Monday, July 21 Today we made a big move. We slept in slightly and then caught the airport express bus. The bus left from in front of a nearby hotel and we had to fend off many persistent cab drivers desperate for our fare. After waiting for a discount airfare (per the advice of our reliable friends at CITS) the only plane tickets left for our date were first class. They encouraged us to fly the next day instead, but the tour must go on. We enjoyed our first class treatment in lines, lounges and seating and it only cost the same as a U.S. coach domestic flight. This leg of the trip was noticeably different from our black market bus experience. Josh kept waiting for several people to pack in around him in his spacious seat.

Arriving in Guilin well-rested and fed, we were met at the airport by another CITS rep and driver to get us the 45 minutes to Guilin’s center. En route we bought our Li River cruise tix and arranged transport to Shenzhen. We got settled in the hotel and set out to explore Guilin. Guilin and the countryside around it are beautiful! A highlight of the trip. The surrounding karst mountains are the craggy and narrow peaks seen in most Chinese watercolors. It is impossible not to sweat here with hyper-humidity and high temps. A few times a day, a torrential rain occurs for about 5 minutes. We sweated while walking the city, climbing two twin pagodas and walking along the Li River. The pagodas are in the middle of a lake.  The moon pagoda (7 stories) is reachable by bridge, but the sun pagoda (solid bronze, 9 stories, with elevator) can only be reached via an underwater tunnel. (A very difficult to find underwater tunnel, I might add – we almost left without finding it – it was behind a wall! And there was no one there – the pagodas were unmanned.) 

We also sweated over an excellent Sichuanese dinner at Yi Yuan, maybe our new best dinner yet. The deliciousness consisted of Sichuan spiced chicken, smoked duck, spicy pork, stir fried green beans with chili, garlic and pork, fried rice with egg and beers. Approximately enough food for four (Americans), we tried to do the job. Luckily, after such a big meal we were able to shlep back to the hotel. And fall into a food coma.

(Update – in looking for a link for Yi Yuan, I found that in March of 2009 it was named the #1 restaurant in Guilin!  Not that we have a large sample size, but, nonetheless, WE AGREE!)

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Sunday, July 20th Today will be a short blog (Josh is typing it). We had a good day. Did some “chores” to start, then had a nice walk through the city.

We found the local bus to the Terracotta Army without incident. Thankfully, Jeannette was able to enjoy herself after Josh unloaded all his thoughts about his disappointment with this particular site. We spent the afternoon at the so-called Eighth Wonder of the World and made it back to the city for a nice evening stroll.

We walked the entire North-South axis between the city walls and had some great Chinese fried chicken sandwiches from some street vendors. The evening ended low key, resting and relaxing in the hotel. Tomorrow we try our hand at a new mode of transport, domestic flights.

Hopefully, by mid-afternoon we should be in Guilin in Southern China. It will be comforting to be only a day or so of travel from our final departing city, rather than our current position (half of a very large country away boasting a less than pristine track record for freedom of movement).

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Saturday, July 19 Cut to the chase. We made it!

We woke up extra early, checked out of our super cute Yide Hotel (Josh calls it a very well preserved, traditional courtyard house) and walked to the slightly shadier hostel that would actually arrange for us to hop on a bus in the middle of a highway. Our hotel would not arrange such illicit tickets for us and the workers there were concerned that this was our plan, but the only trains through Pingyao to Xi’an left at late evening and we needed a morning departure. I am actually no longer so certain that the hostel lady is truly a CITS agent. I think that Pingyao does not have a CITS office and she is maybe a helper – or a go between – or a friend of CITS – but really I think she is a Red, a man who knows how to get things, and we are Andy.

We had a pricey breakfast at the shady but kind-seeming hostel and then rode an open air pedicab to the highway, an experience in itself. Josh offered to throw luggage overboard or run alongside and push the tiny cart like a bobsled when it appeared our vehicle was struggling on the highway. When we got to our improvised highway meeting point, others were there as well for pickup and we were pleasantly surprised when the bus actually came and picked us up. Unfortunately, the bus ticket black market does not properly account for number of seats and Josh had to make do on a stool on the floor in the aisle (a stool that was about 6 inches tall).

But we are now in Xi’an in one piece with all our luggage. We made very good time on the bus arriving aroung 3pm. We checked in to our new hotel, the Bell Tower Hotel. We got plane tickets to Guilin and a ride arranged from Guilin to our hotel there. We toured the Bell Tower and the Drum Tower, strolled the Muslim Quarter and the nearby night market (where we grabbed some street food) and now we are settled in for some outdoor drinks on a happening, yet fairly quaint, bar street Josh remembered from his previous trip here.

Tomorrow it is the Terracotta Army.

We got caught in a big rain storm on the walk home from the bar.

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I can’t tell which mapping program is better so I have included two maps.

We are headed in a counter-clockwise direction, beginning in the upper right (i.e., Northeast) corner in Beijing.  Since the green and red push pins are not labeled with the appropriate city names and do not tell us “geographically hindered” people what cities they are “tacking”, here’s the list in chronological order:  Beijing, Datong, Pingyao, Xi’an, Guilin, Yangshuo, Shenzhen and ending in Hong Kong.

Map #1

Map #2

Here is the first map zoomed in a bit differently.  The map of the states beneath it is set at the exact same scale just so you can get an idea of how far we will be traveling.

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Our studio work is going well. Our team includes three MIT students and two Tsinghua students, consisting of a South African, Australian, two Chinese students and an American. Luckily we work well together and are able to produce a large amount of work in fairly short time. The studio project is the redevelopment of a giant state-owned steel mill and industrial site on the Western edge of Beijing. This week’s work was focused primarily on the conceptual framework and overall planning of the project. We gave team presentations on Tuesday and Friday, worked pretty hard and the work was reasonably well received. On Friday we finished our presentations, went to the hotel packed a bag, took an overnight train to Xi’an and were visiting the famed Terracotta Army before we knew what had happened.

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