14. Having dinner with Angelina, the virgin girl from Yangshuo, China

By Filipe Morato Gomes	Where is Yangshuo?
“In Yangshuo you can relax from travelling in China”, a fellow traveller had told me. So I decided to head for Yangshuo, Guanxi province, a westernized small village in Southern China. I cycled along the rice fields of Yangshuo before I got to know a Chinese girl that decided to have a surgery done to become a virgin again.

I was told Yangshuo, Guilin, is a special place. It seems it has something unique, different from other regions in China. “You can relax from China itself”, a traveller told me. In fact, most travellers end up staying in the small village of Yangshuo, situated in Guanxi province, much longer than planned. As if they were attracted by the invisible force of a powerful magnet. I decided to check it with my own senses. Anyway, it only meant an extra twenty five hours train journey.

Old fishermen in Yangshuo, Guilin province, China

I arrived in Yangshuo in one of the worst possible occasions. The whole China was on the move, on vacations, in a collective movement of millions of people due to a national holiday. And what happened is that Yangshuo is now one of the most popular Chinese holiday centres. Bad luck, I thought. I had all the time of the world to decide where and when to go, and I had just hit the nail on the head, as people say; I had chosen the worst week to be in lovely Yangshuo. Most hotels, hostels and guesthouses were fully booked and accommodation prices cost three times the usual price. People touched themselves with the elbow when they walked along the narrow streets of Yangshuo. It was the chaos in a village that used to have more backpackers that any other place in the country.

Yangshuo is a backpacker ghetto. Chinese authorities have changed the name of the central street of Yangshuo to West Street. Dozens of guesthouses and hotels, breakfasts served without having noodles in the menu, countless restaurants serving western food, bars with cold beer and much amusement, people speaking in English. A paradise for anyone wanting to rest for some days from travelling in China. That was my case. China demands quite a lot from a traveller. It was good to take it easy in a friendly place. And, even is such a week, it was possible to run away from Yangshuo temporary bustle.

I hired a bike and rode across the suburbs, cycling along local roads, from village to village, in the rural borders of the banks of river Li Jiang. Everything was green, much green, huge rice fields with astonishing rocky formations that rise from the ground, superb, as back-cloth. They were the trade mark of the region. After cycling a bit farther I got to a place where it was necessary to cross the river to the other side. After negotiating the price I stepped on a small boat to make the crossing.

Li Jiang river, Yangshuo

In the river, fishermen who use birds instead of nets prepared themselves for a night out fishing. The birds had their throat tied with a thread that stops them from gulping the fish they catch. It's a technique that has been used for countless generations by the communities of the Guilin region. Some days afterwards I'd have the chance to observe one of those fishing nights to confirm that the instinct of birds is something really extraordinary.

I came back to the village and sat down in one of the restaurants in West Street. I ordered a beer, cold enough, and waited for dinner time. And then something uncommon happened. A face I knew, let's call her Angelina, sat down at my table. I had been acquainted with her, some days before, when I asked her for some information in a travel agency, and since then, this Chinese young girl had revealed herself to be very helpful and more open-minded than Chinese women usual are when contacting a foreigner like me.

Between two spoonfuls of rice, we had time to talk a bit about many subjects. About Yangshuo, about Portugal, about work and travelling and, to my great surprise, about passions and sex - a topic which is kind of a taboo in a society where youngsters study first and only then have permission to date.

A view of West Street, the main street of Yangshuo

I told her I was married and she said she had no boyfriend. “We broke up four months ago but he had already found another girlfriend”, she told me. “And you, with so many foreign men here... hummm”, I stirred up the conversation. “No, I can't”, she said and stopped for a while, thoughtful, as if she were assessing the situation. And then she added: “I'm going to tell you something”. I patiently waited for the dialogue to continue. Never had a Chinese woman broken the taboo.

“For Chinese men, a woman's virginity is something very important. Now, as I want to marry another man, I am supposed to be a virgin.” I listened to her attentively, in silence. “And my mother has entreated me to do it. Therefore I agreed with her. And so I underwent an operation to become a virgin again”, she concluded with a sort of disconcerted smile.

I didn't utter a single word. I felt I had just come across one of those cultural shocks a traveller faces from time to time. We said goodbye, I ordered another beer and headed for a bar full of western people.

(originally written in Portuguese)

Author's note: Angelina is not my friend's real name.

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