Paul often comments that you can tell the change in a country as soon as you cross a border. China is definitely no exception. We'd been preparing ourselves for a whole lot of difficulty and culture shock after Vietnam, but actually it was quite the opposite. We pulled into the border city of Nanning – everything was developed, organised, and the people ignored us in the streets. People we did come into contact with were smiley and polite (aside from the excessive hacking and spitting). In short it was a surprise. We'd been expecting the language barrier to be a trial, but in fact it was a sanctuary. If they can't communicate with you, they can't sell you something. They can't use your language as a weapon against you. And when you do try to speak Mandarin, they're so happy and give you special attention. We discovered this when we went out to dinner with a couple from Sheffield who had been in China 6 weeks and were about to cross into Vietnam. We found a plastic restaurant with a menu all in Chinese (reading it was a bit like a linguistics puzzle exercise) and they impressed us with their Chinese food-ordering skills. The restaurant owner was over the moon that these guys were speaking Mandarin, and was eternally helpful and patient with us. After the hostile reception we were constantly receiving in Vietnam, this was lovely. I suppose the phrasebooks and the relative scantness of Western people have made us feel like old-style travellers again. You know, when people used to take language courses before going on holiday and arming themselves with phrasebooks rather than relying on everyone being able to speak English.
The next day we took the train east to Guilin, and from there the bus to Yangshuo. One thing we love about China (apart from the polite and friendly people) is that there is hot water available everywhere (even trains). And this is great as a lot of portable Chinese food is of the just-add-water nature. So on the train we, like everyone else, produced pot noodles and took full advantage of the facilities. Things suddenly felt a lot cheaper.
Yangshuo/Guilin is said to be one of the most beautiful parts of China, nay, the world. It is filled with green-covered karst mountains (like Halong Bay, but not in the sea) and little villages and gorgeous rivers. Well, so we were told. It was a little difficult to tell as it was absolutely bucketing it down. We had a wet hour looking for our hostel (with the heavy bags not getting any drier) and were too burdened to notice the scenery. But once we were settled (with an amazing view from our window, I might add) we could tell even through the rain that it was a sight to behold. 
In the region Guilin is the 'brand', the famous place – but Yangshuo is thought to be the prettiest. It's nestled right in the heart of the mountains, which are floodlit at night. And yes, it's uber touristy. This hasn't been as headachy as you'd think, though. For a start that means things are set up to handle the likes of us, and there's probably more English spoken here than anywhere else in China (so yes, back to avoiding touts). 
The tourists are mostly Chinese – which is a fun thing to watch in itself. Really fascinating, actually. They all sneak photos of us like we're the curiosity (which was funny to start with, but is now starting to feel a bit invasive). We're enjoying watching how Chinese tourism works, and it's refreshing to feel such self confidence in a country. In SE Asia we were always being pleaded with and begged to feed their tourism economy - but China doesn't really need it. They're doing well enough, whether we're here or not, thank you very much!
It rained pretty solidly for the first few days and we went of a couple of soggy cycle rides. The hills looked enigmatic and mysterious looming in the fog, as we teetered on the wet and narrow paths between the rice paddies. It wasn't the sort of thing that could ever be captured in a photograph, so I enjoyed it with my eyes. Chinese girls and boys with flowers in their hair would sail past us on their tandem bikes whilst busloads of others visited the big attractions. We were feeling pretty saddle-sore after just one day on the bikes (several more to come!). I suddenly had quite a lot of admiration for Jill and Bryn (of Vernon) for their cycle tours round France, and up-coming Lands End to John o'Groats. Good luck!
Eventually our patience with the weather paid off and the few extra days we'd booked but were considering regretting, were filled with eternal sunshine. On our way out for breakfast on our penultimate day (the first sunny day) we ran into one of the hostel staff who was just about to take everyone on a free bike tour. 
Just what the doctor ordered! In our stinginess and naivety we were solely relying on the free leaflet map which actually told us nothing about what our route actually looked like. We'd spent many soggy miles getting lost and irate this way. The countryside was even more spectacular in the sunshine than in the rain. And the moving air as we cycled kept us cool. Our guide told us that a lot of rice paddies, especially the ones you can take tours to, are kept solely to attract tourists. They don't need them for the rice as they make more money with the tours so, like the Highland cattle in Scotland, they're purely decorative.We had another day of physical exhaustion and map related general lostness and confusion, before leaving on the sleeper bus for Hong Kong. This bus was infinitely nicer than the nasty Vietnamese ones, and we adopted some other travellers for border-crossing moral support.
