Yangshuo

Yangshuo was put on our itinerary after I saw the movie "The Painted Veil." If you haven't seen it, rent it. It's a good movie (okay, a girly movie) but the scenery is great and was filmed in this area. It's beautiful!!

We had booked a room at the Yangshuo Culture House and the owner, Wei, had sent us an email saying that he would pick us up personally from the bus station and he only has 4.5 fingers on his right hand. There are others who try to steal his guests and this is how we could be sure we were heading to the right place. As soon as we got off the bus a guy said that he was picking us up for the Culture House, but he had all of his fingers. We told him not to worry, but we had to call Wei and he said he'd pick us up. After again trying to tell us that they were partners and we declined, he went off and started cussing at us. He must not be getting much business, and we could see why! Pretty soon Wei arrived to pick us up and we walked to the Culture House.

Before dinner we walked into town with two Canadians who were teaching english in China. They live in a city of 3 million people and they are 2 of 5 westerners who live there. Yikes! Yangshuo is pretty touristy and most of the shopkeepers speak some english, so it was a good transition to our time in China. It was a little hazy, but we could still see all the karst peaks surrounding the city.

At the Culture House all the meals were included in the room rate (about $22/night) and they were delicious! We sat at a big table with a lazy susan and the food kept on coming (at least 14 different dishes!). It was authentic chinese food and needless to say, was much better than chinese takeout at home! Some of our favorites were the sweet and sour chicken, pumpkin, dumplings and sezchuan style beef.

That evening we went to the Liu Sanjie impressions show which is a production put on by over 600 local people on the Li River. It is produced by Zhang Yimou, a famous Chinese director and the man chosen to produce the opening and closing ceremonies for the Olympics. They lit up the karst peaks surrounding the river and performed on bamboo rafts and floating docks in the water.





We woke up the next morning to the sound of rain. We took that opportunity to sleep in until 11! It ended up being a pretty lazy day...spending some time at the internet cafe and browsing the shops in town. They had all sorts of knock-offs...North Face, Lacoste, Polo, Columbia, etc. We both picked up a Lacoste shirt for $5.50. On the way back to our place we ran into Sunny in the street. We made plans to meet up with her after dinner. After another feast, we met up with Sunny in town and did a little more shopping. Then we had some tea and she helped us with our Chinese! I never really knew what a tonal language was, but now I know. There are four different ways to say every word and they can mean four different things (or mean nothing at all). So, for WU you can say wū (flat), wú (rising), wǔ (down and up), and wù (down). To me everything sounded pretty much the same, and we were all laughing through the whole lesson. We exchanged some tongue twisters and were impressed by how good Sunny's english was (Sally sells sea shells by the sea shore, Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers, etc). She taught us a few as well - sì shí shì sì shí means 40 is 40.

The next morning we took a bus to Yangdi to walk along the Li River. We stopped at the tourist office and bought a "ticket of scenic spot of traveling on foot of Yang Di Lijiang River of Yangshuo." Gotta love it. Some old women were selling food and we bought some peanuts thinking they would be good for the hike. They ended up being pretty gross even though they looked like peanuts from home in the shell. They were soft and had no flavor. Our hike was amazing as it followed the river along all the karst peaks.





Despite the haze, visability was pretty good and the rain held off for our hike. The peaks all are named for what they resemble - tortoise climbing up the hill, fish tail peak, yellow cloth in the water. Here is fish tail peak:



We walked through small villages where farmers were tending their land with water buffalo:



Evan took some more panorama pictures and is eager to piece them together. Hopefully we can get this done in Korea or Japan.





The hike was 24 kilometers and with about 5 kilometers left the sky looked like it was going to open up so we decided to catch a bamboo raft to the town of Xingping. The trip on the river gave us even more time to appreciate our surroundings.



Here is the 20 yuan bill with the scene:



Here is the view in real life:



The next morning we had breakfast with a couple from Sweden and decided to go on a bike ride with them through the countryside. We decided to splurge for the mountain bikes (an extra 75 cents) and took off. We tried to follow the map as good as we could through the beautiful scenery and misty peaks. At one bridge we saw a couple who were getting their wedding photos taken. Can you imagine a bride walking through this mud in a white dress?!?!



We pressed on and finally made it to the Dragon Bridge which was our turn around point. There were people offering bamboo rafts back to Yangshuo, but our group decided to keep on riding. If we would have known what was ahead, I think we all would have agreed to take the raft! The road soon turned into a mud pit. We had to peddle as hard as we could so our bikes would stay upright (at which I was unsuccessful once and got a shoe full of mud). At one point we even peddled through red mud - they must have just killed a chicken or something. I was getting in a pretty foul mood at this point and the paved road that opened up couldn't have come at a better time.





The paved road wasn't quite finished yet as the bridge across the river was incomplete. The locals were making a killing charging everyone 20 yuan to cross the river (it was only 30 feet wide). We all got a real laugh because we tried to bargain and they were having none of it. We had no bargaining position whatsoever and had to succumb to their demands.

We finally made it back to the bike rental store and waiting outside were shoe shiners. We were questioning how they would shine tennis shoes, but they did a good job of getting them clean.

That evening we took a sleeper bus to Shenzhen (the last stop on the mainland before Hong Kong). We left around 10:00pm and didn't make it into Hong Kong until 1:00pm the next day. The bus had beds that weren't too bad, but the roads were horrible (imagine off roading in a greyhound) and neither of us slept too well. Here we are before taking off.