Ever since my friend Annick and I saw the movie “The Painted Veil,” set amidst the backdrop of a cholera outbreak in rural China, we’ve been obsessed with the idea of traveling to Guilin and floating down the idyllic Li River amongst misty, craggy hills. We used to joke about having Edward Norton row us down to a cholera colony and falling in love with him while working with him to help the patients.
Our dream, minus the cholera epidemic and Edward Norton, came true when Annick came to China to visit me. The night after she arrived, we decided impulsively to book a flight to Guilin, and just 12 hours later we flew out of the thin layer of dust that perpetually plagues Beijing, on our way to see rolling green landscapes and soaring Karst formations.
The next day, we sat back with the warm breeze fanning our faces as we drifted from Guilin to Yangshuo on rafts, surrounded by the very same mystical landscape against which Edward Norton and Naomi Watts’ characters rekindled their love in the movie based on the old Somerset Maugham novel. The Karst formations are like natural skyscrapers that disappear in the fog; a friend aptly referred to them as “sudden mountains.” Our raft sailed us out of reality and into a hazy, gorgeous daydream.
Of course, no good trip is without its speed bumps, and the two of us had our fair share. We rented a motor scooter as soon as we got into Yangshuo, a neighboring town to Guilin that is famous for its landscape. We had big dreams of scooting all around the countryside, zipping by rice paddies and China’s ethnic minority women with floor-length hair. Unfortunately, we didn’t make it out of the street without hitting an innocent pedestrian first—a portly, fairly young man, fortunately—square in the lower back. “The Scooter Diaries” came to an end in less than one minute.
About a dozen local townspeople surrounded us, shouting in Chinese, “Don’t let them get away!” and “These foreigners just hit this innocent man!” as the man groaned and clutched at his thigh. I got very nervous as I stood there, recalling stories about friends of friends who had found themselves in sticky situations, bullied into forking over thousands of dollars for getting into accidents in which the other person was to blame—and in this case there was no doubt that my friend and I were definitely in the wrong.
We took the man to the hospital, where we paid for his medical bills and waited for the results of his x-ray. “Don’t worry,” he said warmly. “If my leg is broken, we’ll negotiate from there, but if it isn’t, you’ll just pay for all of my hospital bills today and compensate me for the days I’ll have to take off from work. I’ll make it easy for you and we’ll just settle with cash. Deal?” I got uneasy. “How many days of work will you need to take off?” I asked. “We’ll talk numbers later,” said the man.
As I had suspected, the man’s x-ray revealed that all of his bones were in good shape. “Let’s talk compensation,” he said. I told him I didn’t completely understand the situation and that I wanted him to speak with my Chinese friend, sending him into a minor panic. “Why do I need to talk to your friend? You understand perfectly fine,” he protested. After exchanging a few words with my tough-asnails Chinese friend, he knocked 40 percent off of his asking price for a week’s worth of work. “I could have probably bargained more,” said my friend to me. “But you guys did hit him and you’re foreigners and all, so I didn’t want to push it.” I was just happy we got out of it relatively unscathed. Our man waved goodbye to us as we parted ways.
Determined not to let “The Incident” ruin our trip, my companion and I rented bicycles as soon as we got to our hostel in a quiet village just outside of Yangshuo and got our first taste of the countryside, cycling past orange groves, mud-covered cattle and toothless, leathery old women selling flowers as we rode up and down the area’s rolling hills. The next morning, it was pouring rain but we embarked on a long and scenic bike and hike journey to one of the area’s most famous Karst formations, Moon Hill. One massive wipeout, several mud-stuck tires and two pairs of water-filled Bensimon sneakers later, Annick and I huffed and puffed to the top of Moon Hill, which we both think should be renamed Moon Mountain. “This better be worth it,” we grumbled. But seeing Guilin’s countryside is worth any price, even the one you have to pay for your scooter accident victim. The view from Moon Hill sweeps over verdant, lush forests and the most basic doorless, windowless houses, and of course, cloud-tickling Karst formations. All we needed to forget all about “The Incident” were two threegear mountain bikes against one of the world’s most incredible backdrops. And pedestrians all over the world, fear not—these two ladies are not going anywhere near a scooter again.
