The Hechi Experiment

Itchy feet finally got the better of me and I was practically jumping out of my seat and packing my bags as soon as our friends suggested getting out of town for the weekend.  Actually to tell the truth I didn't even know where we were going till Thursday night when we told our housemates we'd be gone for the weekend.  All I knew was we were taking a train.  At that point I decided I probably needed some details...

So the plan was: 

Take the train for 6 hours on Friday.

Arrive in Hechi approx. midnight.

Find somewhere to stay.

No more plan.

I'm a big fan of experimental travel.  A little over a year ago I read a book: Lonely Planet's Guide to Experimental Travel, and when my sister came to visit me in the US, we 'couch-surfed' at some random guy's apartment in New York City.  He wasn't even there (he just happened to be in China ironically enough).  But his room-mates were kind enough to put us up and show us around.  We met their friends, slept on their beds and couches, saw the places they told us to see and experienced NYC from a totally different perspective than we would have if we'd stayed in a hotel I'm sure.  

The point is the concept of Experimental Travel fits in quite nicely with our plans to live in China. So when someone said 'trip', that was enough for me.

We were really fortunate (or unfortunate depending on how much you like to sleep) to find a hotel right be the train station for less than $11 for 2 nights for the both of us.  A small double bed with the most amazing shower I've had since I've left California.  I took three showers on Saturday, just because I could.  

After arriving in Hechi at about 1am and not going to bed until 2, I awaken by the rather noisy trucks right outside at about 6am so needless to say, not a lot of sleeping got done this weekend. I dragged Jason out of bed at 8am and we were off to explore.  We met up with our friends and went to breakfast of steamed boazi & jiaozi (well actually I ate rice & veges cause boazi & jioazi almost always contain meat), then went to investigate a small bird and flower market that Jason and I had seen earlier.  


I had thought to myself earlier that I really just wanted to meet one person today that would make my weekend's experience all the richer.  You see, barely any foreigners come to Hechi -- its not even listed in my Lonely Planet guide as somewhere to go see.  So this is kind of 'real' China so to speak.  Not a village per say but definitely nothing like Nanning.  But I also realized my chances of meeting someone who spoke decent English were slim too.

As I was snapping photos, I saw a young girl with an umbrella and I thought, that's my picture! She had a beautiful smile and surprisingly spoke fairly good English to me!  We chatted till I'd run out of Chinese, and she'd run out of English, then we went to find my friends and my new friend took us out to see Hechi her way.  And this is what we saw...

(this is not her by the way)

She told us about her town's traditions ("A man can have 5 wives if he wants.") and we told her about our countries (she was a little surprised when we told her a man can only have one wife where we come from.  She though for a minute and decided that was a good thing because "wives fight too much with each other.").  She showed us where to get spicy potatoes corn on the cob (Jason's mouth is still on fire -- I didn't think it was that spicy!) and bought us spicy fruit salad (which is so good by the way!).  

It was pretty obvious by all the staring that they never get white foreigners here!  But it became very obvious when the souvenir photo taking ladies capitalized on us being at their town's monument by selling photos to people with us in them.  All the girls wanted their photos taken with Jason because he is 'gao' and 'shuaige' (tall and handsome)!

So if you ever go to Hechi, I'm sure our photos will be posted everywhere!