Yangshou

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My trip to Yangshou was both practical and scenic; I took a bamboo raft between the two towns coming down the Li river. The scenery here is stunning. The landscape is probably among the most famous/photographed areas in china, it’s even on the 20Y note and I hate to say it but it’s in all the HSBC adverts, telling people this instantly makes them understand the scenery here but reminds me of my previous job. The Karst peaks are enveloped in flourishing green vegetation and run all the way downstream. The river was much quieter than I had expected, which was great. There were only about 7 boats going downstream so I wasn’t quite alone but could almost imagine it. A couple of the boats on the river were ferries running groups of middle aged tourists downstream at a rate of knots. Excuse the pun! I didn’t see the sense in this but if they want to pay four times what I did for the whole day solely on a boat trip then fair play to them but I think they definitely missed out. Arriving in Yangshou I found the hostel with little difficulty and after sitting around for a few hours went for dinner. The local specialty here is Beer fish, it’s quite expensive so I’m glad I met Tijl on the river; we decided to split a portion to see what all the fuss was about. We still don’t know. The fish was nice enough but nothing special and I didn’t taste any beer, although the beer here is generally around 3% so much less than I’m used to, maybe this contributed to the lack of flavour. Due to the fact I was completely exhausted I spent the evening in the hostel and watched the 9pm movie, Up!

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