Nanning, Guangxi Zhuang, China
Wednesday, November 11, 1998
The flight from
Hanoi basically just jumps over the border and plops you down in China, southernmost China. Once there, the airport is pretty basic. Everybody pretty much seems to be piling into a van, so I follow them. After a cruise through the countryside, the van finally makes its way into the center of town. From this point I'm on my own, a fact soon painfully driven home to me, for not only is there nothing- ABSOLUTELY NOTHING- in English, but there’s nothing even in Pinyin, the Chinese system of Romanised transliteration developed during Mao’s era. Except for street signs, it’s Chinese characters only, and more than a few of those. Fortunately I brought a borrowed Lonely Planet guidebook with me, so that mitigated some of the effects of 'instant illiteracy.’ Even the hotel reception spoke absolutely no English. Instead they had a cheat sheet with the standard questions written in both Chinese and English so you could just point-and-click, clever. Obviously, there are no tourists here, or such would not be the case. Welcome to ‘the real China.’ Fortunately the people in this part of China, related to Thais in fact, Zhuangs to be exact, are nice, so that helps. A smile can go a long way in making a guy feel welcome. Still this doesn’t hold a lot of attraction for me as a tourist destination, so I buy a ticket the next day for the train to
Guilin.
