Yangshuo

Guilin was the first major city on our journey. It is near Guilin that the classic and picturesque mountains which rise out of the foggy river are located. The town, formerly but a village, of Yangshuo is closest to the action and is really where everyone goes when they say they’re going to Guilin. To get to Guilin from Shanghai, we took a 25 hour train. This was our first and worst experience with the long distance train system in China. We were in a hard-sleeper car, the hardest tickets to come by. Most people would much rather have a sleeper than a seat for this long a trip, but once you upgrade from seats you have to choose between the affordable and comfortable hard sleepers or the expensive and, I can only dream, more luxurious soft sleepers.

Our trip was highlighted by suffocating smokers in the train car (rude even in China), filthy bathrooms, early bedtimes (9:30 lights out?, I had bought beverages for the evening!), and the playing cards and food scraps of the teenagers in the top berths decending upon our sleeping faces. Delightful. All of this was made worse by the fact that despite 3 or 4 comfortable weeks in Shanghai, our bodies chose the start of our endurance-testing trip to turn on us. Lizzie had a serious cough/cold which set in as we departed, and my milder version of the cold was only a few days away. Comfort aside, we were in Guilin in little over a day.

We took two books on our trip: the Lonely Planet: China (printed 2007) and the Rough Guide to China (2005). I will abbreviate from here on. While the RG may have been older and often lacking standard practical advice in the areas of accommodation and transportation, it had an opinion. LP would say, “This place is really popular and can often get crowded! Yay!” while the RG would cut to the chase, “Miserably suffocating crowds on weekends, try this alternative cheaper attraction for the same effect.” Later on we heard many a traveler complain about this particular year’s LP China.

There were two ways to Yangshuo: by bus or by boat. The Li river is the main attraction in the area and drops you off near Yangshuo, so it is almost everyone’s choice. We were faced with the ugly possibility of paying 50 dollars each for a six hour tour group swamped boat down the Li. Thankfully the RG suggested the smaller “highlights version” of the trip on a charming little bamboo boat which cost us each only 20 dollars (still a lot in China, but the travel agencies in Guilin seemed to be in control). And so, we took an absolutely gorgeous bus ride down the river valley to Yangdi, where we hopped on a tiny bamboo boat, just enough room for the two of us, our driver, and our bei bao (backpacks). We felt like we had finally escaped the city, riding the bus by colorful farms and tiny school houses releasing dirt-packed children with little red scarves, some of which chased our bus down the dirt road. Our bamboo boat driver exuded the same rural vibes with his ruddy complexion and straw hat, that is until he whipped out his cell phone and started texting. We wouldn’t encounter anywhere in China where the average person didn’t have a cell phone, nor many places where service wasn’t available.

The ride was more beautiful than I expected. We watched the enormous peaks, as well as the boats we (thankfully) opted out of taking which looked a bit oversized for the small river, for about an hour and a half. We were then dropped off for lunch on the banks of the river, at which point our driver disappeared. It turned out we were less than a km away from Xinting, where we had planned to take a bus to Yangshuo anyway.

Yangshuo is small but bustling. As it is quite warm and easy-access natural beauty for the super-populated east coast of China, it gets swamped most of the year. Our hostel was among the best we would visit. The Yangshuo Culture House is run by Mr. Wei and his family. His English is superb, the building clean and warm (shoes are taken off at the door), the price includes three delicious and full meals a day, and if you were in town for a couple of weeks you could study calligraphy, Chinese language, or martial arts there. Dinners were truly family style, and we had some interesting conversations with the British, Dutch, and American travelers. One solo British young woman had also been in our hostel in Beijing and done the Great Wall hike with us. Running into travelers from hostel to hostel is more common than you may think. The conversation at dinner could have been better. The only other American in attendance was a scorned astronomer in search of a new life in China. We heard these far too personal details two nights in a row, shocked. But he was a nice guy and really seemed to be in disbelief at his situation and unfortunately vented a bit inappropriately. I’ll leave it at that.

For our only full day in town, we rented bicycles and headed up a parallel river to the Li, the Yulong. We rode offroad for about 10km and it was absolutely stunning. The scenery above eye level was much like the Li, but it was rich with life on its banks. We rode through tiny villages and tiny paths between rice paddies occasionally enlisting locals for navigational advice. The road was bumpy and we wished we’d had mountain bikes instead of the intended-to-be leisurely, one-geared, sitting-upright bikes we’d rented, but it was a phenomenal day. We took the main road back (thankfully almost entirely downhill).

That evening we joined a cormorant fishing tour organized by Mr. Wei. This traditional method of fishing is still practiced today, and only happens at night. After dinner we were brought to the shore of the river and put on a small barge-like vessel. We slowly churned along the river until in the distance you could see little lamps. There were bamboo boats much like the one we took down the Li, but there was one human passenger with a long pole and located aft was a large waist-high woven basket. There were two bright lamps dangling in front of the boat so we could see what was happening. There were 9 cormorants, birds trained specifically for this task, tethered to the boat with long strings. The strings attached to the birds by a ring placed tightly around their necks. The rings were loose enough such that they could catch and swallow small fish, but tight enough that the keepers were saved for the fisherman. When he could see that a cormorant got a big one, he would nab it with his pole (the bird would balance on the pole and walk towards him). Then, like emptying the dregs of a wine bottle in the sink before recycling, he shook and emptied the bird. And that was it. We were all in anticipation for the first 20 minutes, but the ride took 90 minutes, and most people were tired of it by then and had returned to their seats. It was worth it, though, and resulted in some funny pictures with a cormorant on my arm and a straw hat on my head. I overheard that cormorants are able to dive so well because they lack the oil on their feathers that most birds have that would bring them to the surface and would keep their feathers dry(?).

We walked back to the hostel via “West St.,” the busy touristy street near the shore. It was overwhelming and a bit disgusting (tons of western food for sale, two man bands with fog machines in most bars, and large groups of middle aged white people roaming the streets (not that I have anything against them, I’m a tourist here too, but they’re certainly not what I came to China to see)), and I could see why Jeremy Katzen ( a.k.a. Blotterman) told me the town had gone down the drain between his first and most recent visits (2002 and 2007). You got that sense of the town; it managed to maintain its local functions (as visible by stepping 50 yards outside the village), but has seen a huge influx of visitors in the last few years (as made apparent by West St).

Moving on, we wished we had more time to stay in Yangshuo. We realized too late that there were several days worth of bike-able day trips in the area. Little did we know but this would also be by far the warmest part of the trip. My pants/shorts were to remain pants indefinitely. But this being our first stop, I was glad we’d put ourselves ahead of schedule by a day, prepared for unexpected delays. We departed with northern Yunnan province on the mind-grapes. However, you can’t get to Lijiang cheaply without stopping in the province’s capital, Kunming.