Things didn't start too well when Yu Bo's father (Yu Bo being my friend's friend) crashed the car three minutes after setting out. Apparently, turning late, suddenly, without looking and without indicating does have consequences; namely, Yu Bo's father having to fork out 3,500RMB to the taxi driver who crashed into the rear side door, and the yoghurt that my friend was eating at the time being sprayed all over the inside of the car and us. On the plus side, no injuries and the car we were driving was an insurance company car.
It was about a four-hour drive along the spanking new expressway to Xixia, a county in Western Henan and home of Yu Bo and family. On the way, the car was making several unpleasant noises, and her father had a habit of answering the phone, sending texts, drinking tea and gobbing out the window – mostly simultaneously - which made my friend and I slightly uneasy, and pleased to get to Xixia safely. On the way, the first interesting thing I found out was that my friend, Dong Hongjie, who I have known for over two years and was my Chinese tutor, is surnamed 董（dong, 3rd tone) not 东 (dong, 1st tone), as I have been calling him this entire time.
In the evening, we went to eat huoguo (hotpot) with her parents and her younger cousin, and then afterwards went for a stroll round the main square. Xixia is quite small (by Chinese standards), so, as with most people from Xian, the thing I mainly noticed was how relatively clean the air was. The main square is like most main squares - a big mass of concrete in front of the main government offices, adorned with fountains, which is pretty stupid in a country with severe water shortages.
The second day was 1 October, and the 60th anniversary of the founding of New China. It had been talked about for weeks, and the highlight was the 'da yue bing' (military parade), which all my colleagues at work were looking forward to. It was pretty interesting stuff, rows after rows of soldiers and performers going past Tianamen Square. Unfortunately the organizational abilities present do not seem to have filtered down to the company I work in.
In the afternoon, we went to Yu Bo's house for lunch. I had previously asked her what her father did for a job, and she said she didn't know, which is the answer I get the most when asking people what their parents do for a living. They live on the outskirts of the main town in a fairly big and well equipped, if old, house, which told me that they were not too short of cash. Her mother's younger brother's wife was also there.
We had seen her earlier at the hotel, and the first thing she said to me (and my friend, incidentally) was, 'Ooh, you're good looking". I should explain that Western people hear this all the time. I've seen some of the ugliest, fattest, most physically deformed people in the Western world being called 'hen shuai' (very good looking). And absolutely everyone, Chinese or foreign, fat or thin, supermodel or Ann Widdecombe, get called the female equivalent (meinu). It's difficult to formulate a suitable response to such vapish sentiments, particularly as she was quite attractive but was also married and had her five-year-old son with her. Anyway, lunch was excellent, and the dishes plentiful. Her parents were incredibly generous the entire trip. Most Chinese tend to think Western people, with the so-called 'AA system', or splitting the bill, are tightfisted and a bit weird.
After lunch, we went to Shimen Lake just north of the main town. It's a big lake formed by a dam, and surrounded by amazing, steep, rugged, tree-lined mountains of the sort seen in 'typical' Chinese paintings, and which were the main feature of our four days in Henan. Showing a sensible disregard for health and safety, the driver of the 10-seater boat allowed the three of us to stand outside on the front section, giving us a perfect view of the scenery and a perfect opportunity for my teacher friend to recite poetry and words of love and praise to the Motherland, which we had heard in the morning on TV.
The next day, the five of us - me, Hongjie, Yu Bo and her parents - went to Longtan Gou, about an hour's drive north of Xixia. As happened with most of the places we went, we didn't need a ticket because Yo Bo's father wangled our way in for free. During the entire time in Henan, we were constantly bumping into people her parents knew, which made things a lot smoother (and cheaper). And with all the places we went to not even near to being mentioned in Lonely Planet, it shows the value of travelling with locals.
Longtan Gou is a scenic spot, with water flowing down a ravine in the moutains, forming pools and waterfalls. Fortunately, there weren't too many people, and so we were able to enjoy the spectacular scenery. A series of steps and stairs wound their way up and through the ravine, passing about 15 pools in total, all with crystal clear water and clear blue skies overhead. It seemed the perfect place to go for a dip, but I would have been the only person, and I'd rather people took photos of the scenery, not me. As usual at these places, there were rocks noted for a resemblance to something or someone. I don't really get this (perhaps in the same way I don't get magic eyes), and I especially don't get the fairly considerable excitement bought on by a rock that looks vaguely like a fat pig.
