After spending the last three days doing what tourists would do, it was time to do something many tourists usually wouldn’t do: visit a rural village. The last time I stepped foot in a village was twelve years ago when I was last in China and visited my dad’s home village, Taishan. This time, I got to see our tour guide’s village. To get there, we took a relaxing two hour boat ride there (cue “I’m on a Boat”).
The village was what I expected. Lots of farmland, farm animals and dogs running around, etc. Of course, this village had a ton of water buffalo. We got to meet Jessie’s family, which was nice. The family runs a convenience shop (possibly the only one in the village) and it seemed strange seeing cup noodles in the village.
Water buffalo!
We spent most of our time at the village visiting the village school. As expected, the school didn’t look like much. They had a pretty large building, but it looked lacking. It’s really disheartening seeing these kids learning in this type of environment. However, the kids there had bundles of energy. They ran around, tackled each other, and even tripped and got right back up. Hardly what you would see in a typical city school. Us NYU students played with them for about an hour and it was really fun. All that energy!
The village school
He was hyper and viscious =X
After we left the school, we went to eat at Jessie’s place, where we had delicious homemade cooking. It was the best meal I had in Guilin. The spring rolls were incredible! Homemade cooking just has something that restaurant cooking does not. While eating, I also met Jessie’s sister, who happened to speak Cantonese! I went to Guilin wondering if people there spoke Cantonese, since it was right next to Guangdong, but up until that point, I didn’t really run into anyone who did. The reason she speaks Cantonese is because she lives in Hong Kong with her husband. I really get too ecstatic when I hear Cantonese nowadays…
Jessie's sister and her son
When we got back to our hotel, we did some serious shopping. I bought a bunch of stuff, including a nice Chinese chess set. I don’t remember how to play, but I’ll learn again! There were also really cool chess sets with carved chess pieces in the shape of Chinese soldiers. But alas, I wanted the Chinese chess set more.
For dinner, we had a Chinese BBQ! It was scrumptious! Chicken and beef skewers, corn (!), broccoli, sausages, chicken wings, fried noodles and rice, and fries! Needless to say, I stuffed myself silly. After eating, Joe wanted to take photos of him writing his name using a lit up skewer stick. We had a fair amount of success and might have turned everyone into pyromaniacs.
My poor attempt to take a photo of my food in terrible lighting
NYU
Since it was our last night in Yangshuo, we went shopping when we got back… again. Luckily, I was already done with my souvenir shopping, so I didn’t actually buy anything except one last drink from Cafe HK. I tired the lemon slushie this time and wish I could have tried all the flavors. There were probably twenty slushie flavors, so my body probably wouldn’t be able to handle it anyways…
Random photos of the day:
Yet another adorable dog =)