GUILIN - LI RIVER - YANGSHUO

From Xi'an we flew to Guilin, a city that boasts having the most beautiful scenery in the world. I don't know if that's true but I'm impressed. You can see the view from our hotel window the morning after we arrived at the link below.

GUILIN PHOTOS HERE

The main reason for coming to Guilin was to take the Li River cruise but we also visited a kindergarten school and the Reed Flute Cave. The kindergarten was a government run school (there are also many private schools) and they obviously often have visitors. We went to two class rooms. The first was for 4 year olds and they sang some songs and then we played a game and danced with them. They were adorable and it was really fun. The second classroom was having art time. While we were there watching them and trying to talk to them each of them found someone in our group to give one of their drawings to. It was very sweet. All of the children we saw throughout the country were very open and friendly, even encouraged by their parents. They always said "hello" whenever they saw white folks and they never minded having their picture taken.

KINDERGARTEN PHOTOS HERE

REED FLUTE CAVE PHOTOS HERE

We went for a short walk in Guilin and discovered a little exercise park. We noticed parks in several cities that had both children's play equipment and adult exercise equipment in the same place. This one only has exercise equipment. It's sort of a low-tech, outdoor gym, in a lovely setting!

From Guilin we boarded a boat for a five hour cruise up the Li River to the town of Yangshuo. If you've seen the movie "The Painted Veil" you'll recognize the scenery. The movie was filmed there. It was an absolutely beautiful trip. Unfortunately it was overcast so the color is not that great in the photos but it does make for a misty, ethereal feel! You can see beautiful bamboo, fishing villages, water buffalo, and farmland. The fisherman use nets strung out through the water and they also still fish with cormorants.

LI RIVER PHOTOS HERE

Regretably, the beauty that attracts people here will also end up destroying the place. Our boat carried about 100 people and we made this trip with a string of other similar sized boats as far as you could see ahead and behind, all belching smoke from their diesel engines. You couldn't stand for long in the bow of the boat because of the smoke coming from the boat ahead. Just imagine what that smoke is doing to the people, animals, and plants that live along the river. And I don't know how the fishermen can still make a living with those boats churning up the water constantly and surely leaking fuel on occasion.

We arrived in Yangshuo in the afternoon where we spent the night. It was an odd little town; a combination of backpackers (there were several hostels), tourists like us, and Chinese tourists. The main area of town was definitely aimed toward tourist shopping, for both the foreign and domestic tourists. Here we saw many shops with knock-off brands such as North Face, Puma, Nike, Gucci, etc. However, if you examined the items closely you could see how cheaply they were made. It is a beautiful town, however, as you can see from the photos.

YANGSHUO PHOTOS HERE

While out on a walk we saw an amazing construction site. The sign over the entryway said "Holiday Inn" but I don't really know if that's what they were building. They were digging a deep hole with shovels and women were carrying the dirt out in baskets hung from bangbang poles. The Re-Bar was delivered tied to the side of a funny old vehicle that Tom lovingly referred to as a "Rhino". It was a type of truck (often flatbed) with a motor on the front that looked like a lawn mower engine. You can see a picture of one taken by Lynda or Darrell in the photos above. The Chinese are nothing if not ingenious when it comes to transportation.

There is also an amazing show put on nightly in Yangshuo on the Li River. It was put together by Zhang Yi Mou (famous Chinese film director) with music by Tan Dun (who did the music for Crouching Tiger…). It was a fabulous combination of lights, music, and dance using the river and surrounding hills and landscape as the stage. I didn't try to take pictures but you can see some here: Impressions of Sanjie Liu

From Yangshuo we took the bus back to Guilin for a brief visit to the Solitary Beauty Peak and art gallery on the campus of Guilin Normal School. The peak has quite a few very old carved calligraphy poems extolling the beauty of the area which you could reportedly see from the top of the peak. I was not tempted to climb the more than 200 steps nearly straight up to find out. (Photos are above in the Guilin group.)