With Yu Bo's mother setting the pace, we had to get moving quickly for lunch and then onwards another two hours or so in the car for whitewater rafting. The Chinese don't strike me as a particularly 'outdoorsy' people, and the rafting typified that. We were given yellow plastic bin liners to wear, and you could buy straw shoes for 3RMB to wear in the boat. Down by the waterside, old women were very insistently selling things that looked like bicycle pumps and cooking pots that you could use to get people wet with. And given that young children were allowed on the rafts as well, I wasn't expecting anything particularly stimulating. And so it proved, especially as after five minutes we stopped to buy some photographs that had been taken as we went over one of the very unrapid rapids.
However, back on the river and propelled by an old bloke in khaki uniform with a wooden pole, we became separated from the few other rafts on the river. It was very peaceful and pretty, despite the incessant wittering of my fellow crew. I asked if I could swim in the river, and was pleased to learn that I could. So I jumped in, closely followed by my friend who quickly realised that he probably needed a few more swimming lessons.
That was the first of several swims in the river that afternoon. The scenery was fantastic, tree-lined mountains rising high up in the cloudless blue sky, the water clear, calm and slow moving, and with no one else but our raft in sight. Several very pretty countryside houses were dotted along the river, their black tiles, white walls and crops around the house adding to the colourful scene. At one point, our raft stopped and the others got out and sat on the bank to allow our 'boatsman' to ferry a family across the river. They made their way slowly across, disembarked on the other side and disappeared off into the trees and up the mountain on the other side. I continued to drift contentedly on my way.
That evening, we had dinner in a restaurant, as we did for four of the five nights. Dinner at a restaurant is one of those things you probably learn about in Chinese culture courses, and it could perhaps be described as a big, pointy pain in the arse. Putting food from the dishes into other people's individual bowls (jia cai) is important, as is knocking glasses with the other people before drinking (jing jiu). When to do this, in what order, at what time, is something to be aware of.
My friend, and something of an advisor to me on all things Chinese, told me afterwards that for things like paying the bill, you'll only get a proper answer after four times of asking. For example, if you offer to pay the bill, you have to say it at least four times for the other person to consider it a genuine offer. He also told me that there is now something of a 'custom' in China these days, namely, that if you do really want to pay the bill, you'll pay during the course of the meal (ie, by excusing yourself to go to the bathroom when really you're going to pay the bill) instead of waiting until the end of the meal. There'll be a lot of perfect friendly jostling and discussions about "I'll get it", "No, I'll get it", "No, no, I insist, really". In some ways, it shows how genuinely hospitable Chinese people are. But to me it also feels like everything is a game, played on the surface, a riddle wrapped inside a dumpling inside a chop stick, where no-one really knows what is going on. And that's just dinner.
The next day, we found ourselves in a minivan and with another family (parents and one child) on our way to Neixiang, a small town containing the best preserved yamen, or ancient government office, in all of China. The yamen was where justice was administered, taxes collected and so on. It was certainly very impressive and pretty, the design showing the traditional Chinese attachment to symmetry, order and hierarchy. They also had a small show, showing how justice was administered, ancient style, which I failed to understand but certainly looked quite fun. The only disappointments were that most of the furniture had been destroyed during the Cultural Revolution, and Yu Bo's mother was again attempting to break her own Olympic record for sight-seeing.
After lunch, we went to what Xixia is probably most famous for - dinosaur fossil eggs. Unsurprisingly, it was complete rubbish. Dinosaurs are undoubtedly fascinating creatures, but there's only so much you can glean from looking at a few fossilised eggs through a window. The main building was inside a huge park, complete with plastic dinosaurs and naff piano music wafting out from speakers badly disguised as prehistoric foliage. Not that I could hear it, because we had one of Satan's children, ie, a tour guide, accompanying us. The spiel, rote-learned, spoken without any interest and directed into the caustic microphone, was enough to kill off any interest I might have had immediately.
For the final day, we drove for hours along a single-track road, then dirt track, deep inside the mountains. This was a new scenic mountain spot not yet officially opened, so there weren't too many many people again. The climb was fairly gentle, although two sections involved walking along a narrow walkway attached at right angles to a sheer cliff-face. The scenery all along was fantastic, the blues and greens a stark contrast and welcome change to Xian. On the top section were several pavilions and little walkways cut through the trees. Quite how they managed to get all the building materials up here is another thing. I could have quite easily stayed there the whole day, gazing across the peaks and valleys of China, but Yu Bo was going for the silver medal in sight-seeing, so we had to get going.
And that was that, a five-hour train journey the next day taking us back to Xian, and probably the last opportunity to go outside the city in a while.
