“Guilin is the capital of Guangxi province and Yangshuo is a small, sleepy town about an hour’s drive away. For many, Guilin is an entry point to the area but Yangshuo remains a beautiful spot from which to experience the fantastic natural scenery of karst mountains popping up from the ground like a child’s drawing.”

Planning – Air Travel

We looked up the flight tickets on ctrip.com and figured out it is cheaper to travel over the week than over the weekend. So we decided to have a Tuesday-Thursday trip. Tickets were purchased for about RMB 1700 one way per person (we used Shanghai airlines and China Eastern combo for roundtrip). Interesting thing was that while we could get a Shanghai to Guilin flight starting from Honqiao airport (City airport of Shanghai), returning had to be to Pudong International airport, which added RMB 200 and 1 hour to our end-to-end travel time while coming back.

Booking on ctrip turned out to be a problem in many ways, my recommendation to travellers would be try some other sites too. Here are the problems we had:

1. Booking on their site was tough; they asked for lots of information (passport details) for everyone, and didn’t accept my AmEx + UnionPay card, and I had to use my US credit card for the journey.
2. Booking for kids was a nightmare. Infant ticket (my younger one is 1.5 yrs) had to be bought but they didn’t allow it to be purchased with rest of the tickets. This meant airlines had no way of knowing we were travelling with infant (so that they could hold some preferred seat if they wanted).
3. Even though they allowed us to buy my elder daughter’s (5.5 yrs) ticket with me, they created 2 orders in their system and didn’t copy the meal details (we are vegetarian) to my daughter’s food preference, and she ended up getting no food.
4. They provided information about terminal to use for the airlines, and so I trusted it. It turned out that the information was wrong, and given that terminal 1 to terminal 2 in Hongqiao airport is 20 min taxi ride, it became a rush in the end to catch the flight because we went to the wrong terminal!
5. Since there were no seating preferences allowed (even when I talked to ctrip agent on IM), we were forced to sit separately and in a congested seating area with an infant who was cranky through the flight.

Planning – Hotels

Booking of the hotel was done by my wife and she found an interesting hotel for our stay, based on tripadvisor.com (which by the way is pretty reliable for various China travels we have done, highly recommended). These were expat-friendly and eco-friendly hotels, with great staff and service.

1. Yangshuo Mountain Retreat is the hotel we stayed for 1 night
2. Yangshuo Village Inn (their sister hotel) for the other night (since there was no availability in Mountain Retreat, they recommended this).

Mountain Retreat had a very homely feel, with personal touch in food, ambience and service. My daughter utilized their toys a whole lot and they allowed her to carry some of them to our rooms. They also had DVDs to rent if we wanted. Food was very good too.

Village Inn was a real village ambience (it was inside a real village) and the room we stayed in had been converted from an old barn and they had tried to preserve all the old, village feel. This barn-turned-room was separated from their rest of the rooms, and the toys and library books (they had pretty good, though small collection of books for everyone), a real farm connected to the room, and quietness all around us made it a more liked hotel for my kids than Mountain Retreat (even though Mountain Retreat had pretty nice views from the room).

Village in has an extremely good rooftop Italian Restaurant (Luna) which is very highly recommended (though waiting time can be a bit painful if you are hungry or have hungry kids around you!). Food was delicious and everything was prepared fresh.

Great places to stay, we were very pleasantly surprised and very happy with our stay and overall experience at these 2 hotels.

Day 1 – Arrival and Light Show

On the designated Tuesday, after the fiasco of right terminal, we finally boarded the flight, only to be told that the flight is indefinitely delayed (which finally turned out to be 1 hour delay). The hotel guys had arranged a taxi to pick us up (very decently priced taxi: 280 RMB), who knew enough English to strike a conversation (rare experience in China for us). I was amazed to see the uniquely shaped mountains which indeed looked like drawing by someone who hasn’t seen real sloping mountains , so all through my journey to Yangshuo I kept clicking photos from the running car.

We reached the hotel at about 1 pm. Hotel was right on the bank of a tributary of Li River (which is the biggest and best-known river in this area). Dragon River is a peaceful, and small river, and Mountain Retreat is situated on the bank of this river. Our room overlooked the river and as people floated down the river on small rafts with chair on it, I immediately liked the place and the hotel. Rest of the experience of the hotel didn’t disappoint us. The hotel is a eco-friendly establishment which caters to expats and locals equally, though it seemed to be full of expats. Food is very expat-friendly and very well-done, home-style. People are extremely friendly and eager to help about everything. I read their vision, mission and goals in the hotel guide in our room (first time I read such a thing about a hotel in such a guide!), and everyone indeed seemed to live up to those vision and mission statements. A highly recommended place to stay.