Paul had arranged for us to couchsurf with Ada, a warden at a charity trust boarding school (perhaps for naughty kids?), and we had a set of instructions to get there. First of all, joy of joys, we were back in a city with a metro system. We've discovered we love cities with metros. This is how we can forgive London. Maybe we'd even cope with living in Glasgow. Second set of joys – though we had been relishing the chance to battle the language barrier, there is quite a lot of English spoken in HK (for obvious reasons) and it made figuring out the right bus and right place to get off a lot easier. Third joy – the shopping centre where we were to meet Ada had a free customer telephone so we didn't have to spend money and hours fiddling with a coin-operated one. Hurrah!Ada whisked us up the road to the school and gave us reams of helpful introductory instructions, a form to fill in (the most testing question being 'what are your hobbies?' - nothing like the kind of paranoia-forms we would have had to fill in back home!) and then showed us to our room for rest and shower before lunch. We were lodged in one of the boys' floors of the boarding house surrounded by dorms, with our own bathroom, private bedroom, fridge and kettle. Such luxury! At lunch we were introduced to Erature, a young lady from Malaysia who was working there temporarily. She showed us how to queue, collect our lunch (Chinese school food!) and sit on our respective boys and girls sides of the room. We had quite a few interesting meals in that place. Poor Paul was left all alone on a table of boys, and all the kids were pretty reluctant to speak to us (although we suspect they spoke a lot more English than they let on). After lunch the kids had activities – today, 'watermelon ball'. This was essentially 5-aside football played with a plastic blow-up watermelon coloured ball. Go on my son!
Later on we met the staff and Bobby, our designated interpretor who would be helping us with our presentation to the kids after the weekend. Ada's attitude towards Bobby was hilarious. 'I don't like this boy's personality,' she told us. 'He is too passive. I want him to learn confidence.' Later she asked us, 'have you seen the fat kid, your interpretor, yet?' Bobby was shy, but we had a back-up member of staff in case he bottled out.
That evening it was dinner 'Chinese style' (they consider their lunch to be 'Western style', although to us it tasting like Chinese takeaway) where we all all sat round tables with dishes in the centre and helped ourselves. I was permitted to sit with Paul on a boys' table (they still weren't talking to us) and we were shown how to go and collect the plates for the table etc etc and guessed how to navigate our way around eating conventions (do you use different chopsticks to serve your food than to eat with?).
The kids had more activities after that, so we sorted out our plans for the next day. Essentially, our visit to the Russian embassy. Ah the Russians. We're beginning to wonder why we're even going there at all. The visa form was like applying for a job as a Russian. Worse, as all we wanted was a transit visa, a job as a Russian in transit. It had very small spaces to answer questions such as 'name all the countries you have visited in the last 10 years and when' (in 3 lines) ! ! ! Give your last 2 jobs and current employer's address, chief's name, phone numbers. 'Do you have specialist training in firearms, explosives, nuclear, biological or chemical substances?' (for Paul, yes). What organisations or charities are you involved with or co-operate with? Etc etc. It would have been funny if it hadn't felt so invasive and impertinent. We were thinking perhaps we didn't want to go to Russia that badly after all, if this was the effort we had to put in. We felt that even more strongly (to the point of outrage) when we made it to the embassy the next day and the stern-faced Russians charged us £100 each! What's so good about bloody Russia anyway, I ask you? Why don't they want us to visit? Do they not want our nice foreign money for their economy? Turned out this initial bout of hoop-jumping was only the tip of the iceberg. We're not even staying in Russian, godamnit! The trans-Mongolian had better be the highlight of the whole entire trip.
So Paul was fuming quite a lot as we wandered quite aimlessly around the financial buildings of Hong Kong Island. We had a bit of time to kill before our next engagement at 6.15. By pure coincidence, about a week before we were due to arrive in HK, a HK British Council representative had sent and enquiry to Paul through the Chemical Connection website (the science communication project he did for the university). She was quite surprised when Paul said they could meet in person. So we met in a posh cafe in a posh shopping centre full of Suits (it's all about Suits in HK Island) and they talked science festivals and workshops.That evening we had the floor to ourselves at the school as all the boarders had gone home. It was eerily quiet since the night before they'd spent all evening tearing up and down the corridors shouting. Erature kindly let us in as the school was locked. This was a dance we'd have to do with her all weekend – arrange a time for her to let us out in the morning, go out for the day and phone her from the free phone in the shopping centre asking her to let us back in again in 15 mins. Sometimes things would be a lot simpler if we had a phone with us.
