Yingde (英德)

On the way to Yingde, we saw five nose to tail car crashes.  On the way home, we saw four more.  (There may have been more, but we slept both ways.)

This was just a short, two-day holiday with a few of Mama’s friends and their families.  We left Sunday morning, travelling the 150 km in a friend’s car, and returned Monday night.

According to Wikipedia, Yingde, which is situated on the northern tributary of the Pearl River, is most famous for its tea and rocks.  But we didn’t go there for either.  For Mulan and Miya (and me, too), the three highlights of the trip were the hot pools, the boat ride and the climb up the local mountain.  For Mama, the highlight was the midnight girls’ time in the hotel room, without men or children.

In my time in China, I have never seen so many car crashes.  But I think this was the first time I have travelled on the roads during the Chinese holiday rush (usually I hide away at home).  And let’s just say that many of the drivers were completely crazy.  It reminded me of a racing car game.  Lanes were ignored, and, at 80 km/h, drivers would hang about a metre behind the car in front, waiting for a gap to zip between and past.  Apparently, no one had heard of the two-second rule.  I was surprised that there weren’t more crashes around us.  And I was pleasantly surprised that we all got home in one piece.

The hotel area that we stayed at, which was still so new that we could smell the paint, had been set up as a middle-class southern Chinese holiday spot.  In contrast to our recent Kaiping holiday, everything was for Chinese, rather than international, tastes.  Our hotel room had concrete floors and wooden furniture.  Dishes at the restaurant were almost all meaty; there was no provision for vegetarians.  There was also no pasta or bread, and for some of our four meals they said they had no tofu either.  I subsisted mainly on scrambled eggs, green veggies and white rice.  Their breakfast menu was even more limited and all I could have was sweet buns.

Our hotel was built alongside a train line.  The first thing Mulan said when she woke in the morning was that she was woken nine times during the night by trains passing.

But I mostly say this just as observation, not complaint.  Even though the place was not to our taste, we were not so princessy that we couldn’t handle it!  It was still an enjoyable holiday.

After lunch, we had a little look at a rusty old museum steam train engine.  I am not sure why it was there, but I was told that a tree out the front of the hotel area had been planted by the person who designed the first Chinese-built railway line (the one from Beijing to the Great Wall at Badaling).

In the evening, we had our one-hour boat ride up and down the river.  It was rather odd that the several boats used were all luxurious cabin cruiser motorboats.  The insides were fitted out with two posh-looking bedrooms and a living/dining/kitchen area.  Not really suitable for masses of tourists.  So, us tourists either sat up top or on the front deck.  The girls loved the speed of the boat, with the wind in their hair.  The scenery was beautiful, too.

The next morning, after a late breakfast, we went for a walk to the other side of the railway tracks.  And it really was the other side of the tracks.  The photo shows the locals’ living style compared with the touristy hotel across the other side.

The locals’ homes were built tight up against a mountain.  We had heard that there was a path leading up the mountain, so we (us four, plus one dad and two boys) thought it might be fun to climb up.  We had a go, and got maybe 20 metres up, scrabbling in the dust on hands and knees.  The girls were keen to keep going, but they really needed someone behind each of them to catch them if they slipped.  Mama didn’t feel confident, so we came back down again, slip sliding often on bottoms.

A couple of local men helped the girls down the final couple of metres.  Mama asked them if they used the path, and how often.  They replied that they use it all the time, every day.  Mama asked them how they get up, so one of them showed us.  He simple walked up and down again as if it was a staircase.  He didn’t use his hands at all.  We were all just silly, useless city-folk in comparison.

I carefully watched where he put his feet, so when Mama pushed me to try it, too, I was also able to walk up without using my hands.  But I still came back down using my hands.  I wasn’t that confident to step without checking first.  As I explained to Mulan on the way back to our hotel, a big part of climbing is technique and knowledge, not strength.  If you know where to step and hold, it can be very easy.

After lunch, we left our hotel and headed to the hot spring pools.  Our two hours there was the best part of the holiday, for the girls.  Several hot pools, of varying size and heat, dotted a hillside, overlooking fields and in amongst trees.  Rocks were used to shape the sides of the pools, and the whole place felt very natural and comfortable.  It wasn’t very crowded, either.  The notable feature of the area was the cave-pools—a couple of pools built inside a natural cave.  (We couldn’t take cameras into the area, but our cave-pools looked a little like the one here.)  Midway through our hot-pool hopping, we had a swim in the cool swimming pool (the Chinglish sign called it a “swimming fool”).  It was a shock to the system initially, but once in it was very comfortable.

Towards the end of our time there, we tried the fish pool.  This pool had little grey fish that darted around and nibbled the skin on our feet.  Mama and I tried it, and it felt very tickly, but the girls didn’t like the idea of fish eating us.  They refused to put their feet in, and wanted Mama and me to quickly get out.  Before getting out, though, we noticed that my feet got far more attention from the fish than anyone else’s.  Maybe the fish enjoyed the different flavour of whitey feet!

We had to drag the girls out of the pools to meet up with everyone at the car just after 5 pm.  After another few hours on the road, once back home I needed a chamomile tea before bed.