In Little Chang’An, a Misty Mountain Stop

We’re down from the mountains and now in the hills. And what strange, beautiful hills they are. This is Guangxi Province, famed for its surreal karst landform tableaus, with endless gumdrop-shaped hills towering above winding rivers and swirling mists. Just look at the back of a Twenty RMB bill to see how this scenery of this place (Yangshuo, anyway) figures in the Chinese imagination.

Postcard from Sanjiang

We arrived in Sanjiang two days ago, reaching our first prefecture-level city, with all its grocery and heated-hotel-room luxuries, since beginning the trip. But there was one ol’ reliable that failed us: ATMs. We needed cash from our foreign account, and not only did this capital of a sizeable chunk of Guangxi surprisingly lack all the usual big banks (Bank of China, ICBC, and China Construction Bank), but also its local branch of China Agricultural Bank, with all its prominently displayed Visa and Mastercard network symbols, was in fact capable of accessing neither. So much for a heated hotel room; without some cash, we’d be lucky to find a good overpass to sleep under (although the one pictured on the right would certainly do in a pinch!).