Eating Goldfish in Wuyuan County

I don’t know exactly what it was that made me fall in love with Wuyuan County, but I think it was the homey, old world atmosphere; the clear air, unpolluted by city smog; the friendly people. We arrived in the city of Wuyuan after dark and, following our friend Liang’s advice, sought out a hostel. “You’ll meet students there who can tell you where to go and what to do,” he said. And that is exactly what happened.

We reached our hostel after dark and were met at the door with a hand-lettered sign—SoHo—and an assortment of navy blue and bright yellow slippers. We slipped out of our shoes and into slippers, threw our limp and wrinkled two-day clothes into the wash machine, paid ten dollars apiece for our bunks—Chad in the guys’ dorm room and I in the girls’. The apartment, located floors above ground, was homey and bright, furnished with cats and computers and college-age kids. A young woman named Shirley and a tall, gangly doctoral student—his height and build a rare thing in China—discussed our options, gave advice in Mandarin-accented English.

Don’t take a motorbike—too dangerous in the mountains after the rain. Sorry, you missed the yellow rapeseed flowers; it’s been hot and they’re over already…but why don’t you try Qingyuan? There’s still some there. You’ll have to take the bus—bus stop just around the corner—to Jiangling, where you’ll transfer to Jiangwan and from there you’ll need to rent a driver to take you to Qingyuan. Stop in Huangling, too. It’s nice; you’ll like it. Better go there first; it’s on the way. 

We did exactly as we were advised, down to the price we paid our driver.

First, Huangling, where we rode trolley cars to the top of a mountain.

Giant suspension bridges were slung from mountainside to mountainside to give tourists a bird’s eye view.

The view was spectacular.

There were many tourists, but few foreigners. Many of them carried umbrellas to protect themselves from sun.

Girls came from the city in pretty, frilly dresses; bought flower wreaths from one of the many little booths that pop up near every tourist destination in China; and had their friends take pictures of them with the country in the background and flowers in their hair. We found many wreaths discarded at a certain spot along the trail.

After Huangling we traveled to Qingyuan, which I loved from the moment I saw it.

It was the China I had always imagined and never put name to, a China where mountains are green, villages small, and women wash their suppers in the canal.

We came across some children who were trying to rescue a shoe that had fallen down a ditch.

Chad jumped down and picked it up for them and gained their friendship as a result.

They found him later, in the village, and brought him smiles and dried fruit.

We walked the streets of Qingyuan, enjoying its picturesque peacefulness and looking for a place to eat.

Two women—perhaps a mother and daughter—patted together some sort of green bread-like food to fry over a fire. We saw tables beneath a canopy and asked, with Google translator, if we could eat there. The younger woman nodded and smiled and escorted us to the table and showed us a menu. Mandarin characters only, no pictures. Give us your favorite dish, we typed. She pointed to herself, eyebrows raised in question. Yes, we nodded.

So she went away and returned a few minutes later with a large goldfish—we had seen them swimming in the canal—and held it up beaming, eyes questioning. Yes! we said.

She cooked it up and served it to us with rice and green tea.

It was delicious.

In the evening, with the help of Google Translator, we became acquainted with the hosts of the inn where we stayed. There was a father and a mother, we learned, and a son and daughter-in-law and a little granddaughter. The son had built the inn with his own two hands. Our hosts were friendly and accommodating and their inn, while simple, was comfortable and clean.

If I were to live in China, I would choose a place like this: a village where the air is still clean and the grass is still green, where everyone knows everyone else and where children can play in the streets at night without fear. I could live in a place like that.

Early the next morning we searched the streets of Qingyuan for breakfast and found it along a sidewalk where two women prepared food and a baby watched from a safe position on his mother’s back.

We boarded the bus—the only bus, only time from Qingyuan to Wuyuan for that day—and rode back to Wuyuan through mist and rain. Because of the rain, we decided to forgo visits to other villages and instead to visit Lingyan Cave, where we would at least be underground.

Mist rose above the mountains of Lingyan when we arrived.

A couple of young women, on vacation from the city, shared an umbrella with us as we hurried through the rain to the shelter of the cave. We joined a tour group and trailed along at the back as the tour guide introduced various twisted and twirled rock formations in a language we could not understand and made jokes that everyone laughed at but us. Funny how there is nothing in the world that makes one feel quite such an outsider as being left out of a joke.

The cave was nice enough, but not much different than caves we’d seen in the U.S. Chad grew annoyed at the red and green lights used to spotlight the rock formations. They made all his photos look like Christmas tree photos, he said. I had bought a purple poncho, but still, I grew wet and cold.

We decided to call it a day.

At the train station in Wuyuan, we found a couple of empty seats and spread our damp jackets to dry while we waited for our train. I complained about my soggy tennis shoes, and Chad suggested, brilliantly, that I take them into the bathroom and park them in front of a large electric blow dryer which the cleaning lady was using to dry her mopped floors.

There was a blow dryer at the entrance of the women’s bathroom and another just visible at the entrance to the men’s. I took my shoes off and laid them in front of the dryer on the woman’s side. Later, when I went in to check on them, several pairs of shoes had joined mine, and several pairs of shoes were parked in front of the blow dryer on the men’s side as well. Other wet Wuyuan vacationers trying to dry off before heading back to the city and their houses and their jobs.

I felt proud. I may not be able to join the “in” crowd in laughing at Chinese jokes, but at least I am able to set bathroom shoe drying trends. Several hours later, when our bullet train pulled in, my shoes were dry and ready for their next steps to the seaside town of Xiapu.