A Final Bowl of Noodles and the Reluctant Goodbye
On my last morning, I woke before dawn and wandered out alone. The world was silent and bathed in a soft, pre-dawn blue. I found a small, family-run noodle shop just opening its doors. The steam from the giant pot filled the tiny room, and the owner, a cheerful woman with a kind face, served me a simple bowl of noodles in a rich, bone broth, topped with a fried egg and some pickled vegetables. It was the best meal of the entire trip. Sitting there on a small plastic stool, slurping the hot, comforting noodles as the sun began to paint the tips of the peaks gold, I felt a deep sense of contentment. This was the Lushan beyond the postcards—the Lushan of daily life, of quiet moments and simple pleasures. It was the perfect full stop to my journey.
Guilin: The Grand, Grey Welcoming Committee
The first impression of Guilin, arriving by train, is strangely ordinary. There are buildings, traffic, the gentle chaos of a modern Chinese city. But then, you look up. And there, rising abruptly from between apartment blocks and office buildings, are the hills. They aren't gentle, rolling slopes. They are towering, grand, and impossibly vertical, like the ruined pillars of a giant's palace or petrified tidal waves frozen mid-crash. They feel entirely random, as if some celestial hand had scattered a handful of stone seeds and they grew, wild and defiant, against all laws of geology.