From surreal to sweltering: Dutch farmhouses and Russian beaches

There's been a real thaw in Sino-American relations of late ... In that, I'm American, and I've been feeling considerably less hostile toward China recently. Turns out, there is a whole vast country outside the ethnic tensions and insular society of the plateau.




Went from just about perishing from hypothermia on a raft trip down the River Li in Yangshuo one day to baking lobster style on the beaches of Sanya the next.

After Chengdu, I met up with Beth and her friend Morgan in Guilin, famous for its karst -- lump-like rocky hills that look like something out of Lord of the Rings. (I've seen the karst once before, in Cuba. They're very dreamscape-y.) We spent several freezing, rainy days staying in a Dutch farmhouse in Yangshuo, wiling away happy hours eating copious amounts of food in front of a fire with an extremely jolly group of Dutch travelers. (Tried dog, a Guilin specialty. Did not enjoy.)

Then on to the VIA conference on the island of Hainan, an utterly bizarre tropical resort-ish place that has absolutely no business belonging to China and suffers from a severe split personality as it struggles to decide whether to cater more closely to Chinese tourists (who every single one dress cult-like in absolutely matching head-to-toe Hawaiian prints) and Russian tourists (who I assume account for the otherwise inexplicable prevalence of fur coat shops on this, once again, tropical island).

It's the first (and probably last) time that all 11 China volunteers have seen each other since we left the Nanjing training six months ago, and there's an odd comrades-in-arms feeling to the reunion.

For those of you just dying to know more about my fellow vols and what we've been up to this year, our program director filmed this video of each of us when she toured our posts in the fall.

VIA China Director's Tour of Post from Anjali Mutucumarana on Vimeo.