Guangxi Province Part Two (Gollum's Cave, "Mao"zi, Secret Garden)

If you have not view Part One of my Guilin Trip, please exit this entry and read that one first. Otherwise you will not know what I am talking about.

As you may recall, the mountains of Guangxi Province jut out of their surroundings more like individual teeth than as rows of teeth, like the peaks I am used to in Montana. While the outer beauty of these "teeth" cannot be missed, the part that many tourists fail to explore are the subterranean adventures that these mountains hold at their core. Just outside of Yangshuo, we visited the "Real Water Cave." Evidently there is another "Water Cave" that consists of beautifully colored lights shining off cavern walls with a paved path through the twisting and turning rock formations. However, the "Real" water cave looks more like Gollum's hideout from "The Hobbit". The picture below shows the low entrance to the cave. The lighting in our cave consisted of only bare, white lightbulbs. Even so, the coloring of the rock could sometimes be quite dramatic.
As I said, the "Real" water cave is an adventure. We used steel ladders, and knotted ropes to ascend and descend into and out of different underground chambers. After hiking underground for about forty-five minutes, squeezing through some fairly tight spaces, we came to the moment of truth. In front of us stretched a tunnel one could only pass through by wiggling along on one's belly. If we passed through this hole, we would exit the cave in only two minutes. Otherwise, we would have to hike-climb-wiggle our way back through forty-five minutes of caves again. We chose the tube. In this picture, Sarah Day just begins to emerge from the tunnel. Approximately thirty feet long, the space felt like what being birthed must feel like, except that we had to do all the work. No one was pushing us out the other side. I took my helmet off, because it made it nearly impossible to see ahead of myself. I just pushed it along in front of me and slithered along on my belly. The nice thing was that the dry rock really did not make us dirty. Only the wet rock did. This tunnel was all dry rock.
The photo below illustrates how precipitous some of the descents are. While the chain railing and the stone steps certainly aided in going down, one should not be fooled about how safe this descent was. One false move and it would have been very easy to tumble a few dozen feet at a time. Because we would end up walking through knee-deep water, we had been given sandals to wear. Needless to say, these did not provide ideal traction in many places. We were glad for the sandals when we finally reached the underground springs, but until then, our feet slipped and slided up and down the narrow winding passageways.
The Chinese words for hat or cap is "maozi", pronounced "mow-dzuh". The most famous "maozi" in China is the one Chairman Mao always used to wear, a green cap with a red star. This creates a Chinese pun--"Mao"zi. We all purchased one of these famous caps and here we are presenting our new chapeaus. I personally do not like this photo of me, but the girls seemed to have difficulty remaining serious long enough for a photo. This is the only one where we are all relatively somber looking. (However, Sarah, on top, does still have a bit of a smirk.) The interesting thing about our hats was the number of people who asked to have their picture taken with the four "Maoist" foreigners. Chinese, Japanese, and Korean tourists all asked for pictures of us in our Chinese "maozi." Finally, I jokingly said to one group of Koreans who requested a photo, "Nimen gei women er-shi kuai" (You give us twenty kuai). They laughed, and we had fun posing.
As I stated in my previous entry about our trip to Guangzi Province, mystery surrounds the terrain of this province. As we walked through downtown Yangshuo, we came to this public park--we paid nine kuai to enter but everyone else seemed to come and go as they pleased--that had a path wandering through it. The path lead to flower gardens, ponds, and some caves in the hillsides. A wall stood around one particular garden, and its entrance was gated and locked. I said it reminded me of "The Secret Garden," and this is a shot of the garden we could not enter. I have read enough literature to be familiar with fairies, but I have never been one to believe in such creatures. However, if they did exist, I believe this garden would be where some would reside. There is a quite, dreaminess about the space that might convince someone that if he entered, he might find Rip Van Winkle, or he might not come out for thirty or so years. There are things in China that seem decades behind the West, but this place simply seemed beyond time.