Weekend visit to Gongcheng

After Liao Laoshi’s lecture, the adventure for the day was to venture to a town and visit the Yao zu in Longshen, a town four hours drive from Guilin. However, it had been raining for two days and the roads to Longshen were known for mudslides so the teacher’s changed the destination to Gongcheng.

Gongcheng is also densely populated with Yao zu, but because of their close relation with Han Chinese, the unique aspects of the Yao minority life have all but disappeared.

The students met in the lobby at 11:30am after collecting their overnight gear and set off for Gongcheng. After two hours, the group stopped in Yangshuo for lunch. Because Yu Laoshi had been disappointed in the Mei You Café’s beer fish from the first trip to Yangshuo, she was determined for the students to get a real taste of beer fish. On this trip to Yangshuo, the group ate at a very authentic wooden hutch overlooking the Li River. This time the beer fished arrived on a huge platter and just from the look of it, everyone knew this was the real thing.

After lunch the group continued on towards Gongcheng. Students napped in the bus, chatted, listened to music, read or studied. The changing countryside was flecked with rain and the leafy green fields showed that once out of the city, agriculture is all around. In between the vast, curiously sloping mountains, not a bit of space was wasted. Various kinds of plants made patchwork quilts across the flat plains: sugarcane, rice, grapes, oranges and persimmons. As the rice fields lessened and the orange and persimmon trees increased, the students knew they were approaching their destination.

A quick stop in the Gongcheng hotel was followed by a walk to the local Confucius temple. The temple dates back to the 17th century and is extremely rare, given that such temples were destroyed during the Cultural Revolution. A guide informed students that the temple had been saved during the Revolution by a clever man in town who had covered the roofs and walls with slogans praising Mao and his desire to eradicate the “old ways”, which included large portions of Confucianism.

There was a traditional Chinese pond and bridge in the center of the temple, a large stone carp sculpture standing on the water as if leaping up to meet anyone walking on the bridge. The guide told students that while walking across the bridge, a person should think of the thing they most want in the world and the fish will grant the wish. Such superstitions were the victim of Mao’s desire to destroy old culture and old thought. He was suspicious of a person who could put all of his or her faith in such ideas.

The temple was dark and held a wooden sculpture of Confucius, seated and under a curtain, also wooden. Two disciples flanked him on either side. The robes were brightly colored and the paint on the sculptures seemed fresh. In China, it seems, preservation is a less subtle art than in Europe where an original sculpture, no matter how faded, would never be re-painted.

After visiting the temple, students were taken to another, smaller temple nearby. This temple was erected in honor of a great warrior, famous from the ancient Chinese epic, “The Three Kingdoms”. As students were finishing up the tour of this temple, it began to rain. Many students went back to the hotel to wait for dinner, but several chose to explore the small city of Gongcheng. The hotel happened to be located on the main street and aside from small bakeries, convenience stores and restaurants, the city provided little to do or see. As for ethnic minorities, the students themselves were the most different looking people around and several Chinese stopped on the streets to stare curiously after them.

Dinner was to be held outside of the hotel. Students met in the lobby at 6pm and boarded the bus. The driver took the group to the edge of a smaller river than the Li and students left the bus and walked to a small, two-storey boat anchored by the shore. Dinner consisted of various fish dishes brought to the table raw and put into a pot of boiling water in the center. Once the fish was cooked, it was dipped in a spicy ginger sauce. The boat was a little rough around the edges and so some students drank beer to scare the bacteria away. Even with this small precaution, many students became ill while on the trip to Gongcheng. No matter the care paid to preparation, the further and further one gets from large cities, the more and more foreign bacteria there are that weak American stomachs just aren’t used to. After dinner, students returned to the hotel and went to bed, having already seen what Gongcheng had to offer in the way of entertainment.