Vegetable Sack Travel

This is the story of how a vegetable sack and a gas can got me to the top of a mountain.

I had planned to visit Longji, the Dragon's Spine Rice Terraces, and do some hiking. The plan included taking piecemeal buses north from Yangshuo to Guilin to Longsheng, a grubby little pockmark of a town. I was to stay in Longsheng and see the rice terraces as a day-trip.

Arriving in Longsheng, I came right up against my lack of Mandarin. My brother had guided me around Guangzhou and Yangshuo was about the most Western-friendly town in the whole of China. This was different. Very few people spoke any English and I had to use my Tall White Guy Power to get anywhere. The girls I smiled at happily led me to a hotel, where the proprietor was confused about my planned adventure.

"You don't stay at the rice terraces?" She frowned, asked the question again, and proposed a different course. "I have hotel at the rice terraces, you stay there. Nice girl runs the hotel, she speak English, will meet you at the bus." The price was right too.

But what's the catch, I thought.

"I run get vegetables, be back, put you on the bus." Ah. So I was to be an errand boy.

I agreed to the plan, mostly because the hotels in Longsheng were over-priced and I couldn't see enjoying my time there. She ran off and came back twenty minutes later with a bushel of vegetables and a local bus ready to head up the mountain. I got on.

"Hey, I have two things here," she said, pointing to the vegetable sack and a gas can, "get off at the last stop!"

Local buses in China are an experience. Glorified Westphalia vans, these things get crammed to bursting so that locals can get themselves and their goods between villages. I'm pretty sure that our bus housed most of a grocery store and its customers at one point: 22 people, several egg cartons and many baskets of fruits and vegetables. We only lacked a contribution from the meat section, livestock, which I'm told can occasionally make an appearance.

My bus wound its way upwards on a narrow piece of mountainside concrete. We made slow progress until a parked truck and a warning sign stopped us; a road crew was laying ashphalt up ahead. Perched on a cliff in the middle of northern Guanxi province, I got to watch a mechanic fix a couple of leaf-blowers while I waited. Mechanics, grease and oil smell the same in China.

The road crew eventually let us pass and we drove up to the rice terraces' parking lot. The promised meet-and-greeter was there. He grabbed the supplies, affixed them to a bamboo pole and started on our mandatory walk up to the village. Thing is, the hotel wasn't at the first village; it was at the second one almost at the top of the mountain. I got to do a thirty-minute hike with twenty kilograms strapped to my back.

The journey that day started at 9am in Yangshuo and ended sometime after 6pm in Tien Tou village, Longji. After a day of disjointed travel, I was glad for a shower, a hot meal and a bed. The hotel proprietors were glad to see their vegetable sack and gas can, too.