Time to return to my Chinese hometown where I taught English in 2012 in Guizhou! I was very interested in seeing how much the town had changed since then. Apparently the town now has a stop on the high speed rail network, as it’s right in between the Guiyang (capital of Guizhou) and the megacity of Chongqing. So it is extremely accessible!
Back in 2012 before all these infrastructure projects began Guizhou was horribly disconnected from a lot of China. It is landlocked, almost all mountains and karsts, and the roads were terrible, the trains slow as molasses. Guizhou in 2026 in much much different in this regard. As a long neglected province, the poorest one in China (although now it’s improved to 2nd poorest, take that Gansu!) It has seen a large uptick in tourism now that it has good roads and train connections, and of course because it’s a gorgeous province with some diverse ethnic cultures.
Even just from brief glimpses on the HSR you can see the much improved roads and so many bridges
Bridges everywhere
Nice looking roads
The first evening I didn’t tell anyone I was coming, as I know with Chinese hospitality they’re going to want to accompany me and take me places and make sure I’m having a good time and not lonely or whatever, where I just wanted one night of alone time rediscover the city on my terms and just walk around observing and taking photos, which is like a completely weird thing to do in Chinese society.
We pulled into the station, which is at the far end of town, close to the high school the girls used to teach at, although Peter and I never made it down this way all that often, as back then it was kind of the outskirts of town. Although the face of the big mountain is near here, which is where I used to practice some rock climbing and bouldering. Getting off the train you can see that the train literally runs through the base of the mountain, which is pretty wild to me!
This part of town is way more built up now, there’s a big plaza outside the station, some newish looking buildings and shops, and a lot more high rises. The central part of town, where our apartment was, was already built through, so this area had much more room for expansion. Looking on the apps I was surprised at how many hotels there were, and how nice the rooms looked, at least in photos anyway. I remember hotels in Tongzi in 2012 looking dreadful. I did notice however when walking the 12 minutes to my hotel that not many of the shops had people in them.
Checking into the hotel was pretty difficult! Not only do I have a 10 year visa, which is quite different than the one month tourist visas they normally give, it’s in a separate passport than my current one. And with a visa for 10 years the reception kept thinking it was a work visa, and I had to keep explaining that it’s just a tourist visa, not a work visa. I think they thought, why would anyone come to Tongzi if it wasn’t for work? I explained I used to teach here and was visiting friends, and it got easier after that. Tongzi doesn’t get many (or any) foreigners theses days. They haven’t hired a foreign teacher since 2019.
While in China you still hear plenty of passing “Laowai” comments (direct translation is old outsider) or the more formal “Waiguoren” (outside person), especially outside of T1 cities. But in Tongzi you hear it everywhere! I think I’m probably the first foreigner to stop by since the pandemic. It is especially noticeable from the kids! If you walk by a group of young kids playing outside, they basically stop what they’re doing and yell and point WaiGuoRen! WaiGuoRen!! One of the very first things I noticed is that the preferred nomenclature is now Waiguoren instead of Laowai for a foreigner. I’m guessing they get taught that in schools that its more polite, as you can use Laowai in derogatory way (or affectionate way) based on how you say it, kind of like Gringo or whatever.
It’s all very amusing to me, and really brings me back to 2012. When I first got here I sometimes had little possees of kids follow around me and my camera to see what I was doing, as if me just walking around town was very fascinating. Even now, just crossing the street I had this young girl run up to me, stare at me in amazement for a good 20 seconds, jaw wide open, and then ran away as soon as I said nihao. So funny. I’m guessing I’m the first waiguoren she’s ever seen.
I had a chance to go hike up the hill opposite the big mountain and the new train station to take a photo of the town from above. So many confused expressions from people passing by! The town doesn’t look all that much different than before from way up above, just a few taller buildings. Oh and a new man made lake. It’s a great view. Coming down I walked down to the new lake, which has a nice boardwalk going around it and plenty of people going for an evening stroll. None of this was here before.
The new lake
nice boardwalk going around it
I passed the middle aged and older women, Ayis, dancing in the park (love it) some street food stalls, even a square dance group, and then was back into town. There was a teahouse built in the traditional style that was about six stories high and lit up at night. Impressive. It looks like they built a new old town (like everywhere else in China), although very few businesses seem to operate in it. But it was nice to walk through and well lit. Tongzi 2012 was a very dark, kinda scary place at night. Although I kind of liked it then, as it wasn’t dangerous at all, just creepy.
