HuangGouShu waterfall and the 50RMB wife!

This is the second pending part of the Guiyang post. The most impressive part of the Guiyang trip was the HuangGouShu (Yellow fruit tree, though I didn’t see any yellow fruit trees!) waterfalls. But whatever it may be called, the place is worth the 2 hour journey from Guiyang.

In short, the specialty of this waterfall is that you can walk behind the entire width of the waterfall and see the waterfall through the cave windows and cave halls. So you get the unique view of this pretty big waterfall from behind it. The noise and just the feeling that you are standing behind a roaring waterfall is very captivating! It’s a round trip hike following one wall of the valley towards the waterfall, enter a cave that goes behind the stretch of the waterfall, exit the other side and follow the other valley wall outside. So it’s a loop that traces the river and the back of the waterfall and again the river from the other side. Ohh I definitely need to tell you about the idea of a hike - Chinese style! To reach the trail that follows the river, you have to hike down 700 feet or so from the top of the mountain. But na-ah, the Chinese saw the amount of crowd to this place and being their usual efficient self, they figured out how to make this whole experience of hiking down very easy and methodical! They have built one humongous escalator down. Yes, I am not kidding. It’s a long, very long, very, very long escalator down the valley wall! Somewhere around 400-500 step escalator, 5 minutes ride and not a single sweat, you have hiked 700 feet!!!

Of course there is the matter of 50 RMB wife. So they say, the initial investment of getting married is very less compared to the expensive life long servicing cost! :) Believe me, I did not make this up. I heard it from someone recently. And true to that fact was this whole 50 RMB wife episode! So during our "hike" towards the waterfall, there was a small show kind of thing. There were beautiful young Chinese girls dressed in their ethnic wear, singing and dancing. So we stopped to take pictures. Once the song got over, the girls came around and started garlanding guys in random (the garland was basically a colorful tote bag kind of thing). The guys were trying to run away. I was wondering why were they running away and attributed it to shyness. Some of them (I guess the ones who were as ignorant as I was!) got caught and taken to the stage. They were dressed up with the ethnic stuff like capes, crown and extra garland kind of things! Then they were made to posture and hug these girls. Yeah, of course, each got their own beautiful girl to stand beside them!

And when the whole thing was over, I saw them paying some money (I thought it was usual tipping) and I was amused why others around were making fun of those guys on the stage. One of my friends realized that I was completely unaware of what was happening and came around to explain me the story and meaning behind all this. Seems this was the traditional style wedding and those guys were role playing in the wedding and they had to pay 50RMB to do it. Those beautiful girls were now their "wife"! Whoa, coming to think of it, I was standing right there and no one picked me. Damn! This is certified racial discrimination. Who do I sue in China?!