Our arrival in the PRC!

Ms Waterman
(teacher)

Today was a bit of a travel-lost day for us, though we have officially arrived on mainland China! We left the YMCA Hotel in Hong Kong after breakfast and flew to Guilin. The flight was very easy and compared to last week’s incredibly long flight, it felt luxurious to spend only 90 minutes total on the plane! Unfortunately, the afternoon was cloudy, so we didn’t see the awesome geography of Guilin on our descent.

Our guide Elaine met us at the airport with a sign reading “Rebecca Waterman” which was a very unique experience for me! On our drive to the hotel, Elaine told us all about Guilin, including the fact that its name comes from two characters, ‘gui’ and ‘lin’, which together mean “forest of osmanthus trees”. I had never heard of that tree, but it is the official tree of the region! Its flowers are yellow and very fragrant and they bloom in the autumn. At dinner, we had tea made from these leaves and it was delicious.

After checking into our hotel, Elaine brought us to a local restaurant for dinner. The cultural dissonance was striking! The restaurant was modeled as an Irish pub, and as we ate traditional Guilin dishes and drank osmanthus tea, we listened to American country music. What a unique experience! Thought we shared a total of six dishes, our favorites were the Chinese eggplant and the rice noodles with pork, carrot, and greens.

We braved light rain showers long enough to explore a night market and the lake in the center of Guilin with has two large pagodas in its center. The pagodas were lit up with golden and white lights and the trees around the lake’s perimeter were lit with colorful lights, too. The path was crowded but beautiful!

Tomorrow, we’ll see more of Guilin’s unique geography so stay tuned!