April 30 Guiping - in which I am a star... or a freak

Guiping is exactly what I was looking for. The one hotel in town that caters
to tourists (possibly the one hotel in town) offers me a lovely single room
with balcony, television, private bath with hot shower and daily maid
service for 50 yuen ($6 US) per night. The town is small enough to get
around by walking and there are very few of the highrise office towers and
modern buildings that appear in larger cities, although there is a
conveniently located, cheap Internet shop right across from my hotel. There
are old, photogenic streets and lanes, two rivers, a rundown central park
with decrepit zoo and a large, central market. And to make my stay there
even more interesting, I soon find out that I am a novelty.

On my first afternoon out to explore the main street, I become all to aware
that this town is not used to seeing a white tourist. Although there are
many Chinese business people in my hotel, it seems that Guiping is not
enough of a draw for westerners, who usually come to the south (Guanxi) to
visit Guilin and Yangshou. The people in Guiping are wonderfully friendly,
saying "hello" as I pass by. But at the same time, I elicit stares making me
feel as though I had left my hotel wearing nothing but my T-shirt and pair
of flip flops. As I walk along the sidewalk, it feels like I am a weird
cross between a naked person and a movie star. Heads turn, people whisper,
some laugh. The stares follow me until I am out of view. When I sit at an
outdoor table to have dinner, I may as well be sucking up my soup through my
eyeball. All of a sudden I feel like I have to take extra care with my
chopsticks in order to prove that I can eat like a normal person. If I pull
out a notepad to jot down a few observations, I draw attention from people
who stop to look over my shoulder, as though I were an ancient scribe who
time-travelled to the present and was chiselling caligraphy on a stone
tablet.

At first it's all amusing. Every time someone calls "hello," I turn in their
direction and respond in kind, drawing giggles and shy glances. But hello is
all they know so further conversation is impossible. And soon the stares get
bothersome. I've never had so many people stare at me and, for the first
time, I begin to look on it as being rude. But, knowing that the townspeople
are just intrigued, rather than let it get to me, I try to have fun with it.
So I decide to stare back. Passing a group of guys sitting outside a
restaurant, I notice their conversation lull and heads pivot as I approach,
as I pass by, I widen my eyes like a wild woman and stare back at them,
making a face. They laugh. I laugh. And they go on with what they were
doing.

Sometimes the novelty of my presence leads to pleasant surprises. After
dinner in one outside restaurant in the market, a young girl runs up from
another table and places a small fruit I surmise is a loquat -- a small,
orange-colored fruit the size of a plum (cousin to the kumquat) --  known at
" pipa" in Mandarin. I peel and eat it, looking over at the family at the
other table with a nod of thanks. Pretty soon another pipa finds its way to
my table and after that, a whole branch of them. I look back again and say,
" she she" ("thank you). Well, that's all they need for an invitation and the
whole group of them -- mom, dad, grandma and children -- come and sit at my
table. They start talking to me in Chinese and I quickly respond that I
don't speak Chinese and pull out my little phrasebook. With great difficulty
and a lot of humor, they ask me where I'm from and what I'm doing in
Guiping. The mother seems most interested in learning some English and, with
pride, counts to 10, albeit skipping number 9. She then corrects my
pronunciation as I count to 10 in Mandarin. And when I say "OK" in response
to something she says, well, this really makes her gleeful.

It seems that Chinese find the use of the English "OK" to be particularly
funny and no matter where I've used it, I always get the same response --
people mimmicking me as if "OK" is the most hysterical thing in the world.
In stores, on trains, in restaurants, if someone indicates something to
which "OK" is a normal and habitual response from me, they get giddy,
repeating "OK" over and over again, extending the K sound and giving the
thumbs up sign. It's quite a pain in the ass after a while.

In the case in Guiping, the mother would repeat "OK" and give the thumbs up
so close to my face, I had to lurch backwards in my chair for fear her thumb
would end up in my nostril and give me a lobotomy. Then, with the suddenness
that the fist pipa had been placed at my table, the whole gang said
something in Chinese, got up and left. I peeled and ate the last pipa and
went back to my hotel.

The next day, wandering down the street, I passed by a hairdresser and
decided to see how much a haircut would cost. It was 50 yuen -- less than
$10 -- so I went in. I guess even more amusing than seeing a foreigner
walking down their streets was seeing a foreigner getting a haircut and the
salon drew crowds for the next hour of people standing in the street
watching to see if the hair that was cut would morph into a terminator and
destroy their lovely town. Chen, the guy who did my hair worked with a man
and his wife and they, too, would sit and watch, practically ignoring other
customers, and using my phrasebook to ask me questions. After the haircut
was done, Chen mimed that he wanted to take my picture. Well, far be it for
me to deny my ego the opportunity to be a model and I made the mistake of
saying yes. Out came the hair product and, before I knew it, he had emptied
practically a whole jar of super-strength gel into my hair, vainly trying to
induce curls out of it. Satisfied with the results, he called a friend on
his cell phone and took me outside for the two of us to get our picture
taken in front of his shop. He didn't want to take a picture of my head, as
some hairdressers would, to put on a wall or in a binder to use as an
example of his work. Nooooooo.... He wanted a memento of the time he cut a
white person's hair. Lovely. My modelling career was not just brief; it was
non-existent. Some quote about vanity I'm sure would be appropriate here
but, unfortunately, I didn't pack my Bartlett's Familiar Quotations with me.

Having relaxed for a few days and given Guiping something to talk about for
months, I decided it was time to head somewhere miles away geographically
and lightyears away frenetically -- Hong Kong.