Guilin and Yangshuo: Day 5

Life doesn't get much better than waking up early, walking out onto the balcony of the Yangshuo Mountain Retreat 阳朔胜地 and enjoying a cup of coffee while looking out over the Yùlóng River 遇龙河. Thus began our fifth day in the Yángshuò 阳朔 area:

Looking back on it, I now wish we had stayed the entire time in Yanghsuo at this hotel, instead of the single night we were there. At the time we made the reservation online, we decided that one night was enough due to the inn's distance from town. Had we known that the Yangshuo Mountain Retreat was within easy biking distance of much of the best of the area's countryside scenery, we would have extended our stay and enjoyed the relaxing atmosphere. If there's a next time...:

Later in the morning, bamboo rafts began appearing on the river, floating languidly by the inn:

Eventually, the time came to pack up and leave the room, but before departing for Yangshuo, we took advantage of the inn's free bikes. My wife rode solo, while my daughter and I teamed up on a tandem:

The skies were threatening to open up and unleash a downpour, but the scenery more than compensated:

Our destination was Moon Hill 月亮山, four kilometers (2.5 miles) from the Yangshuo Mountain Retreat. This limestone outcropping with an eroded crescent-shaped opening is a surreal sight as it suddenly opens up in front of you:

It was a 30-minute walk up 800 steps (a number that Amber constantly reminded Pamela of as the latter huffed and puffed her way to the top) to reach the "moon". The views, of course, were worth the "effort":

My wife felt so sorry for this old woman who walked up the steps in order to hawk drinks that she bought a Coke from her for RMB20 ($3.25):

The trail continued on past the moon-shaped hole to another lookout point. However, at this point, it began to rain heavily so we made our way back downhill to the parking lot:

Though it had rained a lot so far on our trip, this was the first time for the three to be caught outside in a downpour. Fortunately, Pamela had come prepared with some cheap plastic raincoats. Back on the bikes, the rain showed little sign of letting up, so we pulled off the road at a small diner for lunch, where the menu included local treats such as fried pork with taro:

By the end of the meal, the rain had stopped and we got back on the bikes:

Parking our bikes beside the Yulong River, we were given a ride on a farm vehicle past the Yangshuo Mountain Retreat to a point upriver where rides on bamboo rafts were on offer:

This is one of the most popular activities in the Yangshuo area - sitting on a chair on the raft while a boatman using a bamboo pole gently guides you down the river. Amber and I were on one raft, while Pamela rode solo on another:

The scenery, naturally, was splendid:

At one point, we floated past the Yangshuo Mountain Retreat, and our room with a balcony:

Continuing down the river and past a couple having wedding photos taken along the riverside:

The ride took almost 90 minutes in total, and ended where we had parked our bikes. Before returning them to the inn, my wife stopped to buy some grilled fish:

By the time we dropped the bicycles off, it was almost 6:00, and we took advantage of the hotel's free shuttle to Yangshuo, where we checked into our home for the final three nights, the Yangshuo C.Source West Street Residence. Located in a Ming dynasty-era building, and tastefully decorated in modern retro-Chinese chic, it may not have had the serenity of the Yangshuo Mountain Retreat, but it did provide some sense of isolation from the world outside:

Which in Yangshuo was a necessity, as the town's main drag, Xijie 西街, was cacophonous. Back in the 1980's, Yangshuo was a quiet backwater that had the fortune to be "discovered" by young Western backpackers cutting a Chinese path on the Banana Pancake trail. Many fell in love with the area and never left, opening up bars, cafes, inns and restaurants, while local entrepreneurs rushed to cater to the visitors' tastes (such as Western-style breakfasts, for which I was very grateful). Before long, as the Chinese economy took off, with affluence affecting leisure time trends, the Chinese also started coming in droves. The result is that Yangshuo is far removed from being an idyllic rural Chinese backwater. Instead, Xijie teems with tourists, Chinese and non-Chinese, walking past endless souvenir shops, eateries, and even bars and discos pumping out horrible Chinese dance music. Touts proliferate to the extent that the weary tourist ceases to be polite when declining their sales offers. English is widely-spoken, which can of great help to the non-Mandarin speaking visitor but provides little defense against the hawkers and vendors. Still, Yangshuo's atmosphere can be fun, and the setting, surrounded by tall spires lit up at night by white spotlights, adds to the mood:

For my daughter, it was all great fun, especially when she ran into her classmate yet again. It's a small world in China:

Next up: Going up the country on two wheels.