Saturday we were meeting an old school friend of mine, Alice Lo. I'd been to stay with her (and another friend – they shared me) in HK 11 years ago over the 1999 Christmas holidays. It was strange to be back as it felt quite different. Also I hadn't seen Alice since we left school so it was quite exciting. She took us to lots of places using the 'public light bus' system that we probably wouldn't have been able to find on our own. Some places were familiar from before, including some pretty spectacular live seafood. Actually I've never seen fish so huge, crustaceans so colourful, or creatures so weird. It was raining quite hard by the end, but it was a fun day out and great to see Alice again. She also revealed to us why couchsurfing in Asia has been so much more difficult than e.g. South America - there's just not a culture of having people to stay. They don't like it. Seems I was quite lucky to have stayed back in 1999!
The rain became a big feature of that weekend. We decided to do our customary shopping centre-junk food-cinema day and went to see Pirates of the Caribbean. It was good, we enjoyed it. After it got dark there was a brief break in the rain and we went to Kowloon to look at the typical skyscraper-lights view of Hong Kong island. Not ten minutes after we were safely back at the school, though, the storm hit with a vengeance and there was much flooding.I must add that we very diligently shopped in ParkNShop during our stay (treating ourselves to cheese – yes, cheese! - and bread that night) – people who know Logan will understand why.
School again on Monday and this was our big day. We retrieved our passports from the 'friendly' Russians in the morning, all safely and expensively visa'd up, and came back for lunch (another food adventure, though not as crazy as the breakfasts which I'm glad we experienced but wouldn't like to make a habit of). Bobby was nowhere to be seen, but we were sure he'd pull through.
We were presenting in the dining room and the kids had been promised dancing – but we also had a short talk to do. We were starting to have second thoughts about this as Ada kept telling us they didn't like seminars (then why did she ask us to tell them about Scotland?) but, well, Bobby needed the public speaking experience for his passive character. One of the members of staff had made a nice display all about Scotland for us and we were set up with mics and a projector screen and everything. After school a team came to move all the tables, and then at the very last possible minute (waiting until the bell had gone) the kids shuffled in.
It was immediately a more daunting prospect than we'd imagined or than anywhere we'd faced before. We had support from the staff, and Bobby performed fantastically, but the kids were truly the worst behaved I've ever come across. What's more, they were the worst behaved Paul had ever come across and he's visited a lot more schools than me. The chatting amongst themselves throughout alone was distracting (there were a lot of them, it was loud) but then things dissolved into chaos when it came to teaching the dancing. It's very difficult to be authoritative with a language barrier, and they did the whole 'urrrgh! A BOY! I can't be partners with a BOY!!' (Vice versa for girls, and some boys objected to being partnered with each other too) beyond the usual adolescent patheticness.
It was all quite funny really, if not horribly frustrating. Ada had assured us they were all excited to learn about Scottish dancing, but this wasn't apparent as about half of them refused to do anything at all. In the end Paul got a self-conscious all-boy demonstration group going and they even managed it with music. Boy it was all hard work! The staff felt we had been received well, although we weren't so sure!
They were quite hyper during dinner and some of the girls made a half-effort to say a few words to us, so maybe it had worked after all. Bobby was certainly in high spirits. It was strange, because we'd assumed an Asian school would have the kids all orderly and whipped into shape (like the Japanese schoolchildren on the plane to Singapore, and like the kids in Cambodia) but a special kind of chaos reigned here.
In all it was a really interesting experience and it would have been good to stay longer and get more involved (who knows, perhaps some of them might even have begun to talk to us?). But once again it was time to move on and press back into mainland China.
About HK's relationship with China – Alice noted that the pre-'97 days were really the best, but right now they do have the best possible deal. They have nearly all the autonomy of a successful city state, but can also go asking China for help with anything they can't do themselves. And China's doing pretty well for itself these days. So long as they're left to do things their way, being under the wing of a world superpower isn't that bad.
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