes of traditional Chinese landscape painting, where several emerge from the fog, were scarce in town and were more visible leaving it along the railroad, and since then, rather a common sight, on the way to Southern Vietnam. Not worth a pilgrimage, though I only deviated slightly from my intended itinerary, I am glad there were no health consequences, as I was unprepared for the cold weather. Yongshun, up stream, also did not make an impression, other than it really fits local beauty parameters: all the Chinese people I managed to talk to about it, raved and told me what wonderful places both were, I was not charmed by either.

Still tropical Southern China, Guangdong or Guanxi Province

Some of the cold weather slated for Europe and North America, seems to have rerouted to the tropical area of Guilin. It was almost 80 when I arrived late at night, but when I tried to go out the following afternoon, it might have been barely 40, with a persistent cold wind. I was shivering in all the meager winter garb I brought with me, including (light) gloves and a hat. It looked and felt like snow would start falling any second and I considered buying a coat; still believing that the following day I’d be in the warmer region on the Northern edge of the Tonkin Gulf Basin, I soldiered on. The city of Guilin is described as very beautiful in the guide books, surrounded by karst hills and traversed by Osmanthus trees lined avenues; all I saw was shopping malls, high end and low (mostly) and a few tree lined avenues. The city was emptying for New Year’s, as it has a large student population, though the train station, when I went to get my ticket to leave the following day, the crowd was more reasonable than in Guangzhou. In two days it is New Year's Eve and most travellers must have already reached their place of origin, since this is what's done on this most traditional of Chinese holidays. I kept entering stores to keep warm, and in one I was approached by a young salesman who wanted to talk about soccer. His English and communicative skills were the best I had experienced up to that point in this trip, so the conversation went on for a while. I realize I should have taken his picture, though my attempts at starting a blog had been blocked by Chinese governement policy of not letting people express themselves freely to a potentially limitless (but more often parrochial) audience. I made a note for future reference that I should portray all people I have conversations with, though I did not adhere to this policy too stricly.

More Roadside Souther China

On the Way to Guilin

Roadside Recycling

Organic & mediati waste, rotting

Covered Billboards of Guanxi

Facing the National Highway

Ceasar Palace mets Sputnik

Leaving Guangzhou

After a Rocambolesque departure with a subway + on foot race through the underpassages crossing the immense Railroad station square, a crammed wait for the delayed bus in the unbearably crowded Bus Station and 10 hours on a bus to cover less than 350 miles (560 km), on very adventurous roads, I arrived in Guylin. The batteries I bought the night before (3 sets) let me down before reaching halfway, so I could not record the more rural and shocking sights, mostly of dejected poverty, though of a different kind form the one I encountered in India, and environmental degradation: I did not see one old growth treee the entire way, dust and mud are ubiquitous and so is trash, be it thousand of tonnes (complexively along the way) of oranges left to rot, likely a surplus wasted to keep prices up, or toxic waste from all kinds of nasty industrial processes; or garbage strewn down a ravine, the unofficial village dump for light waste that over time generates a wasteland.

Last Batch in Guangzhou

Helpful Catherine, at the Front Desk of the Victory Hotel

Varying width Bicycle Lane

The Yard and Stupas of Hualin Temple

A Visit to the 500 Chosen, Hualin Temple

A Lion siting in guard of the guilded statues of the 500

The Buddha is multiplicity and syncretism

Devotees at an altar

The Happy Ones, home from re-incarnation. No more Human Toiling

Guarding the Entrance

Mall Galore in Tianhe