China continued.........Yangshou

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After a great experience on the mighty Yangtze, we were off to Yangshou, one of the most beautiful (and thankfully easy to travel) spots in all of China. It is easy to travel because it had the most foreigners in all of China. It has a great main street with many bars and restaurants, with English staff, and lots of western food (a nice change). Yangshou was a great spot all in all. It had many things to do, was cheap, and was easy to communicate!!!

Yangshou is a beautiful region of China, famous for limestone karsts piercing out of the landscape. The area also has 3 rivers flowing through it, making it great for fish, and for farming. Like most of China, rice is the staple crop; however, there is also fresh fruit in abundance. The sub tropical climate this far south creates excellent growing for oranges, lechyee, watermelon, and other delicious fruits. Yangshou has a "hippie" feel to it. It has also many night clubs that have booming music all through the night. Funny how all of them are empty...it makes us wonder how they can keep the business going.

The weather here was fantastic......hot and humid, with high temps reaching over 30 degrees and the pleasant absence of rain was a nice touch. We spent our days exploring, renting a scooter and hitting the open highway (a scary experience for the ill hearted). We went on a great trip to the dragon bridge.....a 1500 year old stone bridge. Here we got on a bamboo raft and floated around, having beers and swimming. It was great.
We also stumbled onto a swimming hole on the river that 6 Chinese university graduates were swimming. The language barrier was difficult, but we all had a great time. I even have video footage of all of them holding a Calgary Flames flag, chanting "Go Flames Go" in both English and Chinese!!!! I will be sending it in to the Flames group shortly.

Yangshou also has an ancient method of fishing still in practice today. Fisherman troll the rivers with dozens of Cormorant birds that swim ahead of the boat.....if the catch a small fish, they eat it, however, if the fish is large enough to sell, the fisherman grabs the bird before he can swallow it and takes the fish. This goes on until the fisherman is happy, or the birds are full and don’t fish anymore. It usually takes place at night with the fisherman shinning light into the water so the birds only fish in a certain area. Good for both bird and man, it is neat how traditions carry on.

Yangshou is beautiful. In comparison to all the areas that we have been to, it was certainly the best. And once again, it was nice to see so many tourists and western food choices, as it had been 3 weeks since we have seen either.

The nice thing about China is that if you find it touristy, just go one block, and it is a whole new world. We would recommend Yangshou to anyone to travel, as it is easy. There are many things around to do such as caves, and rock climbing (Yangshou is one of the busiest climbing spots in all of China). Rent a scooter, rent a bike, take a tour, hot air balloon, or just enjoy the town, Yangshou is probably our favorite place in China to date. What it lacks in history, it make up for in fun.

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Photos

River in Yangshuo
It was such a serene place! We look back now at our photos and marvel at the natural beauty!

Beautiful Karsts
Truly, the most amazing landscape!

Trevor Exercising
This equipment is available for anyone to use and the locals actually use it. There was even a treadmill.

Street Food
This lady fried us up some vegetables on kebabs and some sort of fish balls (or so they said)

Visiting with an English School
We were invited to come and practice English with a local school for young adults. It was great fun and the students were very appreciative of it. Trevor even got a beer! We found out that it is much easier for the students to read and write English than it is to speak.

Capain Trevor
Erin felt like a princess being rowed around by her studdley prince!

Helping out the Locals
We went on a scooter ride and ended up off roading (yes, on a scooter). We ran into the locals working at "fixing" the road, so we decided to lend a hand.