Steve at Wulingyuan

No, I’m not going crazy with shots of Steve: each of these captures an aspect of the park that I didn’t get elsewhere, since I was going gaga over the scenery. One shows Steve reclining, on our way down from the day one hike, in one of the palanquins that were used to carry folks around the park. Naturally, we never used one of them – this one was sitting by the side of the trail — but we did see lots of folks being hustled up and down the extremely steep trails in these. On day two we even saw a guy being carried along a perfectly flat trail by the stream bed in the valley — we figure he was making the point that he could afford to be carried. Ah well, to each his own.

The close-up of Steve’s face is really all about the monkey in the background. Steve was concerned I wouldn’t see any monkeys, since he’d seen a big group hanging out on day one, when I was ahead of him on the trail. I wasn’t too worried since — having seen how they behaved at the park outside Nanning — I knew they were likely to congregate near potential easy food sources. Sure enough, coming in from our day two hike there were several hanging near the trail trying to wangle food out of passersby. The guy had been looking directly at us, until my flash scared him off a bit.

Shortly after the kodak moment of Steve surrounded by kids near the top of our day one trail, the kids started hitting us up for money. I was rather disappointed, since my experiences so far in China have been with kids who are usually happy and eager to interact with white folks without remuneration, just for the interest and the experience. Guess the market economy is coming to Wulingyuan!