Guilin/Yangshuo

After several days in Chengdu we boarded a flight to Guilin, where we stopped briefly for a lecture and demonstration on Chinese calligraphy before departing for our main destination, Yangshuo, about two hours south. It is in the far south of China, near the Vietnamese border. With its lush green mountains and miles upon miles of rice paddies, it was the vision that always came to my mind when I thought about China back when I first became interested in the country.

Yangshuo is right on the borderline between large town and small city. It’s a very touristy kind of place. The scenery was gorgeous, the hotel was nice, and there were some cute shops, but the climate was a little too warm and way too humid for my taste. I don’t know that I’ve ever been in air that thick with humidity before, not even in Florida or the hottest days in the midst of Maine summers. I’m having a hard time placing my finger on what it was about Yangshuo that rubbed me the wrong way – maybe it was a combination of the humidity, the crowds of strange foreigners that too often included old white men coupled off with young, innocent-looking Asian girls, the mud and grime that coated the streets and sidewalks, or the fact that the main parts of town seemed to have lost their Chinese-ness in an attempt to woo foreign visitors. Whatever it was, I was glad that our stay in Yangshuo was short.

View from the hotel room:

Yangshuo at night:

That said, quite possibly my favorite activity of the trip took place in Yangshuo. We all rented bikes and rode out of town, down country roads, past farms and rice patties and the lush green mountains to the Li river, which snakes between the mountains and jungle-like forests, where we boarded bamboo rafts. There was a raft guy (driver? navigator? I’m not really sure what to call him…) on each raft, which had two of us, who led us down the river quite a ways. It was gorgeous.

Biking to the river:

Me with Liz, Becky, and WooJung before rafting:

Scenes from Yangshuo: