And thus ends my two week China journey...waiting to catch our 13 hour train back to Hong Kong tonight from Guilin. I slipped and fell on the street when we got out of the taxi (torrental downpour today!) so my butt is wet and I have new bruises. LOL.

There are temples and and pagodas everywhere here, on every hill and facing every water source, but no churches in sight. There is much devotion to the gods, but the statues of gold, bronze and steel offer only emptiness in my eyes. In development, China is still a developing country and the rapid pace of modernization can be seen in every major city and every countryside. At first, the sight of old shanty houses, with leaky roofs made of bamboo and whatever else disturbed me. The crowds of street vendors selling everything from scorpions on a stick to Chinese qiaopuos made me pity the hard lives of the 1.3 billion people. But you know, China's not just about that, people struggling to survive. They are quite a vibrant, persevent people - I loved seeing the old people doing tai chi and dance with ribbons and sing their old folk songs at the park. Life might not be at the standards that I expect, with my foreign eyes (I still don't like squatter toilets but I can appreicate them), but they live and live vibrantly. I went to eat at this dingy rice noodle places last night, for a bowl of local noodles, Guilin speciality for 4.5 yuan (less than 50 cents CDN). It was great! I have never eaten at such a dingy place though but you know, despite my tummy rumblings (a little today), people get by and it's just a different kind of normal I suppose.

The scenery along the Li River is gorgeous and I feel like I walked in a Chinese painting with the mountains, birds and rivers. God is everywhere if we choose to see him. I liked talking to our tour guide about Chinese history and politics. Hmmm this is the side of research I have yet to be exposed too, I remember Yves saying there are two ways to do research - one, from books and statistics and two, from travelling and observing and getting ideas. I guess this is the research class I haven't taken yet. I find that people are quite open and friendly. We've had such helpful taxi drivers and random people we have met on the street. I guess at the back of my mind I still had the idea of the Maoist China but things have changed much since the 1970s. I think people are just trying to get a living, like everywhere else in the world.

It is strange to be a foreigner in my "native" land. Whenever we met other tourists (Caucaisan), I feel that I can relate to them more than to the local Chinese. It's weird too being discriminated against by your own ethnic "race". Yesterday when we were on the river cruise, we sat with three British travellers (quite nice). During the entire ride, the local Chinese servers never paid attention to us, and when they came around to sell merchandise, whether it was snake vodka or Olympic t-shirts, they never once asked us. Jenny got a seal made with her Chinese name carved yesterday in the markets in Yangshao; I would have liked to have one made, but our three heads put together, we couldn't put together my Chinese name. I can't even write it or even knows what each character means! So sad, so sad. It's time I invest some time in Chinese. I did have this written down, but I left the piece of paper sadly in Hong Kong.

Something I thought I would never use in China...French! But it seems at every turn, we have met French tourists! As we are trying to spend the rest of our four hour wait, we went to a random bookstore carrying very few English books, so Jenny and I ended up reading a copy of "Le Petit Prince" that had English, Chinese and French. Welcome globalization.

Honestly, I don't know if I don't like travelling or if I am just tired and need a few days rest at "home" (thank goodness for our HK and Singapore rest days). The first thing I have to buy when I get back to HK is a LOT of snacks, because I get soooo hungry.