Yangshuo and the Li River
Trip Start
Dec 02, 2007
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37
55
Trip End
Sep 01, 2008
Yangshuo,
Guangxi Zhuang,
China
Thursday, May 29, 2008
The area is famous for its limestone scenery, with karst peaks rising out of the landscape, criss-crossed by several rivers. Yangshuo is more an international backpacking colony than a Chinese town, so we decided to stay just out of town in a place on the Li River.
Before we left England, one of the things we wanted to try before we got home was a local cooking course. On our first full day here, we signed up to a course specialising in Yangshuo cuisine, in a small village just outside town. A group of eight of us learnt local specialities including Yangshuo beer fish in a nice kitchen with some great views behind. Best of all, we got to eat the five dishes we had prepared at the end of the session. I'm pleased to say they tasted pretty good, so I'm sure will be making an appearance on our dinner table at some point! This also made up for the trip before the class to the local market, which contained some interesting vegetables and spices as well as all manner of caged animals and seafood
View from the Retreat
. After seeing a couple of chickens having their heads chopped off and other skinned animals, we decided we'd seen enough.One of the other activities in the local region is to take a trip on the Li River. We took a motorised bamboo raft for about an hour, which was incredibly relaxing. The sun even made an appearance for the first time in a couple of weeks, making the scenery look all the better.
Due to a lack of time, we also took a long and tiring day trip to Longsheng and Ping'an, about three hours north, to see the rice terraces. These have been sculpted onto the undulating scenery around 700 years ago, and make for an impressive sight.
We found ourselves on a tour group as two of the four Westerners, surrounded by Chinese tourists, which was the start of a bizarrely entertaining day. En route to the terraces, we stopped at a small village that purported to reflect the traditional way of life for rural Chinese people. Clearly it was really a place transformed for tourism, but it was fascinating for a couple of reasons.
Firstly, the village has a complex set of customs regarding female hair. Girls are only allowed to cut their hair once in their lifetime, at 18, and the style from that point is governed by marital status and whether any children have been produced. This system was demonstrated to us (of course) through a show of traditional song and dance. The show also contained four 'pretend' marriages to local unmarried girls, for which volunteers were requested
C relaxing on the raft
. At this point I sat so close to Charlotte that I was effectively hiding behind her, and breathed a sigh of relief when three others were chosen, including a middle-aged Scotsman. It was also pleasing that Charlotte didn't realise until later that this was a good opportunity to get her own back after being invited to dance in Easter Island.My relief was instantly increased when the compere informed the newly married men that they had to sing a song to their new wives, which the Scot went through with to give him credit. On the way out of the hall, another of the local rituals was revealed as the women lined up to pinch everyone's bum as we exited.
Wandering round the village we did see some more of the real way of life for these people. At one point we were lead into someone's house, which was very rustic to say the least. Unbelievably though, in one of the bedrooms, was a poster of the England football team from around five years ago, as well as another of David Beckham, who seems to get everywhere.
From there, we made the perilous trip by bus up to the rice terraces. Having seen so many pictures of them in the local area, we thought we might be a little disappointed, but they were stunning and not like anything we'd seen before. It was also very interesting to see the locals at work on the terraces, while we were fending off others attempting to sell us anything they could.
We moved on from Yangshuo to Nanning, where we are now, to get hold of a visa for Vietnam and arrange onward transport to Hanoi. Although we are disappointed not to be able to get to India on this trip, we're looking forward to exploring SE Asia over the next five weeks.
