Over the Great Wall: Yangshuo

With no plans to travel in November, Nicole and Jesse were looking forward to spending some quality time in Hong Kong before taking off again.  The previous two months had been fast-paced travel with a few days at home base spiced in between.  It was all going so well until Jesse observed that they had one Chinese entry visa left, and it would be a shame to waste it, especially being so close to such an interesting and immense country, like China.

Hanging out in our soft sleeper car.

That was basically all it took to convince Nicole and a small cadre of friends to join us for a four day weekend in Yangshuo in China's Guangxi province.  Nicole and Jesse had been told prior to their departure from Canada that Yangshuo may be the most beautiful place in the entire country, and that there was lots to see and do for a few days.

So, Nicole and Jesse were joined by Joel (from Jesse's home school), Kelly (from UVic), Kelly's sister Sarah, and friends Jody and Kelli (yes, there were two Kellies for those keeping score from home).  The group took the MTR to Shenzhen, then hopped an overnight train to Guilin, the largest city in the environs of Yangshuo.  Not much to say about the Chinese train.  The food was predictably poor, and stocking up on beer before departure made everyone have sweet dreams.

Our bamboo river rides!

At 6:30 the following morning, the group was awoken by a shouting Chinese train attendant, and forced off the train into the hazy morning.  Fortunately, this was the right stop, so the team shuffled into China.  Not having a means of getting from Guilin to Yangshuo, the team talked to a travel agent who turned out to be massively helpful.  He booked us on a bamboo boat down the Li River to arrive in Yangshuo, and also booked our return trip to Hong Kong, after informing us that the train was sold out for the remainder of the weekend.

The bamboo raft was an amazing idea and an even better ride.  The trip takes just over three hours on the gently flowing and very shallow Li River.  The feature that makes this area one of the most beautiful on Earth (you heard me) are the gorgeous and peculiar Karst mountains that populate the area.  Unlike most mountain ranges which are many mountains connected at great altitude, these hills are self-standing individual lumps that pop up all over the place.  It looks like something out of a Dr. Seuss book.  We got some unreal views of these mountains in the morning light, and thoroughly enjoyed the changing vistas throughout the trip.

Views along the Li River.  The last is the actual scene depicted on the 20Y bill.

The boat dropped us off a half-hour outside the city, so after a minor traffic debacle (typical for Chinese roads), we eventually got to our hotel.  The group really had some luck with the people they met this weekend, and after the travel agent, the next in line was Mickey, our extremely helpful hotel concierge.  Not only did Mickey recommend the best ways to get the most out of our trip, he was also able to book all of our tickets and arrange transportation for us all weekend.  He really made the trip something special, and kept us busy the whole time.

Not doing it justice, but scenes from the Light Show

After exploring the city, we attended the Li River light show.  Directed by the same visionary who choreographed the opening ceremonies at the Beijing Olympics, this performance features over 600 actors actually performing amazing choreography on the river itself...and this happens every night.  The performance uses lighting to illuminate many of the Karst mountains in the area, creating a surreal dream like effect.  The scale of the performance is difficult to relate, but the show definitely exceeded all of our expectations and left us thoroughly impressed with the Chinese ability to muster a massive workforce to do something.

Jesse leading the pack.

With the standards set extra-high after the first night in Yangshuo, the group needed something to do on our second day.  We rented bicycles from our hotel for a tour of the countryside and set off for some adventure.  Because of the region's unique topography, the roads are all flat, making biking outside the city a real pleasure.  Biking in the city is a nightmare, on the other hand, and we had man white knuckle moments trying to get out of the city limits.  Among them is the non-stop horde of touts who hound tourists, offering everything from knick-knacks to tours.  Try as we did to lose them, the touts got on bicycles of their own and followed us into the hills before we eventually lost them and were on our own again.

Moon Hill.

We spent most of the morning lost and meandering through the hills, happening on small farms and little villages before eventually following a group of tourists and getting on the main path.  The easy pace gave the group lots of time to stop and take pictures and talk to other tourists on the path.  Eventually we made it to Moon Hill, a natural arch formation high up on one of the mountains.  Leaving our bikes locked at the bottom (and hoping that the touts would not figure out how to steal them) we hiked up the 1200-odd steps to the bottom of the arch, which gave a lot of great photo opps.  A few of us carried on up a very sketchy "path" that wrapped around the side of the hill and eventually spat us out at the very top of the arch.  Like many things in China, safety was an afterthought at best.  No railings, no ropes, no nets at the top meant that everyone was enjoying the adrenaline rush.  We even found a dicey metal pole to climb even higher.  Everyone mustered the courage to attempt the pole, although Kelli2 was the clear victor, making it to the top and dancing around.

