Experiences Abroad: Guilin shan shui jia tian xia

You feel the bus making a sudden stop and try not to fall out of the seats. These same seats that have been used as a bed throughout this longer bus ride than expected. Looking out the window you notice it is early morning with the sun still yet unseen but daybreak has started giving light to the sky. Then you notice one giant looking mountain off in the distance. . . then another one. . . one more. Trying to count these behemoths would be exhausting especially with the lack of sleep. Besides there is a fog that is floating around and it is hard to make out when and where these structures will pop up. It’s almost as if there are multiple dragons walking around this new location I have found to explore. About thirty minutes later I hear the bus driver saying the name of the city I am looking to get off at and start my vacation.

I have ended up in Yangshou China. An area that is known for wonderful nature and scenery. As I am getting off of the bus I am excited but at the same time a little nervous walking around this mystical new land. That morning after breakfast I travel another 27 kilometers to an even smaller village of XingPing. Up at this village I see a famous scene that everyone in China knows about and that is because it is the picture on the back of the 20 RMB bill (picture is below). Plus in XingPing I did take a bamboo raft trip down the Li River to get an even closer view of these “dragon backs” coming out of the ground. It did rain during that day on multiple occasions which meant the fog and mystical feeling stayed around.

Another activity I did near Yangshou was renting a bicycle and going out looking for the “head of these dragons.” In reality it was a good ride to see the various small villages intertwined with the unique scenery. There were multiple fields with different crops, some orange orchards, and these mountains providing a neat background for some pictures. I did ford the river one time to get along the smaller dirt paths but it would start to rain a couple hours later so it didn’t matter if my feet were dry by that time.

One activity that I saw from a distance but is real unique to this area is how the locals fish. First let me explain that the river is actually clear and can see to the bottom which for China is a rare thing, but even with the clear water I think the fisherman are lazy. They have trained birds to do the fishing for them! These birds are called cormorant birds. So how it works is the fisherman will be out on their bamboo raft accompanied with usually two birds who are his pets. In order for the birds to not eat all the fish it catches the fisherman ties a snare lightly around the bird’s throat. The fisherman coaxes and encourages the bird to go looking for fish and eventually they catch a fish. Since the bird can’t swallow the bigger fish it swims back to the raft where the fisherman takes the fish from the bird and sends it out fishing again. Eventually the bird does get rewarded and ultimately for the birds it is a game. In fact while I was watching one bird found a branch and was playing with it teasing his friend who was on the raft watching him. Eventually the bird did get back to ‘work’ and found a pretty big fish. I was lucky enough to see the fishing pretty close without many people around after hiking sometime along the river.

After spending a few days in Yangshou I did leave this area and headed up north a little ways to an area known as the Longsheng Rice Terraces. Even though I did leave the “dragons” unseen this area up in the mountains still had a mystical feel. This is mainly due to the fog that had always been hanging around which again did make it hard to see the landscape at a distance.

Up in this area there are multiple villages that have various minorities living in them with some unique traditions. One of these minority groups is named the Red Yao Long Haired Village. This village is known for how long and dark colored their hair is no matter how old they are. They only cut their hair one time in their life and after cutting it they don’t throw it away. Instead they use that hair to tie it up. A different hairstyle from the females represent the different marital status. So depending on if you are single, married without kids, or married with kids means how you wear your hair. While in this village I was able to see a performance where they talked about the different customs and cultures. Plus as part of this performance I was ‘voluntold’ to participate in a wedding ceremony. There were four of us on stage (2 Chinese and 2 foreigners) along with the woman of the village going through a wedding ceremony. It was pretty interesting and the craziest thing that happened was us “newlyweds” danced around in a circle while the other woman were the perimeter of the circle. As we were going around in a circle the perimeter would be pinching our butt. This is very common and shows love in the village. They didn’t say this but I think it is also checking to see if the guy works. I say this because it is a lot of walking up and down in the terraces for working and so someone who does this daily would have a fine tuned gluteus maximus.

So besides getting “married” I spent that day and the next day exploring the different villages and different rice terraces. I ended up sleeping at a village real close to the top of this mountain and was supposed to be an amazing view of the terraces. Even the next morning the fog was still around and was raining off and on so it was hard to see the vastness of the terraces. I eventually had to head back to “civilization” and took about a three hour bus down to the town of Guilin, which is the name of a city but also the county where I have stayed these last few days (hence the title of this post: ‘Guilin’s mountain and water scenery is the best under heaven’). Going along the road I still saw the backs of the dragons (really known as the Karst Mountains) off in the distance and could easily imagine a traveler coming across a few ginormous dragon heads wherever these mountains fade away.

I took an overnight bus to a bigger city of Guangzhou and after about a fourteen hours was on my train back home. About twenty seven hours later I ended up back in a city with no amazing view of nature right out my doorstep. Again this trip was able to happen because of the Spring Festival holidays which I didn’t even talk about in this post. That is because this post is long enough and more importantly the festival is still somewhat going on and there are more activities planned before the full moon marking the end of the festival. Once some more of these activities happen I will write about it describing what happened and sharing a couple differences between the different locations I have been for the festival. For now enjoy the pictures and if you look close enough you might see a dragon off in the distance. I will write later.