大陸剛剛開放年代的一次難忘旅程
It was a time when Mainland China（中國大陸）had only recently begun to open its doors to visitors from Taiwan. Travel across the Strait was still something new, distant, and almost unimaginable. China was changing, but slowly. The great cities, rivers, mountains, and villages that we had known only from history books, poems, and maps were suddenly there before our eyes.
Under the leadership of our principal, 粟竹子松校長, we at 延平 set out on what was, for us, our first journey abroad（第一次國外之旅）.
There was excitement in the group, but also curiosity. We were not simply going sightseeing. We felt that we were entering a vast country that had been separated from us for decades—a land at once familiar in culture and yet strangely unfamiliar in everyday life.
Our journey took us first to 成都 Chengdu, the gentle capital of Sichuan（四川）, and then eastward to 重慶 Chongqing.
Chongqing — A City Rising from the Mist
山城重慶
Chongqing was unforgettable.
It was a true 山城, a city of hills, steep streets, stone stairways, mist, and the endless movement of people. Buildings seemed to climb one above another along the slopes, while the 長江 Yangtze River and 嘉陵江 Jialing River met below.
The city did not possess the polished appearance of the great Asian cities we knew. Much of it seemed old and worn. Yet Chongqing had tremendous life. People crowded the streets; bicycles, buses, porters and pedestrians moved through a landscape that seemed forever going either uphill or downhill.
And below the city flowed the great river.
For generations we had read the words 長江三峽 — the Three Gorges of the Yangtze.
Now we were going to sail through them.
Boarding the Yangtze
登上長江外賓豪華郵輪
At that time, tourism in China was still in its early stages. We were told that there were only three luxury Yangtze cruise ships for foreign visitors（外賓船） operating on the river.
To us, they seemed astonishingly comfortable.
There were proper cabins, dining rooms, clean beds, attentive service, and large windows from which we could watch the Yangtze unfold. In that China of the time, such a ship felt almost like a floating hotel from another world.
But what impressed me even more was not the luxury itself.
It was the contrast.
As our 外賓豪華郵輪 moved along the river, we often saw the ordinary 內賓船, carrying local Chinese passengers.
They belonged to a completely different world.
Some looked old, crowded and badly worn. Their paint had faded; their decks were packed with passengers and belongings. Beside our bright, comfortable vessel, those boats appeared tired and impoverished.
The difference was so striking that it was impossible not to notice.
外賓與內賓，彷彿生活在同一條長江上的兩個世界。
We were sailing on the same river, beneath the same sky, yet the conditions aboard the ships could hardly have been more different.
Foreign Exchange Certificates
那個「外匯券」的年代
Even money reminded us that we were visitors from another economic world.
We carried 外匯券 — Foreign Exchange Certificates (FEC).
In many places intended for overseas visitors, ordinary 人民幣 Renminbi could not simply replace the foreign-exchange certificates we were expected to use. The 外匯券 could buy goods and services reserved or more readily available to foreigners, creating another visible boundary between 外賓 and ordinary local people.
Today, it is difficult to imagine how strange this felt.
Money itself seemed to divide people into different worlds.
A simple piece of paper told you something about the China of those years: a country short of foreign currency, still relatively poor, cautiously opening a window to the outside world while keeping that window carefully controlled.
Into the Three Gorges
船入長江三峽
Then the mountains began to close around us.
The broad river narrowed, and suddenly we were entering the legendary 長江三峽.
The cliffs rose almost vertically from the water. Mountains overlapped mountains, disappearing into mist. Villages appeared briefly along the banks and then vanished behind another bend of the river.
There was 瞿塘峽 Qutang Gorge, short but dramatic, with mountains pressing tightly against the river.
There was 巫峽 Wu Gorge, more graceful and mysterious, its peaks rising through layers of cloud and mist.
And there was 西陵峽 Xiling Gorge, long and winding, where the river carried us deeper into a landscape that generations of Chinese poets had tried to capture in words.
Standing on the deck, I began to understand why the Yangtze had inspired so much Chinese poetry.
The river was not merely beautiful.
It had 氣勢 — grandeur, force, and spirit.
The water moved beneath us with immense power, while the mountains stood silently on either side. Sometimes mist softened everything into a Chinese ink painting（水墨畫）; sometimes sunlight suddenly broke through and illuminated a cliff or a distant village.
