HELLO! BAMBOO!

The Li River slices across the northeastern corner of Guangxi Province like a knife, quite literally. The regional geological makeup is predominantly limestone, meaning that the mighty Li and its tributaries dig and cut through the ground, leaving what is known as Karst formations, basically tall, sharp fingers of limestone jutting up out of the flat, fertile farmland. Needless to say, it is quite beautiful here, and many people travel to see the river and surrounding topography. And so it was that we found ourselves in the "laid back" atmosphere of touristy Yangsuo.

Yanguso is the quintessential tourist town; the main district consists of several pedestrian streets lined wall to wall western bars, restaurants, souvenir stands, the whole kit and kaboodle. In many ways, this was a nice break for us, where we could read menus, eat some familiar food, generally communicate with people, and make some foreign friends. In other ways, the town was severely irritating, and has given me a new and mortal fear of the word "hello".

Now, anywhere you have a high concentration of travelers gathered in one place to see or experience something, it is of course natural that you are going to have a high concentration of people hoping to sell, swindle or otherwise capitalize in some way on said travellers. That is just something you have to accept and deal with as a tourist. In Yangsuo, there is certainly no shortage of these people. Every time you turn around, there is somebody trying to interest you in everything from vintage Mao pins to postcards to memory cards to cut-outs of your own facial profile. The universal tactic to to draw your attention to the availability of these goods and services is a loudly yelled "HELLO!". This single word is using to fulfill literally dozens of meanings, none of which have anything to do with what the actual English word denotes. A yelled "HELLO!" could mean anything from "please look at and purchase my amazing postcards/flutes/memorycards/buddha statues" to "you are going the wrong way, follow me and I will show you the way to the river and try to get you let me take for a cruise in my bamboo boat", depending on the context.

Those with a particularly high proficiency in hello-speak will modify and clarify their exclamations by adding a noun at the end of the "HELLO!". For example, if someone selling bananas is particularly clever, they will not only shout "HELLO!", but the much more expressive "HELLO! BANANA!"

Now, as everyone comes to town to see the river and the rock formations along it, there is understandably quite a developed industry of river cruises to take in the full beauty along the most scenic sections. There are large, official flat bottomed boats with seating areas and observation decks, but these tend to run a little on the expensive side. The local entrepreneurs have found a brilliant product to fill the demand for low budget river cruises. Thus the booming bamboo raft ride industry in Yangsuo. Basically, to be a bamboo raft guide, what you need to do is strap roughly 8-10 large pieces of bamboo together, bolt on a couple of chairs, hook up what usually appears to be some sort of lawn mower engine, and shout "HELLO! BAMBOO!" at every foreigner who passes by. You can't come within 50 meters of the river without being bombarded by potential bamboo captains. Even if you make it very clear that you just want to stroll along the river, they are always convinced that they can make you understand that what you actually want to do is slide down the river on their questionable craft.

Even though the bamboos are about half the price of the big boats, they are still fairly expensive, so Taylor and I decided to explore the territory on land routes, powered by our own locomotion. On Saturday we opted for a bike ride along one of the main Li tributaries. After about 20 minutes, we noticed that this one woman was keeping basically the same pace as us, even when we stopped to take pictures. Soon she was "HELLO!"ing us if we made a wrong turn, and after that she was basically leading us down tiny tracks through villages and even offering to take our picture. Inevitably, we arrived at the main river crossing, and she started in with the "HELLO! BAMBOO!"ing. She and about 6 others were sure they needed to take us, bikes and all, back down the river on one of their streamlined, two-seater, no-motor bamboos. We politely declined. It took a while, but we finally convinced the crew that we were capable of making it back to town on our own.

On Sunday, Taylor and I walked the most scenic section of the Li river proper, and though we didn't see too many people, they all greeted us with a hearty "HELLO! BAMBOO!". A woman harvesting fruit in her orchard, a man walking his gigantic water buffaloes down the path, these people all seemed to think it was pertinent for them to drop whatever unimportant task they were currently doing and whisk us downstream on their bamboo. Apparently everyone in this region has an extra bamboo laying around.

In town, the "HELLO!" is used not just for drawing your attention, but also for general conversation and bargaining. The haggling works like this, if you show any interest in an item, the vendor will immediately "HELLO!" you and write down a price that is roughly twice what you should pay on a piece of paper. You then make your counter offer on the same sheet until an acceptable price is reached for both parties. If you walk away from the bargaining table, the vendor will chase after you with desperate "HELLO!"s pointing at a lower circled price.

All of this hello ranting aside, I actually quite enjoyed Yangsuo and the Karst countryside. I am just warning any friends and family that if you ever address me using the word "hello" again, I may instinctively bolt in the opposite direction.