My most recent blog was confined to CC, and ended up with zero responses save from John and Barry. No surprises really.

The 'Guide' hung around through the cooking and the meal, until the owner whispered that she was waiting to be paid for her guiding ... and that if I did not pay her, she herself would have to give her some money - being the CPC official.  I told her that the woman had done nothing for me at all.  I should just have given her another 50yuan and been done with it.  The woman in the turban-like headdress would appear to be Yao or Miao, I cannot tell.  The host boiled a large tub of water, and I soaked my knee for half an hour, getting quite some relief.  

Sorry traditional Chinese: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-D9mlAnCQ3E

2012 I returned to Guilin, planning to go trekking for 3 days in the Longsheng rice terraces. By bus perhaps two hours to the park entrance. I left my luggage there with a shopkeeper, the one selling smoked rat, and set out uphill - and downhill, downhill and uphill. After two hours the following would-be guides had thinned to just one, for whom I stopped and told her with difficulty, in Mandarin which she roughly understood, that I planned to walk alone and had no need of a guide. Nonetheless she followed 100m behind for an hour, then came hurrying to catch me up and ask me to slow down, I was too fast for her 'zou de manxie ba, ni zou de tai kuaile'. It was November and cool, with dark approaching quite early, as I approached a steep climb she came hurrying up again, and told me she could introduce me to a hotel ... and then hurried on ahead. She led me into a ramshackle wooden zhuang building where they asked 700 yuan for the night, so I refrained from laughing, and explained I wanted to get to the top so I could set out early in the morning for morning sun on the rice terraces. She followed me closely and took me into a villagers house where four men were puffing away in the dark and I refused again, walking on till I found a family with children where someone would cook for me, 100 yuan for meal and bed.

It's been a while. Not only have I not submitted articles, but it seems as though no-one else has either.

I haven't logged in CLM for years, and I've been trying to write something. I wish to speak but stop on a second thought. This time I am here to write an article about the love I found here. Let's condense the eight years of dribs and drabs into one article. And so everyone will get a general understanding of my unexpected predestined relationship here.

“Beautiful” —the word elbows my tired mind with force. It feels like a horseman spurring his exhausted mare to get going. It's useless. After a restless night, my mind cannot understand the scene at all: a hairy forearm, white skin, obviously mine, cuddling a female torso. The lower part of the female body is cut off from view by the bed sheet at the waist, right where it curves and becomes the hip. The legs are invisible, mere bumps under the cover. What I'm seeing is a strange, distant image, as if looking through a telescope and watching someone peacefully sleeping in a sandstorm. I rub my eyes to get all the sand, dirt, and grit out. Almost immediately, I start to see clearly. The sandstorm has petered out, and I realize that my wife is sleeping in my arms.

... except one happens in a few million years, and the other happens in half a century

How to Find the Woman of Your Dreams By Learning Mandarin

The snow virgin, so sad I worried my arms would fold themselves around her on their own, was sitting on a chair in front of the window. With the curtains drawn, she was looking at passersby on the street, dressed in winter clothes. I knew she wasn’t aware of my presence, and I didn’t mean to let her know about my being there. If I had, I would have risked breaking my train of thought.