Plus Three

I don't know if I've ever wanted to travel more than I do now. After months of being locked inside, I was beyond eager to get out of Shanghai. But exactly because of that lockdown, our options were limited. Many provinces required quarantine between 3 and 14 days on arrival. While 3 would be doable, it would be better to, you know, not. Fortunately the city of Guilin came to our rescue by being more chill, with nothing needed except a negative test.

Unless you're from China you've likely never heard of Guilin. It's got quite a reputation for being naturally beautiful, with lots of ancient writers saying things like "Guilin is heaven on Earth." Back when travel was more a thing, it was a backpacker destination not unlike Bangkok. Of course, different times now, and the streets I've heard that were filled with young foreigners now has only one, less young foreigner.

Me, I'm talking about me.

A Guilin specialty, Beer Fish

Which is a change compared to Shanghai for sure. I was much more of a Z-List celebrity in Guilin, even stopped and asked by people if they can take their photo with me. It's like when I first came to China over a decade ago, although thankfully I didn't have a baby shoved into my arms while walking down the street (which actually happened once in Xiaoshan). But anyway, how's Guilin?

It's nice. Actually Guilin city is not particularly renowned today, because it's a medium sized Chinese city of merely 5 million people. It was always more of a "jumping off point" for the surrounding region. Still, it has a bit of beauty left in it. You can see the nature showing through however, with large, nearly vertical hills that pop up between the buildings. Guilin city is more of a staging area to explore the region, which is what we plan on doing. But we decided to stay a day or two in the city, because it does have some things to do.

For example, Zhengyang Walking Street and East West Alley, which are connected pedestrian areas with lots of food and shops. But they're actually quite nice and don't feel like the tourist traps other pedestrian areas around China do. In fact, we mostly saw high schoolers, old folks, and families pushing around strollers. Honestly, with tourism in China being non-existent right now, I'd bet we were among the very few non-locals. We had a meal and went on to see Jingjiang Palace, which you know, is a palace. It's alright. It does have a hill in the middle with a cool view. But after climbing up that mountain, we needed to rest before checking out Sun Moon Lake, one of the sights you see on all the Guizhou stock photos. It's just a lake with a park, but has two large towers, one silver, one gold colored. Actually I thought they were really pretty, although Ella seemed less impressed. Then again, Ella was following the directions to our hotel, and it said "next to the clock tower". When she saw it, she quipped "You call that a tower?" I responded "Well, I don't know what else you would call it." I'll put a photo of that below, so you can judge for yourself if Ella has very "high" standards for towers.

There was one thing in Guilin I really wanted to do, called Reed Flute Cave. It's actually one of many caves in the area, some even being downtown. But we took a 15 minute car trip to this one, as it's supposedly the best. To be honest, it's fantastic and I'm very glad we went. Something they did though was really lean into the artificial lighting, which makes it look especially unique. Although simultaneously I was wondering if the rainbow lighting just "Disney-ified" the whole experience. Well, you know, aside from the movie projected on a cave wall and souvenir keychains. But lighting or not, it is a super impressive cave. Not that I'm a cave expert, I've seen maybe... 8? But this was one of the best. The rock formations seemed to be all named after animals and food, which, gotta tell you, it takes a LOT of creativity to look at this rock and think "Yup, that's a lion." Maybe their idea of a lion comes from Shanghai's Natural History Museum. Anyway, here's a bunch of photos:

After the cave, there was another "stock photo of Guilin" to see, Elephant Nose Mountain. Supposedly this rock formation looks like an elephant dipping its trunk into water. Fortunately it's free and right in the middle of town, so it's not at all difficult to get to. Which was good, because free and 0 minutes is how much I think it's worth. What I'm saying is, we were both very unimpressed. Look, I've been to hyped tourist sights before. I can look at something and think "It's not my thing, but I can get how others would appreciate it." But this thing had so much tourist infrastructure around it, not to mention the crazy crowds. Like, when we were coming back to the Guilin airport at the end of our trip (more on that next time), I saw street signs that were "50km to the Elephant! 40km!" I mean, all this just to see... that? I don't get it. At best, it's a pretty symmetrical arch, although I don't know how much was man made. It was so blah we didn't even want to take a photo, but since we were there we thought might as well. I'll let you be the judge - the spitting image of an elephant, or useless tourist trap?

Anyway, that was about it for Guilin city. It's quite a nice place that most want to get out of as quickly as possible to explore the region. Which is a shame, because I think it's definitely worth spending at least a full day there, probably two if you don't want to rush. But with Guilin now checked off, we were off to the Star Wars planet of Kashyyyk to see some mountains and wookies.

I probably have not mentioned we're free.

So, we're free. To be honest, I am sick of the lockdown stuff and want to move on. But also, it was quite an impactful time in my life, so I feel it is necessary to write everything down for memories sake. Anyway, sorry for being a bit boring lately. I hope the next entry will have more exciting travels.

So, how did this go down? All in all, it took about two and a half months, from mid March to June 1st. We were (un)lucky enough to start ours about 2 weeks before most of everyone else, I suppose because there was a positive case in our compound. This turned out to be good in a way, because we were able to stock up on some things before the rest of the city got locked in. There were delays in getting packages, but it wasn't too bad - we're talking an hour or two delivery instead of 30 minutes. In retrospect, we should have gotten a lot more. Although at the time, it did not seem like it was so necessary to stock up. At the gate, they had an official notice with a release date a few days in the future. And when we got near that, that was moved a few more days, and a few more. Then they said they were going to close the whole city for 48 hours. That 48 hours turned out to be 2 months. So of course, people were caught unprepared. We had a couple weeks of food. Supposedly the grocery stores were able to deliver, but everyone was jamming the apps the moment they opened. With few drivers and low stock, we were not once able to order.

