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Cormorant Birds, Scroll Paintings, and a Celebrity in the Antique Market
China | Guilin + Shanghai | March 2005
Flying into Guilin, I understood for the first time why Chinese landscape painting looks the way it does. Those mountains aren't stylized or romanticized. They're real. Flying in and seeing them rise up from every direction, green and craggy and half-wrapped in mist, was like being lowered into a Chinese scroll painting. We had been waiting for this version of China the whole trip.
Our first evening we took an optional trip to see a demonstration of Cormorant fishing, a practice that has been going on for hundreds of years. The birds' lifespans can reach 25 to 30 years, and they typically work with the same family their entire lives. A string is tied loosely around their necks so they can dive and catch fish but cannot fully swallow them. The fish are collected into a bucket and the birds go back in. Fishing traditionally happens at night, and we were freezing watching it, but I loved every minute. There's something about the relationship between these fishermen and their birds, the way the fishermen talked to them while they worked, that felt like watching something ancient and precise and quietly extraordinary.
The next day was our boat tour of the Li River, four hours through scenery that our photos genuinely cannot do justice to. The mountains kept appearing and disappearing and reappearing in different configurations as we moved, like they were showing off. We stopped at a small village at the end for shopping, which is always my portion of any itinerary to look forward to. At a stall there we found beautiful handmade scroll artwork from local artists. An elderly man invited Matt to come see more pieces behind his shop and we followed him through to his home, where he had a whole collection of things he wanted to show us. He wanted Matt to take a picture of the two of us together, and then of course how could we possibly not buy something after that.
We also visited a cave nearby and then a saltwater pearl factory, which sounds like a strange pairing and it was, but the pearl factory had the most beautiful baby I have ever seen in my life. You'll have to trust me on that until you see the pictures.
Guilin was our exhale. After Beijing and Xi'an, it was the softer, more painterly side of China that let us slow down and just look.
Shanghai was a different kind of surprise: it felt European. The architecture along the Bund, the general energy of the city, the way it carried itself, all felt more Paris or London than anything we'd experienced in the previous two weeks. If it weren't for the absolutely extraordinary numbers of bicycles everywhere you looked, you might briefly forget where you were.
We decided to break from the tour group on our last day and go fully solo, which turned out to be completely the right call. We started at the Bund, watching ballroom dancers and people doing Tai Chi along the river in the morning. Then we visited the Chinese Gardens, which are exactly as beautiful as their reputation suggests: classical, precise, peaceful.
Then came our great antique market adventure. We had the hotel write down the address for a local antique market and took a taxi. The driver dropped us on a street corner and pointed. No market visible. We walked around. Still no market. I flagged down a couple of passersby with a smile and my piece of paper. They pointed in the same direction as the driver. So we committed: down a narrow alley with laundry hanging overhead and bicycles leaning against every wall. Then we turned a corner and there it was, stalls on both sides of a neighborhood street, completely tucked away, completely wonderful. We found some beautiful old Chinese carved wood pieces and I was very happy.
Then Matt grabbed my arm. "That's Katie Couric." I looked. It was absolutely Katie Couric, standing in the middle of an antique market stall in Shanghai. Matt said "no way." I was positive. We became complete groupies immediately. We hovered near her stall, struck up a conversation with one of the women she was with, and asked if Katie would mind taking a photo with us. The woman said she hadn't been recognized all day and wouldn't mind at all. Her husband worked with Katie and they lived in Shanghai. We spent several minutes talking about our China experiences and she suggested other places to see. Then Katie came out and was genuinely lovely. She had someone take two pictures just in case one didn't turn out. She chatted with us and shook our hands before getting into a van. In an antique market. In Shanghai. The world is a very small and occasionally very surprising place.
The rest of the afternoon was serious shopping at a multi-level market that sold everything imaginable: purses, luggage, jewelry, sunglasses, DVDs for a dollar. Everyone coming at you saying "Ello, Ello, Ello!" as they followed you from stall to stall with their photo albums of merchandise. We bargained for everything, which takes real time and patience but is its own kind of fun when you get the hang of it. We bought enough that we had to purchase an additional suitcase just to get it all home.
We met up with the tour group for a final dinner and river cruise through the illuminated city at night, which was a beautiful way to close out what had been one of the most significant trips of our lives. China itches at you long after you leave. There's so much more to see. We've talked about going back ever since.
