Our reason for coming to Zhaoqing was to see the Seven Stars Crag
park, across the lake from town. We walked down to the water front
and were immediately met by touts waving maps of the park under our
noses. One in particular was persistent and followed us for quite
some time laughing at our inability to understand him. We found the
company, probably one of many, who run the boats across the lake and
bought our tickets. They are small little motor boats with a covered
section at the front to keep the boatman dry and an awning covering
the part where passengers sit.
It was a quick hop across the lake. We passed a
small pavilion along the way and a couple of people out in very
small canoe style boats The were incredibly narrow and they were
down on one knee, paddling their way forward. The park is named for
its seven limestone karsts, which are huge lumps of rock set among
lakes and waterways. A network of paths and trails works its way
around and there are many opportunities along the way to stop and
buy souvenirs of your visit. All around the park there are neat and
tidy landscaped borders and as with parks we have seen in the rest
of China so far, the park is litter free.
A short way into the park a trail of steps leads
up to the top of one of the peaks. It was a 113m climb to the top
and well worth it for the views. About a third of the way up was a
derelict building that was divided into what looked like four or
five small houses. Further up still was temple carved into the rock,
the smell of incense giving it away before we got to it. To
compensate for the number of photos Stef took we bought and lit some
incense sticks, probably falling foul of all the common standards
and practices for this activity in doing so.
At the start of the trail there had been warnings
not to go up when it was wet and slippery. The tail has been
concerted over and in most parts, especially where there is a steep
drop down on the side, there are handrails. The steps were uneven
with some very low in height and others quite high. One thing they
all had in common though was that they were not very deep, not great
for our Western sized feet. On most of them the concrete had taken a
smoothly worn patina and I reckon it would be easy to slide down
quite a way in the wet. For the most part the path was fairly wide,
in a couple of places going through a small cutting in the rock, but
the closer to the top we got the narrower the steps became.
The views from the top were superb, marred only
by the smog like haze that engulfs the whole area, in fact the whole
of China so far. A small pagoda is perched on top of each of the
crags in the park providing a cool and shady place to admire the
view. You could see down to the Five Dragons Palace below, a central
pagoda with four smaller ones at each compass point, all built on
stilts into the water. A large part of the waterway was clogged with
water lilies, unfortunately not in bloom at this time of year. To
the left a splash of gold caught my eye, then another, then another.
They were huge fish in a pool below. People were feeding them and it
looked like the fish were climbing over each other to get at the
food. Abandoning our first route back down as it was a very narrow
path with a sheer drop down to the left, we retraced our steps and
wound our way back down hill.
Further round the island was the Dragon's Cave
and our first indication that the Y50 you pay to get into the park
does not cover you for everything. The extra Y10 to get into the
cave was worth it though. First you are taken in a small flat
bottomed boat on a tour along an underground lake. It is a slightly
tacky tour as they have lit up rock formations in the cave in
different coloured neon lights. There is an elephant, a lion's head
and the dragon that gave the cave its name. One of the Emperors used
the cave as a hideout during a time a of war and there is a small
shelf where he slept. Surprisingly, as we went further into the cave
it got warmer and muggier. Apparently it is warm in the winter but
cold in the summer. The rock is mainly limestone but there is also
some jade. In one part the rocks when hit make the booming sound of
a large drum which reverberates around the cave.
After the boat trip there are more caves that you
can walk along. A boardwalk path, lined with decorative bamboo
railings, leads you past more illuminated rock formations, the
inevitable shrine and down to a small pool which is home to a large
turtle. AT first sight the turtle looks real but it is stone. A
dirty film on the pool shows how polluted the water is here.
The path out of the caves took us to the other
side of the island. Here a sign pointed to the Cave of a Thousand
Poems, a strange place. The cave is quite large and is open to the
elements but it has been turned into a big book. The walls are
covered with different tablets of Chinese script, the style of which
differs as the writing style has changed over the years. Here too
was a temple. Once more we were frustrated by our inability to
decipher the characters and interpret what the poems said.
