Shuhe to Beijing

Shuhe is an ancient town about 10km away from the ancient town of Lijiang. It is supposed to be smaller and much less tourist focused than Lijiang so we thought it would be the perfect place to spend a couple of days before our four flights to get us to Europe.

We had made a booking online for a guesthouse, but we had trouble locating it on our map. So we got ourselves in the general vacinity of where we thought it was, and then wandered the back alleyways looking for it. After half an hour we had had no success, so we went to a travel agent and asked if they knew where it was. They put the address in their phone and kindly showed us where it was on their map.  Only problem was it was all in Chinese characters. So we made our best guess, about 2-4 block away, and set out looking again. Another 30 minutes went by and we still hadn't found it. We tried one place that looked exactly like the entrance photo in the booking but went by a different name, but the man inside said it wasn't right. So after another 15 mihutes Kate approached a man who looked rather young and hip thinking those were great signs that he would speak English. He didn't. But he had a friend out back who was visiting from Hong Kong who did. After the young man had given her directions we followed this woman back through the winding alleyways. She got a little confused when she thought we should be there, so she called the number on our reservation. The man at the end of the line said he had no record of our booking. She shrugged her shoulders, said she was sorry, and trotted off back to her friend. So there we were, left outside the place we had tried earlier and we thought it would be a good place to start asking around about prices to find anywhere to stay. We enquired to the same man again and he told us to sit down in the courtyard and wait. We were brought water and freshly cut mango which we had barely touched when the manager entered, showed us our booking on her phone, confirmed the room we wanted, and set us up in our room - the one we had originally booked. Apparently the first time we came in we just spoke to a guest who knew nothing so sent us on our way.

Still feeling tired and depleted Kate spent the remainder of the afternoon snoozing. After returning from dinner our guesthouse manager took us through a bit of a tea ceremony and introduced us to the special tea of Lijiang. When we enquired as to why she wasn't drinking she said she didn't drink tea, only coffee. Kate got pretty excited at the mention of coffee, and the next morning the manager took Kate out for her first batista coffee in three months.

Unfortunately, the same day Kate started developing more severe stomach pains and was losing energy fast. We quickly threw all our gear out of our panniers and set off on a mission to find a post shop to send some unneeded goods back home. With little success in Shuhe we headed towards Lijiang. Everything we had read about sending mail from China suggested you needed extensive ID and would have to fill out loads of forms. To be honest, it was just as easy as sending a package from New Zealand. There were a few banned items we weren't allowed to send - rechargeable batteries, iPad - but it was a pretty painless exercise. Fingers crossed it arrives home in the next three months. Kate then slept for the rest of the day while Calvin sorted the bikes and joined the manager and some other guests for a free home cooked meal.

After another sleepless night and waking in more pain Kate decided to try to seek some drugs from a pharmacy. We weren't holding our breath though as all the pharmacies we had encountered in China had had strange alternative drugs and were less focused on Western medicines. However, when she asked the manager if she knew where we could go, the manager showed Kate the exact drugs she was after in her handbag. She then called her boyfriend and he drove us to a shopping mall in Lijiang where we quickly made our purchase. As the manager and her boyfriend (aptly named Zhou Yù and Zhou Yû - we can't hear the difference in their names) had been so good to us we offered to cook them dinner. So we set about making a feast. Zhou Yù found it hilarious the way we cut the food, and a number of times she asked if she could take over. Only once did we take her up on this offer when Calvin accidentally let the chicken stick to her nicely seasoned wok. Whoops.

Carefully burning the chicken to the wok. Note the really white feet and sock line! Pretty cool. Zhou Yù thought it was hilarious.

The massive feast! Zhou Yù (left) and boyfriend Zhou Yû (middle). Note the different tone over the u, really hard to pronunciation. 

Zhou Yù was a pretty special part of Shuhe for us, and we felt incredibly grateful for her hospitality. She owned a dog called Wangzi (Prince - pronounced Wong-zha) who she constantly let out of her sight and you could hear her at all hours of the day calling "Wangzi? Wangzi!". She called him her boyfriend, although he was very obedient, and he did many tricks including eating green beans from her mouth - that one was pretty vile.

From Lijiang we flew back to Kunming where we had planned a rest day to enjoy the city before we flew to Beijing, Frankfurt and then Tallinn. Our rest day didn't end up happening as at 6:30am Kate had had enough of the pain and decided to go and see a doctor at the hospital. This was  one of the greatest experiences we had in China. Where our hospital system requires you to visit a GP, get referred to a specialist, go to your appointment at a specified time, go get booked tests done and return to the specialist at another appointed time, the Chinese just let you walk in to the hospital and queue up to see a doctor who then tells you to immediately go to other areas of the hospital to queue up for tests and then return to them. You can literally get a diagnosis and be on the way to treatment in a day. However, because we walked in to the madhouse looking completely lost and confused (and Kate was in tears) we were given our own special guide to take us around and translate for us - none other than a Neurologist. We really felt like we were given special treatment, always bumped to the front of the line and having a specialist as our guide. Three tests were done, three visits to the specialists and we were sent on our merry way hoping we had the solutions.

Our Neurologist and translator (left), abdominal specialist (right)
and three Gynecologists. I think that should cover us!

We were then set to fly out to Beijing early the next morning. When our taxi showed up it wouldn't take us because of our bikes, so the hotel called another taxi, and with very little time to spare the young driver hooned his way to the airport laughing when Kate cheered him on when he honked at fellow drivers and passed them at great speed. It was all unnecessary however as our flight was delayed four hours. After finally getting to Beijing we settled down for a night sleeping in the terminal, ready for our flight to Frankfurt the next morning. Leaving China hadn't been the calm reflective process we had hoped for, but that night in the terminal we did reflect on the fact that we would miss China and all its quirks we had come accustomed to.