Yangshuo to Guangzhou

3-4 November

For my final day in Yangsuo I immersed myself in Chinese culture - taking myself for a calligraphy lesson and a Chinese cooking lesson.

The characters I thought I knew in Cantonese have their own slightly different Chinese versions, as well as completely different names so while I recognised the numbers I had no idea how to say them! Also another lesson learned is that my Chinese name is completely different in Mandarin to what it is in Chinese.

Mah Lei Lin in Madarin means Happiness and Longlife, not beautiful waterlily as it does in Cantonese. So to get the right meaning in Mandarin I guess I should be called Mei Zhong. All very confusing but at least I know how to write it all now.

I can also add GangBao (gun powder) chicken, steamed pork dumplings and deep fried eggplant stuffed with mince and vegetables to my cooking repetoire. Can't believe I made something that actually tasted delicious but our cooking teacher was quite the sergeant major who left very little room for error.

The most interesting and appalling part of the class was the trip to the farmer's market which I alluded to in an earlier blog. This time I braved the butchering section where the poor skinned dogs were hung up on hooks and the most unfortunate ones were in the process of being burned / beaten and their long, painful yelps will haunt me for a long time.

That evening, stuffed full our hand made cuisine we caught the bus to Guilin and our last overnight train to Guangzhou. The havoc and the Guangzhou train station made for frantic goodbyes to my fellow travellers before I found my driver and was introduced to the Media Village in the Asian Games Town about one hour of the city at Haibang.

Let the next adventure of the 16th asian Games begin!