China

Grey Teeth
Theres no particularly good place to start when describing a new country. China is big. The people arent, but their friendliness is.
The climbing.
Limestone casts jut out of the countryside as if I was standing in a dragons mouth. The climbing is acrobatic, technical, and super long. Belaying is relaxing. Yesterday I watched a woman work her field, have lunch, seed it, fertilise it and then get grandma help turn it over.
Its like im inside a video game.

Longer
Evan and I are in Yangshuo (pronounced with a weird south coast chinese accent – young-zshow) or something like that. Its in the south west part of china and is seriously like those tacky bamboo pictures in the cheap Tar Kee duck inn in Dickson.
It even smells as good, but is way way cheaper. Dinner here, 3 meals, beer and rice is topping out at 20Y which is about $3.50 aud. So im thinking we are probably just going to get nice and fat.. and fit.
We went to a place called the white mountain today. We had the whole place to ourselves… a 100m long at the base 40m high beautiful limestone wall, the backdrop was rice paddies and orange trees in bloom. Kinda like Ceause but without all the traffic, eurotrash and polish. The routes we did were overhung, long and sustained and…. well if i had any more strength and water would still be out there.
We even have a beautiful pink fuzzy heart lamp besides our bed.

Ee
In China, ee is actually a word. It means one. Well, Im not sure that is how you spell it, but thats how its said.
On our second rest day its decided to rain. Really nice rain. Soft, im glad i have an enormous book rain. Its good, it cleans the street and forces people off them which means you get to have a really good look around. Yangshuo is a bit of a tourist destination for Chinese and foreigners, you can understand why though, the river Li is super beautiful and the surrounding casts are awesome.
So, some climbing news. We have visited a couple of other crags. The routes are going up so fast around here that the ‘new’ guide (one month old) is already out of date. Its cool but, as theyres a book in which all the new routes are put and you jsut hang out in the cafe, copy them out and go off again. The abundance of unbolted beauties is amazing. Some walls are sooo impressive, but no ones had the time to put anything on them. Im sure it will happen though as there is a pretty commited group of climbers chomping at the cause.
Yesterday we hired bikes for $0.75 and rode to a place called the Egg. It is an egg of limestone with routes on all sides and one even right over the top. The bikes were hysterical. Crappy chinese quality about the right size for an eight year old kid. Still, mine was a silver beauty complete with front basket and bell. I felt guilty taking this ‘lady bike’ off road and through the rice fields to the base of the climbing. It was a 20min ride, and a good warm up to the super long routes. Everything here is a rope stretcher. Im thankful for my big legs that I can jam in tufas, and get hands free rests. On the way back, i was thinking how good it wasnt to be getting in a car and driving for 3.5hrs home.
Home is a funny room above the climbing bar. It has more storage nooks than we have stuff and a beautiful view onto a dirty roof… oh but if you squat at the left hand edge you get to see the peaks. The climbers we have met are all super nice and theyres even been job offers. Theyres so much potential here, its paralysing. But thats another story.
So many stories. The old 4th generation dude with a buck tooth the size of a domino, the bananas that are a different species, the way they make houses, the farms, the things people eat.

Team Heaven
and no, we didn’t nickname ourselves.
Its a bad combination of Chin-glish and everyone’s accents. Language is fun. Especially tonal language. The same word means dog, balloon and potato depending on how you sing it. I think Kareoke would get fun.
The best thing here is the packaging of the food. Apart from the super weird graphics, the text is the best, riddled with fantastic spelling mistakes and incredible combinations of wrong words. Yeah and they package chicken toes…
So, i’m drifting.
The Chinathon continues happily, with our bellies well accustomed to noodles for breakfast. The taste of their bread is still hard to come at, if you squish it, it turns into a putty that you could build a dam with.
I am addicted to bubble tea (basically sugary liquid with solid jelly balls) and these fat bananas that are phat! they are like 3 times as wide as a sugar banana and taste like they’ve been bred with an orange.
The routes here continue to get better the higher you get, and harder you get; with crazy foot jams and hidden holds. And the potential for new climbs is huge. We did a hike today that took us past hundred meter faces that were completely blank.. access issues maybe, but nothing a machete and a fist full of bolts wouldn’t fix.

Endings
Theres always that time on a holiday when it seems that it will never end. And then there is the morning that you realise youre leaving. Thats today. China is a place ide recommend. But I cant actually say that i saw more than a 20km radius… a bit sad I know, but three weeks in one spot gives a nice bite of what somewhere else is really like.
I got to see a woman work her fields and see them sprout. I learnt how to say a few nessecary things in Chinese and count with my hands. I know what Bowzers are (incc spelling) and what a dog meat hot pot looks like. I learnt where the best breakfast carts are located and trained my stomach to eat meat for breakfast. The climbing has been great, the friends Ive made greater and the milk bubble tea the greatest.
If you climb, this place has so much potential for development and great great fun; and if youre dont, I rekon it would be a great place to hire a bike for 75c and bump through the countryside.