After lovely Yangshuo, poor Nanning had a lot to live up to
in order to impress us. However, even though it isn’t especially beautiful, we
did have a surprisingly nice time on our one full day out there. We arrived
mid-evening at a bus station a couple of
miles out of town, and the local bus we were looking for to get us into the
centre was nowhere to be seen. Before we had the chance to get too frustrated,
some very helpful Chinese girls, in town to celebrate National Week, translated
the impenetrable bus timetable for us and recommended another bus that got us to
the same part of the city. Our hostel was very basic with a handful of pristine
dormitories and a couple of private rooms, but the facilities were immaculate
so it felt fine to be in a dormitory, sharing a bathroom (something we’ve been
trying to keep to a minimum, but when on a budget…) The common room area was
perfect for working too.
The main purpose for our visit to Nanning was to secure our
Vietnam visa, which the hostel arranged for us during our stay. It was an
utterly painless procedure – we just handed over our passports, some passport
photos and some cash and two days later, our passports had Vietnam visas
installed neatly on their pages. Definitely an improvement on our experience
getting the China visa in Bangkok!
We had one day of fun before two days of work, so we decided
to see as much of Nanning as we could. Although there is not a huge amount to
see and do, the city is the capital of Guangxi and as such it was well kept
with several parks and museums.
We strolled through one park just off the main
street, but this was heaving with tourists, so we headed to the Guangxi
Provincial Museum instead (which was empty – I guess museums are not well
frequented when the nation is partying!).
We also passed the Science and
Technology Museum on the way, which was heaving with families (and quite right
too – it looked like an excellent museum) where we saw a massive model of
Optimus Prime that we had to hover around for ages to even try to get a good
photo of. Optimus Prime in a science museum – the Chinese vision for future
technology may be quite ominous (or very cool…) |
Sign on the fencing around Optimus Prime! |
The Guangxi Provincial Museum was fairly simple, but we saw
some great porcelain and some enormous bronze drums.
The most interesting part
though was the museum gardens, where there were some small stone bridges beside
an ornate Wind and Rain bridge.
The wind and rain bridge was a commonly built
community structure, popular in the Guizhou and Guangxi procvinces, used to
link A and B but also to protect the community in a town or village from the
wind and rain, as well as to shelter them from the sun on a hot day, and offer
somewhere for the community to gather to play games, talk and socialise. This
bridge was extremely well preserved and had been converted to a restaurant
(which spoiled the effect somewhat) though as the grounds were so quiet I think
we saw the bridge at its best. Being surrounded by beautiful gardens helped to
make this a very tranquil place to spend the sunniest part of the day!
We were starting to get hungry so we wandered down Zhongshan
Lu to see if we could get something to eat, but despite its reputation for
being a renowned food street, things obviously hadn’t started up yet so we kept
walking until we found a dumpling restaurant – a great substitute!
We then
struck gold (of a curious kind) as we found the river - while wandering some
secluded steps for a better view, we found a makeshift bar overlooking the
river and the bridge! The seats were even in the shade, and perfectly placed to
enjoy the view. We ordered a couple of beers here, where it was also very quiet
for such a great spot… until a few more people started to show up, and the
singing began! We’re still not quite sure what was happening, but there was a
rotation of singers very earnestly singing anything from pop songs to
traditional Chinese songs, and there seemed to be some kind of competition and
scoring going on. Each singer would also come round and shake the spectators’
hands as they sang, making the whole experience seem like a local X Factor
audition.
This looked like it was going to go on for some time, so we
discreetly slipped away after we’d finished our drinks and headed over the
bridge to see what delights were to be found there. This was also pretty
strange! Swimming in the river is quite a popular pastime (no idea why, as the
water looked quite filthy), and the river bank was swarming with men, women and
children launching themselves into the murky water.  |
Look carefully for the guy cleaning his motorbike! |
One guy was even washing
his motorbike in there! Entertainingly, there was a handful of men in
embarrassingly brief speedos doing some stretches pre-swim, and occasionally
dropping down to do some press-ups – perhaps a bizarre mating ritual?! They
could have at least put on some clothes for the press-ups part!
Right next to the river we found Binjiang Park, where we
found more people wandering around in their swimming trunks, and basking on
benches in the dying sun.
We explored the park briefly, but decided hunger was
taking over and made our way back over the bridge, resisting the temptation to
check up on the X Factor crowd on the way. We doubled back on our earlier
route, and this time found the Zhongshan Lu rammed with every kind of seafood
you can imagine. I tried a spicy squid kebab, which was delicious, though
Bradley wasn’t convinced!
We went back to the hostel and watched The Dark Knight –
with Chinese subtitles so that the receptionist could watch it with us – though
I think some of the plot may have confused her as she seemed to think we were
watching Spiderman at first. She soon questioned what this peculiar superhero
was up to, and why he was a bat and not a spider… It’s quite hard to explain in
broken English the nuances of superhero mythologies.
The next two days we worked at the hostel, and got take away
rice and noodles to keep us going. Suddenly our time in China was over, and
after one last tired night’s sleep we were boarding a bus for the border
crossing with Vietnam, and the journey to Hanoi.
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