Mango-Milk & Moon Pagoda

November 7th 2016

The three of us are sitting in a small mango-milk shop for an afternoon snack, enjoying our smoothies. Some of the mangos that form the basis for all the freshly prepared dishes here are lying in the windows to the street. And while we are slurping our drinks, I notice the lens of a smartphone camera very slowly moving up past one of the fruits, pausing for a second to watch us before disappearing again — including the Chinese teenagers in front of the window.
Well, what they can do, we can do, too: At the main station where we have just said our goodbyes to Katha, we find a young Chinese in a Germany-themed shirt — here's an attempt at reproducing our conversation:

Ah, ni hao! Can we take a picture? Camera-gesture with one hand
Because — Germany. Point to his shirt, then to us
"Uhmmm"
Picture! Jan takes out his phone and opens the camera
Confused look, he takes out his phone as well
We just take a picture, thank him and leave him behind, confused look still on his face.
In the evening we take our hostel's shuttle service to the inner city to check out the sun and moon pagodas at night — which is definitely worth it. But have a look for yourselves:
Afterwards, we wander off into the wrong direction for a while thanks to Jan's solid navigation (the map was upside down) before we finally arrive at the night markets of Guilin.
I don't need to defend myself this time... We've seen some new parts of the city thanks to me, ok?!?
We stroll around the various food and souvenir stalls here before being picked up by our shuttle again.

Guilin & Gongcheng — Review

we like the two cities — Gongcheng especially — much better than Shenzhen. Everything here feels more real and more Chinese than in the theme-park heavy Shenzhen — and somehow, the cities feel more human, too. We really notice that people work and live here: There are countless food stalls and street vendors all over. At any time, day or night, huge swarms of small electric scooters buzz around buses and cars — confidently ignoring any traffic rules, but still remarkably accident-free. Also there is a real inner city here with a centre and some pedestrian areas — if Shenzhen had something like that, we didn't find it.
Maybe it's just because we have a guide with us who is at least somewhat knowledgeable in both the city and the Chinese language (thanks again to Katha!), but we discover a lot more new things, try more unknown food, and generally feel more comfy here.
You have to add that the people here are usually very very friendly and you don't have to worry about your safety as a tourist. And it's super interesting to meet a culture and people for once that are noticeably different (not in a negative way) from Europeans. I don't want to generalize here, but I think you get my point.
Mainland China is definitely worth a visit — the landscape especially is incredible and our walk to Fengyan continues to impress me. Everything here is so different from Europe that everyday life becomes an adventure.
Would we come back? With some more Chinese skills? Sure, why not?

China — Review

Let's get political (That's supposed to be my part :( ) — As you all know, China is a de-facto single party dictatorship. And even though you don't always notice that here apart from small Mao-trinkets hanging from the rear-view mirror in some cabs, China does not do well when it comes to topics like human rights, democracy or torture.
What we personally noticed more — apart from the widespread internet censorship — is more of a cultural "problem": The treatment of animals here seems very... dubious to us Europeans. We come across living turtles being waved about on a stick for advertisement, living pigs in wooden cages so tight they can't stand up, and many chickens in tiny cages on the street side — organic animal husbandry sure looks different.
If you'd like to read up on China some more, you can have a look at the following two articles on human rights and the protests on Tiananmen Square — the "square of heavenly peace":

China 2015/2016 — amnesty.com

Tiananmen Square Massacre — time.com

Aaand finally two things you shouldn't do in China:
First off, it's not worth it to wait for a traffic light — green or red, anarchy rules the streets either way.
Also you shouldn't head into a supermarket expecting to find real orange juice* (or reasonably priced chocolate without electronic shoplifting protection).

*As a bonus, here's my optimal juice finding strategy:
1. Assign a value to every bottle in the cooler derived from [percentage of citrus fruit among the pictures on the packaging] * [highest prominently featured percentage on the packaging]^2
2. Mentally sort the bottles based on their value
3. Sample drinks in descending order

After a false-positive at 30% (way too much sweetener) my China-maximum is currently at 12% fruit with the taste of slightly healthier lemonade.
Nils without orange juice — hard to imagine.