Magnificent Guilin — Views of Hezhou
I love visiting ancient towns in China. In this blog I have covered the Gankeng Ancient Hakka Townlet and the Dapeng Fortress in Shenzhen. Apparently, many tourists find ancient towns to be very attractive tourist sites, and China’s local governments and cultural heritage developers have caught on with this trend. A whole lot of ancient villages and towns are revitalized for the purpose of tourism, and so far I find these efforts to be laudable.
I found online sources describing Huangyao to be “one of the most low-key ancient cities in China.” I was intrigued. Certainly, the photographs show the many features of old towns for which I have a soft spot. The stone laid streets, mud-covered brick houses, old temples and maybe a stream or two running through the village — a poetic scenery murmuring an enduring pride from centuries of hardships and survival. I was determined to go.
Getting to Huangyao
Perhaps exactly because of its relative low profile in the tourism scene, Huangyao was not easy to get to. It being the first leg of my journey in Guilin, Huangyao presented the most difficulty out of the three ancient cities in this trip. The closest High Speed Rail (HSR) station is Hezhou.
From the Hezhou station I followed the way for “bus station” and walked a good 20 minutes before I arrived at the long haul bus station quite some ways from the train station. Follow signs, they are clear.
Once arriving at the bus station in Hezhou, I saw the bus to Huangyao. I boarded the bus and with this began the most frustrating part out of this whole trip. The bus driver told me that it would take 1.5 hours before getting to Huangyao, but 2 hours later, we were still winding through the provincial areas and not getting to the ancient town.
Eventually, the big coach dropped us off at an unknown spot in the backstretches of Hezhou and we then headed over to a smaller (and therefore slightly faster) car to finally arrive at Huangyao. The whole journey took me 2.5 hours.
Sights on the Journey
Looking out the window while I was on the train, I noticed how the scenery changed as the train approached the Guangxi Province. Ranges after ranges of distinct mountains appear afar hugging all kinds of human settlements—farms, towns, cities—as we moved into the Guilin area. One cannot miss this change of character in the scenery, as these mountains, or hills, are distinctly Guilin. Each of these hills stand alone with its own clear contour, and they appear to be rolling and rolling endlessly, one distinct hill after another, as the speed train proceeds. This is described as “karst peak clusters.”
Photo: View at a Gas Station in Hezhou
The scenery indicates a way of life that is different from what I am accustomed to in Hong Kong, which is also enveloped by mountains, but their presence much less pronounced. Living in Guilin, one comes face to face with the magnificence of Guilin’s nature. As one develops the appreciation for hovering mountains all around, a human being feels like being dwarfed, infinitely and intimately so. One must also live with, and get around, the myriad waterways that branch out of the Lijiang (Li River). Here is a river, there is a river, with them comes the many bridges that one must cross — and they are all part of the Li River waterway.
Views of Hezhou
Throughout the whole bus ride in Hezhou I kept thinking to myself that time is a cheap commodity in this part of China. The driver told me that the ride took 1.5 hours. An hour, an hour and a half, two hours… I was still not making it to Huangyao. The big bus was making its rounds all through Hezhou. As it did so, I could not help but to note some observations.
The views outside seems to confirm my grumbles about time being cheap there. Hezhou strikes me as a part of China that was left behind and forgotten in the nation’s stellar record of development. It was worlds apart from the vibrance and sophistication of China’s big cities like Beijing, Shanghai or even Nanjing. At the same time there were not the primitive, raw and untouched landscapes that make one’s heart drop, like in Xinjiang or Tibet. Other than the Guilin mountains being its saving grace, Hezhou was simply provincial, with a lot of vacant big buildings. Life seemed to go slowly and listlessly, and I sensed a hollowness and powerlessness in the air. On an afternoon of a weekday many shops were closed.
Despite the abundance of the Pearl River waterways the town was filled with billows of dusts, the dirt that got kicked up by vehicles seemingly running on diesel and belonging to a different era in time. People dressed in humble clothing. Although they looked a whole lot better off than the peasants that I saw some two decades ago in my China trips, their appearance was still quite a bit humbler than the well-dressed city-traveling crowd that I met on the train.
Perhaps it would be fair for me to call the sights of Hezhou a little desperate.
The lady that oversaw the bus ride was dropping off packages at different locations, causing delays. And one could only imagine how people in this part of China tried to make a business out of every ounce of their resources.
Finally at a little before 4pm I was dropped off at the Qianxing Square in Huangyao. This bus ride took me a total of 2.5 hours. I came to the first beautiful sight of the day, the Ancient Stage of Huangyao. At this sight a mixed emotion welled within me. I was at once sad and excited. Hezhou and Huangyao are both old but in wildly different ways. Hezhou is old in the sense that it is outdated. Huangyao is old in the sense that it is antique.