After some leisurely walk on the river bank, and rest, we asked the front desk to help go see the light show and take a Li river cruise. They promptly helped us get the tickets as well as round-trip taxi arrangements. I was very impressed with their efficiency and eagerness to help.

We went to see the Light show which was created by Zhang Yimao, who has also created and choreographed the opening ceremony for the 2008 Beijing Olympics. This is an amazing light and music show with 7 mountains and Li river as the stage (which is said to be the biggest natural stage in the world). It was amazing to such imagination and grandeur and courage in creating such a visual and aural treat (even though we couldn’t understand the lyrics and the story too much). However, this show is so popular that we had to be part of a tour group (we didn’t realize this when we booked from hotel) and the place itself was as crowded as great wall of china, and inside was very packed too. Show was great, but it is not for kids (especially when they do not understand the language), because most of the enjoyment comes from seeing the grandness of production and awe at various creations of sight and sound. My daughter was thoroughly bored, but we enjoyed it!

Day 2 – Li River Cruise

Day 2 morning was spent mostly lazing around in the morning, enjoying the dragon river views and so many people floating down on rafts. We had our breakfast in the hotel restaurant, on the bank of the river and got ready to check out to go to the other hotel (the hotel provided shuttle to their sister hotel).

There were 2 options to the cruise: we could take the cruise from Yangshuo to the destination (Yangdi or some place), or we could drive up to another place called Xingping and do a shorter one. We did the shorter one and the hotel arranged our roundtrip taxi as well as the river raft. The taxi 1-way trip was 1 hour, and the entry point for Li river was the place whose picture is on 20 RMB note:

It was about 2 hour round-trip cruise on a small raft, and well-worth the 250 RMB it cost us:

Day 3 – Cave visit and Return to Shanghai

On the day of departure, we planned to visit one of the water caves. Since the mountains in these areas are actually limestone mountains (karsts), water has eaten into their bases and created very interesting water caves. There were lots of advertisements about caves to visit. So we asked the front desk of the hotel and they got us the ticket. The cave is slightly outside the city and the public transport provided by the cave company is nothing worth mentioning, but since those are the only options available, we had no other choice. Another problem was that when we came out of the cave, we had to wait for the bus to get filled and then we could leave (since this was the day of our departure, we got pretty nervous in the end but finally made it). Not knowing language meant we had to rely on visual tips like people getting on the bus .

We ended up spending about 3 hours inside the cave and it probably required more time. It was all walking, so it was very tiring but my daughter managed reasonably well. They had cold water springs where you could take a dip as well as hot water springs, though we didn’t get enough time to spend time in the hot one. Better information about the cave would have helped. Also, carrying as little things as possible would have helped, we carried lots of of eatables which we didn’t consume but had to carry as we bent and crouched to get through some of the constrained cave areas. Not really comfortable with a 1.5 year old who is trying to sleep comfortably in your arms, but we managed it!

They also had a mud bath and you can buy your pictures for 10 yuan a piece of you bathed in mud; again we didn’t have time or patience to do this. Overall, a good but tiring experience. Scheduling it on the last day was probably a bad idea, we should have done it on day 2.

Travel back to the airport was non-eventful. It started raining heavily on the way back (while we were in yangshuo, even though the weather was hot, since it didn’t rain while we were there, it was great overall), but we reached airport on time, and were back in Shanghai home by 10 pm.

A great trip overall, lots of pleasant memories to cherish, and heart full of hope that we would go there again!

It was an interesting sight and since I didn’t want to offend anyone by taking a photograph, here I am trying to draw a picture by words! This sight came up unexpectedly when we wandered into Friendship Shopping Center in Shanghai near LianHua Rd metro station. This is a huge shopping mall with lots of small shops on first floor peddling everything from McDonald’s burger to dried snake for medicinal purposes. We were roaming around when we came across this shop, which is called (very unimaginatively I thought) T.T.K. Fried Chicken in small English fonts and large Chinese characters across the banner. Two (very dark-complexioned) Indians (Tamils, which is a southern state in India) were busy preparing very interesting-looking bread, and a (very fair-complexioned) Chinese girl was standing right besides them taking orders from some customers. There was a small crowd gathered to watch the bread being made. I say ‘interesting bread’, because its method of preparation was interesting. If you have seen ‘rumali roti’ makers of India, you will know what I mean: one of the cooks was making the bread stretch by throwing it in air with a strong centrifugal (or is it centripetal?) force which made it turn around and fly up, and when it came down, he would catch the stretched bread with one hand, massage it some more and then throw it up for another round of stretching. In a few minutes, the bread would become paper thin (yes, literally that thin, it looked like translucent paper!) and extra big (about 50 cm diameter, which is almost 10 times a normal Indian bread). He would then spray some egg on it and hand over to his friend, who would carefully fold it into a more manageable size, cook it some more and cut it into small rectangular chunks of the size of a regular bread (16 of those), ready to be eaten! Most of the crowd dispersed when the bread was done, so we could go near them to place our order. The cooks were happy to see an Indian face and helped translate to the girl while we placed our order in English. Then one of the cooks and the pretty girl were engaged in some talk. After a few seconds, I realized what they were talking about: the cook was trying to teach the girl how to count in Tamil!

