To Guilin- Tuesday, August 2, 2016

     In spite of the heat, we were sorry to leave Xi'an.  We really liked the hotel, our driver Mr. Yang, and our guide, Herbert.  We met them after breakfast to head off to the airport.  We shared pictures of our dogs.  Herbert's white poodle is named "Bean Sprout."  They never mentioned tipping, but we were happy to pay the same thing that we had paid to John and the Beijing driver.  In fact, Julie threw in a little more because Herbert hadn't asked for anything.

     We sat in the same row on the plane, but with two other people breaking us up.  Other than that, the flight was fine.

     When we arrived in Guilin, we immediately could see a change.  Xi'an is near the deserts of Northern China, but Guilin is in the tropics at about the same latitude as the southern tip of mainland Florida, and a short distance from Vietnam and the South China Sea.  (Is this the furthest south that we've ever been?)  We could see the change in flora, with banyan trees and even some palm trees.  In fact, Guilin's name, 桂林,  means "Forest of Osmanthus," a tree that we saw a lot of and would learn more about.  Guilin is a smaller place compared to our other stops, with lass than a million people.

     Guilin is also a poorer place than Xi'an and Beijing, or at least the parts that we were in.  There are many partially constructed buildings with unfinished floors and wide open walls and windows.  We later found out that these partial buildings are built by people who own vacant land in hopes to increase the value of the property when and if the government buys it from them.

     Our guide here is "Jackie."  We later learned that we are his last customers as a tour guide.  He has gotten a visa to move to Memphis, Tennessee. He works as a translator for a foundation that brings Chinese children with congenital heart defects to American hospitals, and he is leaving in a few weeks.

     Jackie said we were too early to check in to the hotel, and he was also concerned about the rain tomorrow.  Typhoon "Nida" is expected to blow in here from off the South China Sea.  He suggested that we go to the tea farm today before the rain.

     We also needed something to eat, and Jackie was nice enough to find us a KFC on an apparently busy pedestrian-only shopping area in town.  By the time we finished lunch, the rain had started, so Jackie went to plan C.

      He brought us to the South China Pearl Museum.  It wasn't much of a museum as much as it was a pearl store, but it was interesting.  A woman opened an oyster for us and showed us the pearl.  She showed us a little about the grades of pearls and how to tell fakes.  Real ones feel gritty when rubbed together or on you teeth; Fake ones are smooth.   Julie had bought pearls in Beijing, but all the girls bought some things for themselves here.  Anna bought two pendants with a pearl in each one and Emma bought a bracelet of black pearls.  Julie bought a bracelet of irregular pearls.

     After that, the rain had stopped, so we went to the tea farm after all.  We got our pictures taken wearing the traditional low, conical hats worn by farmers, with tea bushes behind us and Guilin's unique landscape in the background.  A woman first showed us the differences in the leaves as they are picked, and how they result in the different kinds of tea.  We saw a few of the many steps that the leaves are put through in order to prepare them, including drying them by hand and kneading them.  Then, she took us inside and hosted a traditional tea ceremony for us.  Here we tried four different kinds of tea that she prepared in front of us.  We sampled each from small cups, and she gave us advice and tips as we went.  She said a person who drinks the whole cup at once is like a "water buffalo."  A person who drinks it in two sips drinks like "a donkey."  The polite way is to drink the cup in three sips.  The first tea we had was made with the Osmanthus tree that Guilin is named for.  the second tea was "high mountain yellow tea."  The third was "Oolong tea," and finally we had the compress tea which is sold in brick form and is popular around China.  Anna seemed to enjoy the tea ceremony the most and bought some of all the teas to bring back and a pot to make them in.

     We were then able to check in to our hotel, the Guilin Bravo.  It's not as nice as the Xi'an hotel.  The rooms' decor is a bit tacky looking, with lots of red, white, and pink, giving them a kind of retro-feminine look.  The view out our windows is what Anna would call "dooky."  It's not of the great rock formations, but the backs of some poor apartments.  We were almost all shocked when we found red boxes in our closets that contain gas masks.  They are meant to be used during a fire.  Emma said that the Xi'an hotel had them too, but the rest of us didn't notice them there.  The best thing about this hotel is that the beds are softer.  All the beds we've had so far have been like boards.  Once again, the girls are in a separate room, next door to ours.

     We had dinner at the buffet in the hotel.  It was nearly all Chinese food, and the girls seemed to adjust to it well.  Anna did go swimming in the outdoor pool, even though it had started to rain.