When we were down to maybe 5 days, we had a moment where we said, "Alright. We need to go figure this out." I swallowed my pride, went to the community office, and on the way ran into truck unloading stuff. I asked how to buy it. Turns out it was a truck for Haidilao, a pretty well known hotpot chain. The lady just gave me a giant bag of rice, greens, and potatoes, for free, and said don't worry about it. I insisted on paying something, and she eventually charged me a pretty fair price overall. While this would be good for a few days, I still went to the community office, who got us in on the group buy. Basically you sign up for the vegetable set, the meat set, etc.. Then a few days later you get it. Of course there is no choice in the matter, but it was alright. I got to learn how to cook vegetables I had never heard of before, like celtuce and water bamboo (look them up if you'd like, pretty interesting).

Now I will say, for us, things were boring but smooth sailing after that. In fact, the aforementioned veggie shop in my last blog opened around that time. That was joined by another 5 or 6 shops, so really you had everything you needed in our compound - shops just run out of apartments or in front of them. This time and before it were also where the not so great stories you saw in the news came out, about people not having food. Is it because they were out of options, or because they tried to do it themselves like we did and failed? I don't know. But also around that time, we started to get lots of government care packages. I will say this - this is the only time in my life I ever felt worried that I would not be able to eat. I knew it would not be dire - there are like 5000 people in my community - but I was embarrassed I was going to have to ask people for help. It turns out it was not a big deal at all. Like when I went to the community office, their attitude was more like "Oh, you finally finished your ramen noodles! We've been waiting for you!" I can only hope everyone else was as lucky as we were. Still, it left an impression on me. I'm not going to turn into a hoarder or anything, I still hate having things in my apartment. But for the rest of my life, I probably will keep a little more food on hand than I would in the past.

Anyway, these group buys, work care packages, and government care packages, were of course, giant. And the days they came were a big chore. Basically, we had to wash, chop, and freeze as much as we could. Everything that wouldn't fit in the freezer, we'd need to plan how to eat it before it went bad. Basically in addition to my regular full time job (which was fortunately more relaxed now), Ella and I had another full time job as kitchen managers. Choosing meals around "what random ingredients will go bad first" is not great. I think for a month, I never got to choose what I wanted to eat over what I had to eat. To be honest I still get annoyed by cooking, although I expect that will pass once I get tired of takeout every day.

And that was our life for a while. We basically worked, did kitchen stuff, and I snuck in some video games. Every 48 hours, the nucleic acid test workers came by and called out your building with a megaphone. You'd go down, scan your code, and get a mouth swab. I took this time to throw out some trash and go for a 20 minute walk, just for some sunlight and exercise. We'd also feed and play with the stray cats around the community. About a week before the end, they came by and said we could go out tomorrow for a few hours to go to the grocery. Ella asked me to go first. Going out that day was surreal. Everything was still shut down, and a city of 25 million was surprisingly empty. Still, it was refreshing that everything was the same, and it really improved my mood a lot. A few days later, Ella got her chance. But it turns out it was not as necessary, because just a few days after that, they announced that tomorrow, everything was over.

And that was that. Now, things are not 100% back to normal. For one, you cannot dine in restaurants, although many have set up outdoor tables. You need to get regular tests, because to go anywhere or do anything, you need to scan your code. If it has been more than 72 hours, sorry. The only place you're allowed in is home. Fortunately, it is quite convenient to get tested. There are booths every block or two, and even our community does it twice a day. Some are 24 hours. It takes like 5 minutes to stop on your way, and it is free. The first day we were free, luckily enough, was Children's Day. That means it was a day off for me. I went downtown, got Five Guys, and basically walked for hours. I even got to meet a friend for coffee. That evening, we went to a bar, which was again, surreal. It looked like it always had, but I know that everyone was in the same situation as me, that this was the first time they've been out in months. Anyway, over the past two weeks, things have felt surprisingly normal, almost like the lockdown was a distant memory. We even had our 4/8 year anniversary (4 years married, 8 since we met), where we got to eat some great pizza and go around the city.

So, that leads us to today. What have I learned? Well, like I said before, I will stock a little more food than I did. Also, after the first few weeks, Ella and I are surprisingly good at being in isolation. At the beginning I was pretty bummed out, and I got sad here and there when they said there was a new case in our community (which turned out to not matter at all). But overall, we dealt with it really well - especially Ella. She is a rock, and I don't think it bothered her at all. We didn't get too sick of each other, and the few times we got on each other's nerves we'd just talk about it. I think the biggest lesson I learned was do not set a date in your mind that things will be over - because it is soul crushing when you're wrong. I think this was far more impactful a time for Ella. It reminds me of when I was stuck in my apartment in Vietnam, where I looked at my life and said "Hm.. I should be with Ella." She looked at her life and decided teaching teenagers is not for her. So she quit her job after this semester, and is taking her life in a completely new direction. I don't think she knows what that direction is. Then again, I was a BA Psych major turned IT tech turned kids teacher, so I certainly didn't know either. She has some ideas that sound very exciting, and I am very proud of her for making the jump.

Whew! That was a lot. There weren't many photos of that time for obvious reasons. But here's what I have, which seems to consist mostly of stray cats.