Yangshao Yahoo!
Trip Start
Mar 10, 2005
1
4
24
Trip End
Aug 02, 2005
Yangshao,
China
Wednesday, March 23, 2005
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So folks, we arrived in Guilin and found ourselves in a city that just wasn't quite what we had in mind. Guilin, as the guidebooks said, lived up to its reputation. Just another big city with armies of street vendors and lots of Chinese tourists. The surrounding limestone hills, known as karst formations, were its single redeeming quality we felt. They were fascinating shapes and are the inspiration for Chinese paintings. We hiked up the most popular hill in town - Elephant Trunk Hill - so called because, you guessed it, it looks like an elephant with its trunk taking a drink from the riverside. For us, spending a night in Guilin was necessary to get to Yangshao..
March 21
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We met up with our tour guide and the rest of the group for our cruise down the Li River to our destination for the next couple of days - Yangshao
Cormorant Fisherman
. A little kinder, gentler than Guilin though a backpacker haven catering to Western tastebuds. It may not be a typical Chinese city, but we certainly enjoyed being in a much smaller town with fresh air and a more rural feel to the place. The Li River cruise was excellent. It took four hours which was plenty of time to take in the mountains and terraced rice paddies and small villages by the riverbank along the way. We enjoyed a buffet lunch and took LOTS of pictures. The day started out foggy but cleared to a slightly overcast sky.
Once in Yangshao, we parted with our tour guide and the rest of the group to find accomodation, which wasn't difficult. Xi Jie (West Street) is full of cafes and souvenir shops all aimed towards tourists with local tour guides approaching at every turn - you learn to say "no" consistently and we even had to break out our favorite phrase that Tony taught us early on - boo yao (that's what it sounds like to us) or "I don't want it".
Amy's wish for this part of the trip was to cruise the Li River - check. Alex's wish was to see cormorants (type of bird) fishing at night. We arranged for a tour/show at the recommended Light Travels agency on West Street that evening of a local fisherman demonstrating cormorant fishing from his bamboo raft while we watched from another boat
Cruisin' down the Li
. Li River fisherman have trained their cormorants (it takes one year to train one bird supposedly) to dive into the river and catch fish by lamplight. The birds' necks are banded so that they can't swallow the larger fish, only small ones. This way the fisherman can pick them up and retreive the fish from their throats. It sounds inhumane and a little sketchy describing it this way, but it is a way of life here that has gone on for decades/centuries and actually quite interesting.March 22
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The other "thing to do" in Yangshao is to take a bicycle tour through the surrounding countryside and explore the hills. We signed up again with Light Travels for a bicycle tour with a personal guide. The three of us went off into the surrounding countryside on dirt roads for an enjoyable morning of riding past farms and rice paddies with the incredible backdrop of the misty/craggy limestone hills the whole way. Our guide took us to a popular hill - Moon Hill - you guessed it - it is a crescent shape with a hole in the middle. We hiked up to the top getting a spectacular view of the surrounding area and some great shots. On our way back down it started sprinkling rain and so we stayed around at the Moon Hill cafe for some delicious fried rice with our guide
Off-roading
. This was a highlight of our trip thus far.Instead of riding back through the countryside with it still raining we opted for the main road back to town - good thing too because it started raining harder. Once back in town we took the opportunity to sleep the afternoon away. In the evening we strolled around town again and ate a good meal of pizza (better than others we tried) and chocolate pancakes (aka crepes) at Jimmy's Cafe.
March 23
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Today we are headed back to Guilin - not stopping in town but going directly to the airport for our stopover flight to Bangkok before heading on to Siem Reap/Angkor Wat tomorrow morning early. So there is much more to come as we say goodbye to China and start our Southeast Asia leg of the trip. All in all we have enjoyed our time immensely in China with the best parts being with friends Tony, Carolyn, and Josh in Beijing and Shanghai. Stay tuned . . .