Visualize this: a dark Indian and a fair Chinese standing together, Indian having learnt Chinese and Chinese learning Tamil, a 20-inch regular TV playing a true-blooded Tamil song and dance sequence (with heroine in saree and all) with full volume, and a Chinese menu proudly displaying Indian breads offering.

I was amazed, and happy! Here, in the middle of everything Chinese, I see two Indians who stand out so much visually but they have blended in so well that they do not care if they create a crowd around them by their antics. Great job guys!

When we were coming here, we were told that traffic is really bad and I should not even think of owning a car, let alone driving it. So I have stuck to that advice and use public transport. However, traffic is not that bad, especially if you compare it with India. People here seem to follow the traffic sign most of the time, and I am yet to see a fight breaking on the road because someone cut someone else off or bumped lightly. These are very common sights in India. Also, even though the roads are crowded, I haven’t seen too many zigzag driving (cutting lanes and driving across your face, mostly by bikes and 3-wheelers) in Shanghai, so traffic is not that unpredictable. However, owning a car is very expensive because govt wants to discourage you from buying the car.

There are lots of cars in China (mostly taxis since owning them is expensive). There are a variety of brands but 99% of cars you see on the road is Volkswagon! Indeed, China alone can help the company survive any kind of downturn, there are so many VW here J. I wondered why, and then I found out that long time back, VW had tied up with Chinese govt to set up their factory here and that spurred local sales. In 2007, VW sold 443000 vehicles in China in first half of the year, a record.

Cycles and scooters have their own lanes, with their own traffic signals. They are alongside regular traffic lanes, and they can choose to use these lanes or pedestrian lanes (not sure if it is legal or not, but they do it anyway!). Pedestrians are hit more by cyclists than by cars. This is because of 2 reasons: one, cycle lanes are nearest to the pedestrian lanes (and sometimes cyclists use pedestrian lanes), and two, they break traffic rules much more often than regular cars and buses.

Within China, I find so many websites which are either entirely composed of numbers (like http://www.4008123123.com/ which is a pizza hut franchise in Shanghai), or part of the name is numbers. It was intriguing to me initially, and I was thinking about the reason. One reason is logical (esp the pizza hut example above): this is the number you can call to place order, and also the name of the site too where you can place order online, so only one thing to remember. Another reason for all numbers is also that it is language independent (since Chinese write numbers using roman numerals as rest of the world does), so the same site name can be targeted towards expats and Chinese alike. However, there is one more reason which I found very innovative when I was told about it. Given the fact that same character name can have different meanings in Chinese (for example yi has 160 meanings according to mandarintools.com), some companies pick numbers whose pinyin is similar to a phrase they want to use in the name. For example, 51 (wǔ yī) can mean so many different phrases because wu and yi have hundreds of other meanings (and I forget the site name, but there is some ecommerce site in china which has 51 at the start of its name which means ‘I like..”, or something similar!). Interesting..

There are very large bookstores in Shanghai, much larger than the ones I saw in US. However, they carry Chinese books only (except for a small corner of foreign books). This is tough for me, because I really love the sight of books and like to spend time in a book store just browsing the contents and titles. However, this has interested me to learn reading Chinese characters, hopefully I will learn enough in 6 months to read the title of the book at least! I have been told that it is very difficult to learn reading if you can not converse well. This is because most meaningful phrases are formed out of a combination of characters, and the combination means something different than what individual characters mean. So if you do not know those combinations, knowing the single characters will not do much good.

I have also realized that trying to buy books in English is futile. If you want some popular (kids, management, etc) books, you can get lucky at those small foreign corners, but the prices will be prohibitive. If you want English literature books, esp the old classics, you can find them in some good bookstores which carry/publish these books for local consumption (since students need to learn good English) – the bookstore in Cloud Nine Mall is great in this respect. However, I have been trying to buy technical books in English (computers primarily) and there is no shop around. This is despite the fact that there are some good schools which have their engineering course in English. I wonder how they manage to learn if they can’t find English books to refer to. Hopefully I will find the answer to this riddle sometime! For now, I have two options: order on http://www.amazon.com and wait for a month or so to receive the shipment, or wait for my next trip to US or India (or Hong Kong or Singapore I believe) where I can buy English books.

1. English sentence: What is your name?
2. Chinese pinyin: nǐ jiào shén ma míng zì?
3. Hindi pronounciation: नीअ ज्याओ शन्मअ मिंग ज़?

Note that zì is actually pronounced like ds sound (as in kids), so it is not really ज़, but it is still better than remembering to not pronounce the i in pinyin here.

