By Claudia Chang
Special to CNN Interactive

September 28, 1998
Web posted at: 4:38 p.m. EDT (1638 GMT)

mail from the trail
	Tell us your favorite places for bike tours

YANGSHUO, China (CNN) -- Having been to Yangshuo before, I could attest to the beauty of its sharp limestone peaks, especially during the dusky evenings when fisherman take out their flocks of cormorants. But this time I did not want to sit on a boat and watch fishermen reel in the birds -- whose wooden collars restrained them from swallowing -- and pluck the fish out of their mouths. Instead, I was there to take the kind of bike tour my friends had raved about. And that's how I met Su-sen.

Su-sen had worked for years as a rice farmer in southern China, bending over rice paddies pulling up young shoots and prodding weary buffalo. But, as for the rest of China, times had changed for Su-sen. Several years ago, her husband bought machinery that freed her from the fields. Looking for ways to make money, Su-sen realized that her hometown was drawing more tourists. Yangshuo, which has long inspired Chinese poets and painters with its mountains rising dramatically around the Li river, needed tour guides. She taught herself basic English and became one.

She approached me at a cafe, as had many others offering tours, and I found I liked her immediately. We set up a time to meet the next day.

Watching Su-sen come up the road the following morning, I thought she was a picture: straight black hair in two short pigtails, cloth sandals with a short-sleeved white shirt and black pants. Her grin spread from ear to ear as she walked her bicycle up to mine -- making sure that I had rented a good one and was not overcharged. Satisfied that I would not crash and create a problem for her, she nodded and hopped on her bike.

As we headed down the main road, I concentrated on avoiding the puttering tractors and sprinting chickens while Su-sen pointed out a nearby cemetery. Why, I asked, were all the tombstones lined up against the hillsides facing towards the fields. She explained that everyone wanted to have a good view from their final resting spot. It was also bad feng shui (arrangement of spirits and energies), she said, to face the mountains because you would never see any evil spirits coming your way.

We turned off the main road and pedaled down a narrow dirt strip between rice fields. The only sounds came from my creaking bicycle and rustling branches. We biked up a small hill and onto an incredible overlook with a small river winding around us. I smacked buzzing mosquitoes away, mentally picturing my bug spray back at the hostel. Su-sen grinned and pulled some leaves off a bush along the road. "Here," she told me tearing the leaves, "put this on your bug bites and you'll be happy." Whatever it was, it worked and we kicked off to the next stop, Su-sen's village.

Claudia and her guide Su-sen

As we careened down a hill into a cluster of low brick mud houses, Su-sen yelled at curious children to get out of her way. Little pebbles bounced off my bike as I waved to the kids and greeted them in Chinese (in Mandarin, hello is 'ni hao'). This created a variety of reactions. Some kids screeched with laughter while others ran with shocked looks to nearby adults, grabbing their legs and crying to be picked up. They were not yet used to seeing non-Chinese in Su-sen's village.

Several old buildings in the village remained heaps of rubble, untouched since the days of the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s when communist leader Mao Tse-tung aimed to create a new China by destroying everything associated with the past. Thousands of lives, historic sites and documents were destroyed. Many buildings in Su-sen's village still showed the faded painted slogans, and older people we met had clear memories of those chaotic years.

At the end of our tour, Su-sen took me to her family compound and cooked a delicious lunch of chicken and vegetables. After lunch, she handed me a small bowl filled with clear liquid. "Go on" she said, "it won't kill you". Having grown up with a Chinese grandmother, I recognized the taste immediately: rice wine. Not only did Su-sen work as a bike guide, she sold homemade liquor to local stores and restaurants. I sat on her front step, amazed by her, while lamenting my lack of enterprising skills.

Su-sen also presented me with a homegrown gift, something like a spongy corncob. She explained that she made natural loofahs for people to wash themselves and their dishes. I thought back to the bath shops at home filled with these loofahs and chuckled.

Finally, Su-sen brought me back through the maze of back roads to the main paved lane and to the end of our day together. I paid her and she asked me to sign her guestbook, in which I gushed satisfaction with my tour. We asked a passer-by to snap a picture of us before she left. As Su-sen pedaled off, I noticed she left some extra loofahs in my bike basket. I yelled to her but she just waved me away, saying, "They're for your friends -- be sure to tell them where you got them." And with that, she disappeared down the road, a testament to a China at once ancient and ever-changing.