 

Guilin and Yangshuo: Day 4 (the second tour)

Continuing on...

It would be hard to top our just-completed 3½-hour boat ride along the Lí River 漓江 from Guìlín 桂林 to Yángshuò 阳朔, but the tour my wife had booked while on board the ferry unfortunately didn't come even come close. Another mixed group of Chinese and non-Chinese were bundled into a large tour bus and driven off to see cormorant fishing and to take some pictures of poor rural dwellers. 

According to Wikipedia:

Cormorant fishing is a traditional fishing method in which fishermen use trained cormorants to fish in rivers. Historically, cormorant fishing has taken place in Japan and China since about 960 AD...

To control the birds, the fishermen tie a snare near the base of the bird's throat. This prevents the birds from swallowing larger fish, which are held in their throat, but the birds can swallow smaller fish. When a cormorant has caught a fish in its throat, the fisherman brings the bird back to the boat and has the bird spit the fish up. Though cormorant fishing once was a successful industry, its primary use today is to serve the tourism industry.

It's supposed to be done at night, when torches are used to lure fish closer to the boat, but supposedly the recent rains had left the rivers too swollen to do so. I suspect, however, a willing local fisherman can be found on short notice to demonstrate the techniques of cormorant fishing to picture-snapping tourists. It was a brief but admittedly interesting demonstration:

All this took place next to the 600-year-old Dragon Bridge 遇龙桥, which I somehow neglected to take a photo of, though I did get a couple of shots of the surrounding countryside from the span itself:

Also taking place on the bridge was my daughter showing off her superhuman strength by holding up a heavy bamboo pole with a cormorant perched on either end:

The crumbling houses of the surrounding village drove home the fact that while many Chinese have become affluent over the past several decades of explosive economic growth, the majority of the people in the country still have at least one foot in the Third World. I couldn't bring myself to take pictures here, but one house I had no problem with belonged to the local party official, in a scene that no doubt plays out all over this vast country. Interestingly, our tour guide mentioned who the homeowner was while speaking in English, but said nothing about it to her Mandarin-speaking charges. I assume it's because they already knew:

Before getting back on the bus, Amber had the opportunity to both feed and get on a water buffalo. She learned the difficulty of wearing a short traditional Chinese dress while trying to ride an animal bareback, a memory I hope she recalls when the day comes when she'll want to put on her first miniskirt:

Voyeuristic though it may have been, at least the village was a real community. The second couldn't be said for our next stop, a "water town" of sorts dedicated to some of the region's local ethnic minority groups. Believe it or not, we were put on boats that puttered around the waterways, passing stages where representatives of these local ethnic groups "greeted" us with snippets of their colorful "native" songs and dances. The whole thing felt like being on the jungle cruise ride at Disneyland or a visit to some kind of human zoo:

At least some of the locals appeared to be benefiting from the influx of tourist RMB, judging by the number of new houses dotting the shoreline:

And there were some appealing sights that defied the make-believe quality of the ethnic amusement park:

Amber is at the age where none of this matters, as long as she can be one of the lucky ones who caught a silk ball, originally part of a kind of bouquet-tossing courtship ritual conducted by one the minority groups, but here thrown out for the benefit of the punters:

Tourist trappings aside, the countryside exuded some charm:

Still, it was with a great sense of relief (on my part, anyway) when were finally able to check in to our lodgings that evening, the Yangshuo Mountain Retreat 阳朔胜地. The wonderful view of the Yùlóng River  遇龙河 from the balcony of our comfortably-appointed wood-floored room made me wish we had arrived earlier so as to savor the one-night only experience just a little bit longer:

Next up: Moon viewing and bamboo rafting

On the Li River from Guilin to Yangshuo