My teacher friend Bobo had work for most of the next day, so I did have some more time to take a walk to my favorite spot outside the city, the giant rock arch. The thing I loved about this place was that I thought it was an absolutely amazing spot, yet no locals seemed to care about it whatsoever. Never anyone there. You could bike there, hike around a bit on some overgrown trails, although you couldn’t go directly under the arch because it’s a river, but you could go for a swim at it’s base, which I did a couple of times. I ended up walking there, the route of out of town is kinda rough around the edges, just like the old Tongzi.
gotta get the smokestack in the background
And then you get to this!
When I got close to the arch I see that all round it is completely fenced off. Weak! I also see a they’ve built a wooden walkway up on the cliffside that looked cool, but I didn’t know how to access it, as the entrance was locked up. Okay so I actually snuck around the gates and hopped the fence, but like so much of China, the walkway was covered with cameras, so yeahhh, I’m going to try and not get arrested for trespassing my first day back in Tongzi, so I turned back. These cameras ruin all the fun!
I keep walking, all the way past the arch, wondering if the whole place is just completely shut down, but eventually get to the entrance of the “park”. Seriously, China just has to turn everything cool into an amusement park, even in small town China. There’s a ticket for 60 yuan/$10, 80 yuan, and 100 yuan/$15. I didn’t know what the difference between any of these tickets was, so I just bought the 100 yuan one, to make sure it included the cliffwalk. This is all very pricey by Tongzi standards! I doubt anyone in Tongzi was paying these prices. And they weren’t! I was the only soul in the whole the place.
They put me on a shuttle bus and took me back to the same place where I hopped the fence, unlocked the gate, and I was on my way, legally! I mean it is pretty cool, walking above everything like this. The boardwalk takes you around the arch and on the other side is the glass bottomed walkway, oooh scary! Not really. But this is what sells, supposedly. There’s also a zipline, which I thought maybe my ticket might be good for, but nope, had to pay even more for that, which looked like it would only last about 20 seconds. The route then goes down and you can walk through the arch. But of course you are limited to the boardwalk and there are even no swimming signs, boo. Not that Chinese people would randomly go swimming in a river anyways, it’s just not part of the culture whatsoever.
I took a photo from inside the rock arch and then walked to the lake, which must be man made, as I’m almost positive was not there before. I guess my ticket included a 5 minute boat ride on this tiny ass lake, meanwhile it was now drizzling, so yeah no thanks. So it was an interesting and unexpected trip to the ole rock arch! Eventually my friend got off work and he came to pick me up in his small electric SUV, which I was impressed he could afford on a teacher’s salary, it’s a nice looking car! A little goes a long way in China.
So it was cool seeing him again, we both couldn’t believe it’s been so long. He didn’t really look THAT much different than in 14 years, he’s now 47, so 7 years older than me, and he said now I look older than him. Chinese people are very blunt when it comes to physical appearances. But yeah, a lifetime of gambling for a living, too much drinking, and a lot of sunlight with not enough sun screen is taking its toll, oh and the hair loss. Always good to be reminded of that within minutes of meeting again! Asians do have better genes when it comes to aging though, as they are happy to point out.
We drove to the monastery on the top of the mountain, which didn’t have a road before and hiked around a bit in the forest catching up. Although I felt bad, it seemed like Bobo had a bit of a rough time, he got caught up a bit in an (unknowingly) fraudulent scheme through one of his friends, the richest businessman in town, who is now in jail for who-knows how long (10 years is the guess) for defrauding the government, he and his wife divorced, and his daughter, who I was hoping to meet (she was 4 when I was there) has some type of depression where she dropped out of school and just sits on her phone all day. So it was all a bit sad to hear. So he’s a free and single man now…
After the temple we went back to Number 1 High School, which is now Number 1 Middle School, and has much nicer facilities than when I was there. The track actually had nice fake grass in the middle of it, rather than dirt. They even had dormitories, which is where teachers after us used to sleep instead of our old building. Apparently Tongzi expanded from two high schools to four, plus two private schools as well. We ran into a couple of English teachers and Bobo tried to introduce me, they said they had to go and scurried away, the exact same as before! Chinese English teachers don’t want to lose face talking to a native English speaker because usually (almost always) their spoken English is not very good.
Although it sounds like the school expansions were a bit premature as now the school admission rates are getting lower and lower. It’s a pretty well known epidemic in China, birth rates have been going down and then nosedived after Covid. Tens of thousands of kindergartens across the country have already shut down. I’m guessing elementary schools are next.
The local economy has also been depressed since Covid, residents don’t have much free spending money, younger people are leaving to work in bigger cities etc. Not great to hear. We stopped by the building we teachers used to live in, it looked just as scary and jail-like as before! The rest of the street had changed a lot though, most of the storefronts on the street were totally different so I didn’t recognize much, everywhere was now well lit with glass windows and heat/AC, ie modern buildings. Very few of the restaurants had any temperature control in 2012. When it was cold, you just lived in your jacket. When it was hot you had a fan.