From here we walked up to the pond we had seen
from the top of the peak with the large gold fish. The fish had
looked pretty large from up high but close up they were enormous.
Most were the same orangey colour as goldfish but some were white
and others steel grey. They are obviously used to being fed and soon
a small group were all in the water below us, mouths gaping in tube
like fashion waiting for food. We bought a bag of fish food and
within seconds of throwing some in, the water below us was a
squirming mass of fish. The newest ones to join the mass simply swam
in on top of those already there. It was a strange sight to see and
lots of squishing and gurgling noises accompanied the sight.
A floating restaurant behind us provided a good
spot for lunch. Three large tables of elderly Chinese all gawped at
us as we walked in but following the standard pattern grinned when
we smiled and said hello. Our attempts at food ordering were pretty
dire and we ended up with two different plates of fried rice. Stef,
needing a chilli fix, tried to find a way to ask for spicy food. The
closest he could find in our dictionary was "with lots of garlic".
The result was a whole bowl of raw garlic cloves! The poor waitress
could not understand why we were chuckling away as she put it on the
table.
We paid a few more yuan to walk across the steel
bridge which true to its name is made of steel plates joined
together by big steel cables. Despite the signs saying not to shake
the bridge unnecessarily, every group of people who walked across it
made it rock as much as they could. We went into another series of
caves lined with a whole range of statues of what looked like
historical characters or those from old legends and stories. The
tunnels looked like they had been carved from the rock, rather than
being natural, and incense hung low in the air from the few temples
dotted around the caves. From here we wandered back round to the
boat wharf, stopping briefly at yet another temple where we bought
more incense. The largest incense sticks they had here were about as
tall as Stef and a couple of inches in diameter.
After a short wait at the boat wharf we were
whizzed back across the water and into the hubbub of Zhaoqing. As it
was still light, and would be for another hour or so, we decided to
head down to see the old city walls. These must have been about ten
or fifteen metres high and were very thick and solid. One of the
main entrance gates was near where we were and had big red wooden
doors that were closed, perhaps to keep out prying eyes. We climbed
up what looked like fairly recent steps and walked a little way
along the walls. The houses here looked very run down and with few,
if any, modern facilities. The people generally looked less affluent
compared to those just a few streets away. We did not want to get
caught in the rabbit warren of the old town in the dark with no way
to work out where we were or how to get back so we headed back into
town and checked the time of the bus we need to get tomorrow. We are
heading for Wuzhou and checked the symbol for it in our book so that
we could try and decipher the timetable painted on the wall above
the ticket office. We had managed to make ourselves understood but
were still very pleased when a lady who spoke English helped us out
and confirmed the information we had got.
For dinner we went back to the same place we had
gone to last night but this time went armed with more interpretive
tools, our Lonely Planet and our Point It book. The latter is a
small book full of different pictures of food, clothes, transport
and pretty much everything you think you might need on your travels.
We had a friendly welcome in what today was a very busy restaurant
and had to sit in the posh bit where you got tablecloths rather than
just a glass topped table. On our way up the stairs to the
restaurant they had pictures on the wall of some of the dishes so we
asked the girl downstairs to mark on the menu what they were and
very smugly looked forward to a good meal.
As you can guess it did not quite work out the
way we thought it would. What had looked like beef on a bed of
noodles was spicy noodle soup with about three strips of fatty and
chewy beef in it. The dumplings and rice were OK but Stef needed
more meat and he decided to order and extra dish, half a chicken. We
thought that would be trouble free but oh no! It came still with its
head attached and I reckon it must have been boiled. The skin was a
pale yellow colour and very rubbery and they had simply hacked it,
bones and all, into small pieces. Stef found the few bits of
breast meat but the rest was simply too unappetising and rubbery
to eat!