For a moment, the China of reality and the China of classical poetry seemed to become one.
兩岸猿聲啼不住，輕舟已過萬重山。
Those famous words of Li Bai（李白）no longer felt like something belonging only to a school textbook.
We were there.
The boat was moving.
The mountains were passing.
And the long river carried us quietly through history.
From the Yangtze to Guilin
從長江到桂林
Later came 桂林 Guilin.
If the Three Gorges possessed grandeur（雄偉）, Guilin possessed delicacy（秀麗）.
Here the landscape changed completely.
Along the 漓江 Li River, limestone peaks rose abruptly from the earth—thin, strange, graceful mountains reflected in green water. Bamboo, small villages, fishermen and distant fields completed a landscape that looked almost too perfect to be real.
桂林山水甲天下。
We had heard the phrase countless times.
Now it was before us.
Yet our boat on the Li River was nothing like the comfortable 長江外賓豪華郵輪.
It was old and simple, even shabby by today's standards. The engine sounded rough; the fittings showed their age. But none of that mattered very much, because outside the windows was one of the most beautiful landscapes in China.
Then we saw something that none of us could easily forget.
Children in the River
跳入急流討糖果的孩子
As our boat passed some of the poorer settlements along the river, children appeared near the banks.
They saw the tourists.
They knew that visitors carried things they rarely had—餅乾、糖果、巧克力.
Some began calling toward the boat.
And then, astonishingly, children jumped into the water.
The current was swift—湍急的河水—yet they swam toward the passing tourist boats, hoping someone would throw them a packet of biscuits or a piece of candy.
From the deck, tourists tossed 餅乾和糖果 toward them.
The children chased after them in the water.
For us, it was difficult to know what to feel.
At first there was surprise. Perhaps some people even smiled at the excitement of the children.
But slowly the scene became uncomfortable.
These were not children swimming simply for fun.
They were risking themselves in the current for things that seemed so ordinary to us—a biscuit, a sweet, a small treat.
一顆糖，對船上的遊客微不足道；對水中的孩子，卻值得跳進急流去追。
That image stayed with me far longer than many famous scenic sights.
Beauty and Poverty
美麗山河與貧困生活
China then was still economically far behind the Taiwan we knew.
The differences could be seen everywhere: old buildings, simple transportation, worn boats, limited consumer goods, and the enormous gap between facilities prepared for 外賓 and the daily conditions of ordinary people.
Yet this was also what made that journey unforgettable.
We did not see only 名勝古蹟.
We saw a country at a particular moment in history.
On the Yangtze, our comfortable 外賓船 passed battered 內賓船.
In the shops, we carried 外匯券, while ordinary people lived in the world of 人民幣.
In Guilin, tourists admired the dreamlike beauty of 桂林山水, while children jumped into the river for 糖果和餅乾.
Beauty and poverty existed side by side.
山河很美，生活卻很苦。
Perhaps that was the deepest impression of the journey.
A China We Could Never See Again
再也看不到的那個年代
Years later, China would change beyond recognition.
Cities would rise, highways and high-speed railways would cross the country, modern airports would replace old terminals, and luxury hotels and cruise ships would become commonplace. The 外匯券 would disappear into history.
But we did not know any of that then.
We simply stood on the deck of a ship, watching the cliffs of the 長江三峽 move slowly past us.
We sat aboard an old boat on the 漓江, surrounded by the extraordinary mountains of 桂林.
And somewhere below, in the rushing water, children were swimming after pieces of candy thrown from a tourist boat.
That journey with 延平, led by 粟竹子松校長, was our first journey abroad.
But in memory, it became much more than that.
It was a journey into an old China standing on the threshold of change—
一個剛剛打開大門、仍然貧困，卻擁有壯麗山河的中國。
The Yangtze has continued to flow.
The cities have changed.
The boats have changed.
The money has changed.
The children we saw in the river have long since grown old.
But memory has a river of its own.
And sometimes, when I think of that first journey, I can still see the mist over 巫峽, the weathered boats on the 長江, the strange green peaks of 桂林, and those small figures swimming through the current—
reaching for a piece of candy,
while behind them rose some of the most beautiful mountains in China.
