China 2013 Day 8

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We wake up to a beautiful morning in Yangshuo. What an incredible sight! All around and even in the town stand sheer limestone mountains in a variety of shapes. Although it's a sunny day, there's a mist around the more distant peaks. We realize now that these are the mountains so often depicted in Chinese paintings. They remind me a bit of the mountains around Rio de Janeiro. I wonder if the geological processes that created them are the same.

A not-so-great breakfast at the hotel, then on the bus. Our first excursion today is a boat ride on the Li River. We descend from the bus to the peer along a residential street with a few shops. Here is how the vast majority of real Chinese live, in ramshackle homes patched together from wood and brick, some still presenting a suggestion of long-ago splendor. Half-naked children play in the streets and wizened crones regard us with indifference as we pass. They live in their world, and we in ours.

We board the small cruise boat and are off. As we motor down the river, we see fishermen, people collecting algae mats from the rocks, fish farms, and water buffalo. Local boats whiz by us. They are constructed from three or four long bamboo trunks lashed together, propelled by a motor with a long shaft that acts as a tiller and rudder. There's a group of foreigners like us kayaking. Egrets and cormorants are plentiful. We see one fisherman using his trained cormorant to catch fish, but he is too far off to observe closely. But the real star of the show is those karst limestone formations, partially shrouded in mist. It's an alien landscape, an unforgettable vista.

The boat u-turns and heads back up river to our starting place. We retrace our steps to our bus, window-shopping at the small shops along the way. Next is lunch, another rice and stuff meal but with a little more spice and some interesting combinations.

For the afternoon, a smaller group of us, led by Tracy, hop into a trolley bus and head for the countryside. It's a fascinating closer look at the amazing landscape and the lives of everyday locals. Every inch of cultivatable ground is used through the clever use of terracing. Rice paddies dominate but there are also many other crops, including mandarins, persimmons, loquats, pumellos, various beans, strawberries, soy and cotton. We stop to explore a rice paddy in more detail. Tracy explains the techniques used to extract the greatest yields from this challenging topography. Most of the final rice crop of the year has been collected but here and there are yellow areas where harvesting has not yet taken place. The stalks after harvesting are gathered together to dry, then either burned and composted or used as an insulating material for roofs.

As we continue our drive, we see men and women working in the fields, using traditional farm implements like scythes. There are lots of water buffalo, including a mother and calf, the latter who is racing around with the wild abandon of youth. We also see cows and flocks of ducks and lots of chickens.

We stop to visit the house of an eighty-plus-year-old woman who lives alone and is apparently paid a stipend by tour companies to welcome visitors whenever they show up. She shows us around her very simple dwelling and demonstrates how she prepares her meals. She clearly loves having visitors and laughs often. She pinches our arms and tells us we are too fat.

Our final stop on this excursion is a view of a mountain with a natural crescent-shaped arch at the top known as the Mountain of the Moon. We have fun posing so that it looks like we are holding the moon in our hands.

On the way back, we disembark at West St., which is just a block away from the hotel. This is the main shopping area of Youngshuo which stays open until midnight every night. It is full of interesting sites, sounds and smells. Lots of shops offering knockoffs of major brands and the usual contingent of peddlers and beggars. Wanda takes the girls including Violet to one of her favorite shops, a handbag store, and they are whisked away into a secret back room where apparently the real deals are to be had. As the only guy, I am left on the street by myself. I have to keep moving, however, because as soon as I stay in one place, I attract a crowd of peddlers and other people interested in my money. The girls finally emerge; Violet has succumbed to a purse of some kind.

Supper is at the same restaurant where we had lunch. Two interesting dishes: "beer fish," a local specialty where the fish is marinated in beer then steamed (delicious but bony); and "toffee banana," essentially a fritter stuffed with banana and dipped in honey (yummy).

The evening's entertainment is something really extraordinary. It is the famous Impressions Liu Sanjie show, designed and produced by Zhang Yimou, a famous Chinese film director who also was responsible for the 2008 Olympics opening ceremony. The audience sits in a huge outdoor stadium and most of the action takes place on boats on the Li River. The show is a tribute to Liu Sanjie, a famous Chinese singer with a dramatic life. At the height of her fame, the story goes, she fell in love with a simple fisherman, but then was asked to be a concubine of the emperor (a great honour). Instead she and her fisherman husband fled and lived in hiding, eventually committing suicide to remain together forever. How this story is reflected in the show is mysterious to us English speakers, but we enjoy the spectacle as a sumptuous visual and aural feast.

By the time the bus arrives back at the hotel, we are all once again wiped. Despite the ironing-board bed, we are asleep in minutes.

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