Boating on Caohai Lake
Weining is famed for its much praised Caohai lake. I walked out of town to its shore and found a dock full of rowboats ready to take tourists out on a lake jaunt. I stood at the desk pondering what to do and found that a group of five was about to set out. A man said I could join them. The boatman used a bamboo pole to push the dinghy through a reed-bordered canal towards the lake passing vegetable plots.
Next to me was the
Halfway into the sailing time we were accosted by an original boat equipped as a floating barbecue stall. They offered crayfish skewers, which didn’t particularly appeal to me
I stopped at a section of the market where dog puppies were kept in cages or hampers and I wondered why. It seemed strange that they should be sold as pets in such a forgotten town. And in Xingyi I had come across a row of restaurants that had the gou Chinese character printed on the front to advertise they offered dog meet. One even sported a setter painted on the sign, if words were not telling enough. I hadn’t yet recovered from the surprise when a stray dog passed by, careless or oblivious to the risk of rummaging in the area.
The scene of buyers and sellers looked interesting and I took out the camera to snap a shot, but certain looks made me feel as if I was wielding a bazooka. Surrounded by embarrassment, I decided it was time I broke the ice and I asked them about the dogs. “They are not for eating. We don’t eat dog meat in Weining”, they declared emphatically as if the nearby town belonged to a different world. Once the people had realised they could communicate with me, they timidly started asking friendly questions. When they asked about currency, I pulled out the 100.000 Vietnamese dong banknote that I kept at hand in my wallet for whenever I wanted to do a gag. The effect was always guaranteed. I heard the murmur of shiwan, hundred thousand, creeping through the crowd while the banknote changed hands and with the help of the index finger startled eyes counted the noughts on the figure.
Dog was allegedly not eaten locally, but I also wanted to avoid fatty pork. The best way to achieve my goal was eating at a Muslim restaurant where noodles are served with sliced beef usually from the joints on the ceiling hooks where it is kept to dry. Lajiao, or chilly pepper, comes on request, which doesn’t mean that the dish is not spicy. At the very least they add half a spoonful of ground huajiao, a spice with a distinctive pungent taste. As I couldn’t find any such restaurant, I sat down at another which seemed a good deal cleaner that the ones beside. Its
All in all Weining was not too bad, but it seemed a waste of time to stay another night. When I learned there was a train at