Jesse and Nicole, atop Moon Hill.

Leaving Moon Hill, we navigated our way back to the city to rest up for a big night.  After a nap, the team reconvened for an amazing meal of Sichuanese food (some of the spiciest to date).  For those of you wondering, almost every manner of house pet was actually on the menu - what you've heard was true.  We, however, stuck with trusty chicken, fish, and beef.

Jesse was a spectacle!

Saturday night in Yangshuo was something else all together.  PRC domestic tourists flock to the city by the thousands, and after we left the restaurant, the streets were choked with Saturday night shoppers and revelers.  Our concierge Mickey told us that these people come for the obvious beauty of the area, but stay for the possibility of seeing foreigners, who are apparently a hot commodity in the Middle Kingdom.  As a 6'7" man, Jesse was apparently just what these people were hoping to see.  Jody, who is blonde, was also a fan favourite on this night, where the group was constantly hounded in the street for photos.

Ever enterprising, Joel learned how to say "Photo? Three bucks!" in Mandarin, and the makings of an amazing night were well under way.  We didn't actually charge anyone, but the phrase led to a lot of laughs on both sides as we took more than 40 photos over the course of the night.

Jody and Nicole were invited this time.

Eventually we made it off the street to a local bar, where, again we were fan favourites.  Many locals bought us drinks for the opportunity to drink and talk with us.  We learned that the Chinese locals (at least the ones we met) were very friendly and surprisingly outgoing.  They just wanted to talk to us about our lives and share some laughs.  We got so close with one group that they took us out for an outstanding post-bar meal at a restaurant they knew....then they picked up the tab for the whole event!  We all traded emails (Facebook being banned in the PRC) and drifted off to dreamland.

Cave Monsters!

The weather, to this point, had been bright and sunny and fairly warm during the day; Sunday, however, was overcast and a little chilly, so the group decided to spurn the outside and go spelunking instead.  Several of the mountain formations have cave systems, and one in particular attracts a lot of tourists.  We took a very rickety bus out into the middle of nowhere, and from there boarded an even ricketier boat to take us on a river into the cave.  Besides some incredible rock formations, the cave also had a freezing cold pool, a mud bath, and a series of hot baths fed by natural hot springs.  After some initial exploration, the group indulged in the pools.  The mud was totally gross, but after some initial hesitance, everyone got dirty.  The trip ended with some lounging in the hot baths.

Mud bath time!

Surviving the boat/bus back to the city, the group spent the remaining hours shopping in Yangshuo's street markets and writing postcards.  However, they soon realized that there was a lot of time left before their bus came to pick them up at 11pm on Sunday night.  So, Mickey yet again helped us out by booking a trip to see some live-action cormorant fishing on the river.

Retrieving a fish from the cormorant.

This ancient practice sees fishermen using trained birds to dive and catch fish, which are then retrieved and kept.  This was actually one of the most amazing things we've witnessed to date.  Flood lights illuminated the river as these birds dove and hunted small fish.  The birds have rings around their necks preventing them from eating the fish themselves (cruel, yes, but these birds are well fed and keep coming back, so it can't be all bad), so when they surface with a fish, the fisherman adeptly snags them by a cord attached to their feet and hauls them onto his tiny bamboo raft.  He makes the bird spit the fish into a bucket before throwing it back into the river to keep working.  It was very interesting to see this unique working relationship in action.

Nicole with the fisherman, and yes those are live birds!

One of the things we came to realize on this trip is that the Chinese have a much different relationship with animals than we do in North American.  Besides eating animals that we might consider house pets, they are very much still in touch with animals as beasts of burden, like the fishing cormorants, or the many oxen we saw grazing in the river.  Not a judgment, merely an observation.

Tired from an amazing weekend, we boarded an overnight sleeper bus for the last leg of the adventure, back to Hong Kong.  The bus had no seats, only beds stacked three wide and two high.  It took forever; we got hauled off in the middle of the night for a PRC Police random check (extremely disorienting, but ultimately harmless); but it was actually a pretty funny experience when we survived until the morning.

All in all, Yangshuo was a great way to spend a weekend and Nicole and Jesse are thoroughly thankful that they decided to check out a small part of China in the end.  The country is totally worthy of its own trip...but that will have to wait for another time.