I went back to the hotel to shower and change and then met up with Bobo again for some shaokao, chinese BBQ, just off the main walking street. This street used to have tons of tables set outside lined with street food carts. Now most of the eating was indoors and Bobo said it used to be a lot more lively than it is right now. We talked a lot about 2012 and went through my old photos, it seemed kind of shocking how poor everything looked. Although to be fair I did take more photos in the poorer parts of town because they were more interesting to me.
Bobo liked this time period a lot, because as an English teacher who actually can speak English and likes interacting in English, he really enjoyed having the foreign teachers around. Although he did mention that well before 2019 foreign teachers were less likely to hang out, and not many groups got along as well together as our group did, which was nice to hear. So anyway for the last 7 years it’s only been Chinese English teachers, partially because more Chinese people have learned more English in Guizhou, partially because English skills are becoming de-emphasized in Xi’s China, which is certainly turning inwards rather than outwards.
We then walked around a bit, checked out Tongzi’s new underground shopping street, and then settled on quirky little tea house, where I taught Bobo how to play a bit of Texas Hold’em, which he was very interested in. In Tongzi the usual gambling game of choice is Mahjong, which you see people playing everywhere. Oh and I guess some student filmed me and Bobo picking out our meats for the bbq and sent it around to all the students, so I was going viral in Tongzi lol. News travels fast in a small town! So we ended up playing a bit of mock Texas hold’em and calling it a night. I tried to pay, but of course Bobo was having none of it.
The next day, another one of the teachers, Katherine, was coming into town from the next town over, Zunyi, and we would meet at a teahouse, which turned out to be same one as the six-story one I mentioned earlier. We had a private room, which I always find a bit stuffy and formal for two people. Besides the tea they gave us, Katherine had smuggled in some tea from Zunyi, and some Pu’er, which is aged tea from a certain region in Yunnan, and is quite famous in China. Which I thought was quite the coincidence because the book I was reading was about a minority woman growing up in the Pu’er boom of the 90’s! And it turned out to be the tea I liked the best. Katherine also gave me a tea cup and bag of tea as gift, although the whole thing about bringing gifts was something I totally forgot about, which I was pretty embarrassed about because I knew they weren’t going to let me pay for anything.
So we chatted a bit, we were never all that close in Tongzi, she mostly hung out with the girls, Suzanna in particular, and I guess they still keep in touch as Suzanna visited Katherine in Singapore this year! Katherine won a scholarship into a linguistics program in Singapore, so she was fortunate enough to be able to leave China for this program. Public educators are considered civil servants, and generally will not be allowed to leave the country, either by their school or the government, for tourism.
Basically the only way they could get approved to travel outside China is visiting a foreign spouse’s country, or a study program like Katherine got into. So it was cool she was able to get into this program. She was also now married with a young child and seemed to be happy, so I was glad for her. A little later Bobo showed up and he wanted to play some more Texas hold’em, so we did, using candy as pieces, and Bobo, ended up with all the candy. We took a break for a bit and then met up for dinner a little later, which happened to be right next to my hotel.
We had a private room again, one with the spinny table. Bobo brought baijiu (rice wine) and a friend, another English teacher at Tongzi #1 High School, who actually liked to speak English. These are a rare breed. He was younger and from Chongqing, so I’m not sure how he ended up in Tongzi, but he spoke English well and it was fun night with lots of GanBei’ing/cheers’ing. We ordered a special Tongzi chicken dish, and a bunch of sides, and the one I picked was eggplant of course, my favorite Chinese vegetable dish.
Although I always do feel a bit bad coming to Tongzi and hearing about how little money people make, then hearing how much I can make from poker (which is much less than it sounds after US living expenses) plus the younger teacher was dating a German girl online I guess, and she came to visit him for a month, but there’s no way he’d be able to visit her, so he expected the relationship to probably fizzle out. Life in Tongzi can be a bit difficult so I guess it felt a bit bittersweet.
After that we could either play cards or do karaoke, and since we’d already played cards twice now, I voted karaoke so that’s what we did. I figured it was a more fun way to end the trip than sitting around a card table. We started out with lots of Chinese songs, and gradually transitioned to all English songs. Although I must say, some of the English songs they chose are older and seem to be completely random, and not good karaoke songs! And the band Westlife as well as Celine Dion’s Titanic song, will presumably never stop being popular. So we finished the night butchering our way through a bunch of English songs, but having a fun time doing it. A good way to end the visit. Of course Katherine snuck out and paid the bill already. But I was really happy to have been able to stop by the city again and see some familiar faces