Our experience with people has been great so far, and I am told that it is normal. I see taxi drivers tolerating our lack of spoken Chinese and take it in their stride by trying extra hard to get us to our destinations, all without expecting anything outside the meter reading; I see shopkeepers trying hard to find someone who can understand bits of English so that they can answer our English queries. I find numerous instances where people can be dishonest or lazy (or both!) because they do not get anything extra by being otherwise, but still they behave so well with us. When I contrast this experience with that in India (especially north India), this stands out as a striking difference between these two places. I am not sure if I get special treatment because I am a foreigner (because we are supposed to be dumb!), but I suspect this is more because of the general nature of Chinese people to be nice and kind.

Our real estate agent who helped us find a great house and continues to help us settle down with nitty-gritty of living around Chinese people is truly special in this regard. Typical remuneration for someone in her role is to get a low monthly salary coupled with a 1-time commission (which is less than 1 % of annual rent the tenant agrees to pay). Given such a compensation structure, typical behavior should be to spend just enough time with the prospective tenant to get the lease papers signed and then disappear to make more business come their way. However, this lady has spent significant time with us even after lease papers have been signed so that our shift to the new house can be smooth, and continues to help us by paying the bills on our behalf. I am not sure how I can help her, but I definitely feel awed by her service. Her English is enough for our needs, and she more than compensates for any lack on that front with her hard work and sincerity. Superlative work indeed!

Do let me know if you want the recommendation for a good and reliable agent for your next rental house search in Shanghai, referral is the least I can do for her.

Coming from the thought process that Indian and Chinese culture are similar in lots of ways, I was very surprised to find that in most parts of china, it is expected that boys and girls will find their life partners on their own, rather than parents helping them (the so-called ‘arranged marriage‘ which is so prevalent in India). I am still surprised and not convinced, but I have been told by all of my reliable sources that except in few villages, norm is indeed to find your own partner. I always thought that evolution from parent-controlled adults to self-controlled ones is associated with economic prosperity and cultural independence, but I guess I was wrong. I still plan to try and know more about the evolution of this part of culture. Another aspect of marriage that surprised me is that boy’s parents are supposed to give a house to the newly-wed, and this is so important that marriages are delayed, put on hold, and sometimes canceled if this condition is not met. Given the fact that houses are getting so expensive, I am told that modification to this rule is that parents will pay the down payment and the newly-weds will pay the mortgage (installments). So if you cannot afford a house (or if your parents can’t afford one if you are a boy), you cannot get married. This is unlike India in two ways. In India, it is girl’s family which has to bear all the costs of marriage (dowry system). Also, having a house of your own is a luxury, very few can afford even in cities, and hence having a house at the time of (or right after) marriage is not an option considered by many. However, parents on both sides do start pestering the newly-wed to save and invest enough to be able to afford a house as soon as they can!

It has been a long time since I posted here, sorry about that. I have been busy in the process of settling down which has afforded me some observations which I will share over coming days. These are some of the observations I have had since we have been in Shanghai but I was trying to collect more instances, reasons or facts before presenting them to you. Some of these are based on discussions with a few of my colleagues while others are my own observations over last 2 months. Please read this more as a tidbit to be enjoyed rather than authentic cultural information. There are very good sites out there which can provide you good information about culture, Chinese-tools.com has been a recent find for me which I have liked. Some of the topics I want to cover are as follows:

1. Marriages and how they are different from India
2. Traffic conditions
3. Getting books in China
4. Many chinese websites have numbers in them, is there any reason?
5. Learning Chinese is hard if you only know English!
6. About Chinese people

Let me know if you have questions that you would like me to address through these posts, or additional ones.

In last couple of weeks, we have felt much more settled in Shanghai. We are moving to our new house over the weekend. I still have to figure out the best way of commuting but I realize I have to give 1 hour to my commute, a far cry from my regular 10-15 minutes for last 12 years of my work. Well, there is always the first time! The house should be a pleasure to live, it is more tall than broad, so there are lots of stairs, with each floor having its own bathroom! Maybe an overkill for a family of 3, but then we need to plan for future! J We went to the new house to do some basic Puja at the place (we are scheduled to move there on Nov 1), and met another Indian family there (the only other Indian family in that complex!) who are very friendly. This will definitely ease our initial settling down process at the new house.

My wife is getting more comfortable getting out on her own; the incident in my daughter’s school triggered her outings and now she doesn’t mind going far-off places on taxi. The ease with which I could get the cell number and bank account excited her and she too went ahead and got these too, with not much hassles. With a cellphone in hand, I guess she can go all over China if she needs too!

So in a nutshell, progress in Shanghai for us is better than what we expected it to; hopefully this trend will continue and we can proudly call ourselves shanghainese in 6 months!