The Wall Changed Everything: Beijing, Xi'an, and the Trip That Made Us Bold
China | Beijing + Xi'an | March 2005
China was the trip that changed everything. Not just for how extraordinary the sights were, but for what it did to us as travelers. Before China, we were adventurous in a comfortable sort of way. After China, we were bold. It's the trip that handed us a new passport identity and made every trip after it possible.
We booked a guided tour because frankly we weren't sure we could manage China on our own. In hindsight I think we could have, but the tour gave us something valuable: a framework and a guide named Flora, who went by her American name to make it easier on us.
Our Beijing guide was Michael, same story. They were warm and generous with their time and their country, and the warmth turned out to be the defining characteristic of every Chinese person we met.
We landed in Beijing late at night and I remember standing in front of a Starbucks in the airport waiting for other group members to arrive, thinking: my Starbucks really does follow me everywhere. The hotel was a genuine surprise. Luxury by Chinese standards, and the rooms were lovely. The beds, on the other hand, were like sleeping on cement. I'm not exaggerating. I plopped down that first night and was immediately jarred awake by the sheer hardness of the mattress. This was not a one-hotel issue. This was an all-of-China issue. We slept on concrete for two weeks and called it character building.
Beijing opened with its greatest hits and they delivered without fail. The Forbidden City is sprawling in a way no photograph prepares you for. Tiananmen Square is the largest public square in the world, and you feel the weight of its history in your chest when you stand in it. Both are extraordinary. But the moment I keep coming back to when I think about Beijing is the Great Wall.
As the bus pulled up, Matt looked out the window at the Wall going straight up the mountain and said flatly: "No way. I'm not climbing up that." And look, I understood the instinct. It literally went vertical. The steps were uneven, worn down by centuries of foot traffic, and steep in a way that makes your calves burn just looking at them.
But I climbed it. I made it to the top. And when I turned around and looked out over everything below me, something shifted. I wasn't dripping sweat. I wasn't gasping. My journey toward being healthier had been real and slow and sometimes discouraging, and standing on top of the Great Wall of China was when it became undeniable. It was the proudest moment of my life up to that point. And for the first time in the history of Matt and Erin traveling together, he was the one struggling to keep up with me. Not the other way around. I won't pretend that wasn't satisfying.
Xi'an is where Matt had been mentally living since we booked this trip. The Terra Cotta Warriors were his thing, his anticipation, his personal Great Wall equivalent. And they did not disappoint him.
The backstory makes them even more astonishing. Made more than 2,000 years ago as an afterlife army, the tomb was later robbed, burned, and destroyed multiple times. Most of the warriors were found in pieces. What you're looking at now is the result of incredibly painstaking reassembly, thousands of fragments fitted back together to rebuild an army. They're beautiful and powerful to see. We were also lucky enough to be there on a day when one of the original farmers who discovered them in the 1970s was there signing books. He and his fellow discoverer received new bicycles and government jobs for their trouble. For finding one of the greatest archaeological discoveries in human history. History is sometimes deeply unfair.
Here's what I treasure most about Xi'an though, and it has nothing to do with the main attraction. When we arrived at the hotel, most of our tour group immediately wanted to rest. Matt and I looked at each other. We were in China. We did not come to China to rest.
We went for a walk. Our hotel was not in a touristy area, which meant what we found was real Xi'an. People stopped dead in their tracks to stare at us as we made our way down the street. We found out later that many of them had never seen a white person in real life before. That thought lodged itself in my brain and stayed there.
We turned down a narrow alley where people were cooking on the street and selling goods from doorway-sized shops. They were happy to pose for pictures, excited to show us what they were making. My face hurt from smiling so much. Then a group of men ahead of us, and one called out "Hello." I said hello back. Within thirty seconds there was a crowd gathering around Matt, fascinated by his camera, wanting to see it, wanting their picture taken. I had one second of panic thinking he was being mobbed before I realized they weren't hostile at all. They were delighted. These were people who wanted to be in the photographs we would take home to America. That realization moved me more than almost anything else on the whole trip.
That was our only real China experience on the tour, away from the coached and curated sites. Real people, real streets, real curiosity. Unforgettable doesn't come close.
Xi'an also has an ancient City Wall that you can walk along the top of, which is genuinely remarkable, and the Wild Goose Pagoda for good measure. But I'll be honest: that walk in the alley is the Xi'an I remember.