I’ve got a fair bit of black ink on my fingers this morning as I’ve just returned from a lesson in calligraphy which was fantastic. Our tutor collected us from the hostel and led us through the streets to an underground workshop where a row of newspaper covered trestle tables were arranged. We all sat as the tutor poured black ink into a number of small dishes on the table in front of us. On the tables were large A3 sized pieces of very thin tissue paper (almost like crepe) which had feint red grids on.
One by one the guide went to each of us and wrote the number 1 to 10 and 0 in English. We copied these familiar numbers using long elegant strokes from bulbous brushes which ended in a fine point. It took a little while to get used to handling the brush, it was tricky to gauge the amount of pressure I could apply as the paper would soak up a huge amount before dispersing it through he thin layers, creating a blob mess. Lines that started neat and sharp took on a fuzzy smudged appearance. Perseverance led to me mastering this hurdle fairly quickly and I was absorbed in this fine art, I think I actually had my tongue sticking out the side of my mouth for most of the time.
We learnt to write in Chinese characters meaning ‘sun, ‘moon’ and ‘stream’ in addition to writing our names which appears to be based on tonal syllables rather than any obvious literal meaning. I’m unclear what my name meant but the tutor stuck up his thumb saying, ‘its goooooood!’
The rest of the morning I spent visiting the large park in the centre of Yangshuo, sitting by the river watching touts drum up business from other tourists. Later I had a couple of terrible games of pool with Victor, it was so hot and humid the cue wouldn’t slide properly through my hand. Prior to this I had told Victor that I was pretty good at pool but he surprised me by being a demon at the game, turns out he has a great skill in many things including sleight of hand card tricks, impressive!
We grabbed our kit from the hostel and filed into a privately booked coach to leave this wonderful place. Our next leg of the journey was another overnight train, 14 hours of bunking it. The coach ride was extremely cheap, I recall it worked out o £15 to take all 16 of us for a 2 hour ride.
I’m currently sat in Guilin
Many people are stocking up on noodle pots prior to boarding the train, seems to be the staple diet in China
 |
| The noodle cart awaits |
Earlier we visited the market to buy provisions as we wouldn’t be able to source breakfast or dinner whilst on the train – apart from small trolley which occasionally passed us in the corridors. I had bought a whole heap of junk food – the shop had a huge amount of brightly coloured, ghastly looking foodstuffs, none of which appeared to hold too much nutritional value. I too bought noodles in a pot, shrimp flavour in addition to some coffee flavoured milk tea and honey injected dates (they removed the stones and replaced with honey – genius idea!)
I almost forgot to mention the Lotus Vegetarian Restaurant in Yangshuo – simply the best meal I’ve had on the whole China trip, delicious veggie dishes beautifully presented and using ingredients in an imaginative way in amazing traditional restaurant settings – dirt cheap too. I recall some veggie meatball style delights, taro and sweet potato, gorgeous marinated tofu and a very delicious bottle of Heineken lager.
