This sign was found in the Bonsai Tree garden next to Huangguoshu Pubu in Anshun, Guizhou Province.

Clearly the image indicates that there should be no lighting of fires.  I get that.  But what about other firing?  Can you fire guns?  Can you fire employees?  Will it destroy the peace and serenity of the garden if you are on the phone firing somebody?  Chinese usually try to avoid confrontation, so I suppose it’s possible.

And scribbling?  I can’t even begin to imagine the horrors that would be unleashed by scribbling a note on a piece of paper.  Imagine, if you will.  You are lost and trying to find your way back to your car.  Someone offers to give you directions.  You pull out a pen and paper and start to hastily scribble down what he is saying.  All of a sudden, policemen jump out from behind the Bonsai trees and attack!  They mercilessly beat you for scribbling.  Oh the humanity!  Clearly you should not scribble things down.  Because you might be writing down politically subversive doctrines or what not.  And that would certainly disturb the peace.  Or, at the very least, cause people to think for themselves.  And the powers that be can’t have that.  Certainly not.

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3. Funny Sign Friday

You have been warned.

Heading to Guiyang was entirely a last minute decision.  I knew I would be taking a trip somewhere, but up until Thursday morning I had no idea where.  Friday, May 1 was a holiday (Labor Day) so I was aware that pretty much every tourist attraction worth seeing in China would be crawling with people.  So that left out the big cities.  I set my sights on something smaller, a little bit out of the way but something I still considered as definitely worth spending my long weekend on.

So I chose Guiyang.  Thursday morning I purchased my tickets, emailed about 10 people on CouchSurfing, had the tickets delivered that night, and left Friday morning.  Do you agree this was a last minute decision?  I love the fact that, in China, the longer you wait to buy an airline ticket the cheaper it gets.  This works perfectly with my well-cultivated ability to procrastinate.  Perfectly well.

“So what’s so special about Guiyang?”  Well, there are plenty of reasons to head there, but mine was this:

Oh yeah, that’s right, I wanted to see this sucker.  This is Huangguoshu Waterfall (Yellow Fruit Tree Waterfall) located in Anshun, which is about an hour or two from Guiyang.  At 255 ft high and 330 ft wide it makes for an impressive sight.  Certainly one of the largest waterfalls in one of the largest countries in the world lives up to expectations.

A lot can be said about the surrounding area: the lush forest and verdant greenery is a breath of fresh air compared to the dusty and dry Xi’an.  I do enjoy living in Xi’an but getting out into the country and the forest is a great respite for me–it reminds me of home.  But there is something special about this particular waterfall.  Something very special indeed:

You can go behind it!  The Water-Curtain Cave is a 440 ft naturally formed cave that snakes along behind the waterfall.  You can literally reach out and touch the water as it falls.  It’s amazing.  I’ve never heard or seen of anything like this in my life.  It’s hard to describe the exhilaration of standing in a cave watching thousands of gallons of water pass right before your eyes; to feel the spray of water on your face; to feel your whole body vibrate because the noise is so loud and is coming from just a few feet away.

The roar of the falls can be heard long before you see it, just like most large waterfalls.  But that experience pales in comparison to actually feeling the vibrations in the walls as you pass under the waterfall.  The roar of water is reduced to a slight rumble in the cave, but you can still feel it.

Of course, the park was not completely devoid of people.  Quite the contrary, in fact.  When initially planning my trip I imagined hordes of tourists invading places like Beijing and Shanghai.  I wanted to avoid that.  Doesn’t everyone?  But I was not so naive as to think any place I could go would be unlike any other weekend.  I fully understood there would be large crowds.  And crowds did I find.

Of course there was the requisite groups of Chinese tourists all wearing the same hat.  Of course there were the gaggles of teenagers taking pictures with each other in every permutation imaginable.  And of course there were some Chinese tourists who wanted to have their picture taken with the big white laowai (ahem, that would be me).

And because of all the spray from the waterfall, plastic parkas were in good supply and very cheap.  Almost every tourist (except me, water doesn’t scare me!) purchased a parka to get through the Water Curtain Cave high and dry.  So what do you think happened to all those parkas immediately on the other side of the cave?

After having the awesome experience of going through the Water Curtain Cave I was really disappointed to be greeted with this site.  Really just a complete letdown.  China still has a long, long way to go in terms of environmental conservation and conscientiousness, it seems.

Upon my return to Guiyang my host, Andy, offered to take me to Qingling Park.  As if I would say no?  In my humble opinion, Qingling Park is on par with Seven Star Park, in Guilin.  Qingling is just as beautiful and yet much, much less touristy.  I like that in a park.  I should be able to enjoy nature and all the beauty it has to offer without being heckled to buy a soft drink or buy tickets to an animal show.  We climbed to the top of Qingling Mountain to view the temple there.  Yes, I climbed yet another mountain.  Why does it seem like any place I travel there is a mountain involved?  Anyway, the temple was of your standard fare, nothing spectacular.  It was near the end of the day so the temple was relatively empty which provided for a nice experience strolling through the grounds in relative silence.

To reach Qingling Lake we had to descend the other side of the mountain.  Along the way we found monkeys.  Lots of monkeys.

The monkeys there are fearless.  I was told that old people come to the park quite often to feed the monkeys.  I did spy an old couple feeding them.  Giving them snacks, with the plastic wrappers still on (yay environment!).  The monkeys were constantly hanging on them, pulling on their clothes and practically jumping into their bag of goodies.  The monkeys are so tame that the couple could actually pet them.  At one point I crouched down to take a picture of them.  I set down my bottle of water right between my legs.  As soon as I put it down, this little bugger approached me and….

Damn it!  Sneaky monkey!

Walking around Qingling Lake was a great end to the day.  As the light began to fail it created a surreal atmosphere.  A very peaceful evening on the beautiful lake.  According to Andy, Qingling Lake used to be completely dry about 10 years ago.  After Andy went there and saw it in that state, he wrote a letter to the mayor of Guiyang about the problem.  The mayor wrote him back, saying that he would fix it.  And he did.  Restoring it to the natural beauty I was fortunate enough to see.  Andy saved the lake.  I think that is a pretty incredible story.

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