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Yangshou is a sweet little town in the countryside that, although quite a bit touristy is absolutely breathtaking. The landscape consisted of gorgeous mountains, modest farms and twisting rivers lined with bamboo rafts. All of the shops, bars and cafes were in walking distance of our hotel. Our favorite activity was a half day bicycle ride through the mountains. We stopped and had lunch with a farmer’s family who insisted we try all of the local delicacies, one of which included pork stuffed snails. While in Yangshou we also went Cormorant Fishing (we actually joined a man who had trained water turkeys and they snatched fish and brought them up for him), caught a spectacular light show/ballet that was put together by the same man that did the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics, and had another cooking lesson! Although there was much to do in the little town of Yangshou, we were anxious to go on to our cruise through the Three Gorges on the third largest river in the world.
The Three Gorges on the Yangzi River is a must see when you travel to China; according to everyone we spoke to. For us though, it was truly
Overnight Train
Six beds per cabin. These are our roommates.a disappointment. We boarded our vessel, a late-model and rather small cruise ship that may have been called luxurious twenty years ago, and hoped for the best. Our first stop was the Three Gorges Dam, which, because of its enormity (or maybe because of the thick smog), you cannot even see from end to end. The controversy surrounding this dam is that they basically created it to control the yearly floods and the rare disastrous ones that had occurred about once every ten years or so, but by doing so they had to permanently flood many of the villages that have existed there for centuries. Our local guide told his story of relocating his family from their village before the dam was completed. Two weeks after the water rose above the roofs of their homes, his grandmother, who had lived there her entire life, passed. In order to cross the dam we had to go through five locks which took over three long hours. Over the next two days we powered upstream taking in the foggy views of the now undersized mountains that made up the three gorges and below deck drinking over-priced cocktails. Even though these mountains had their
Overnight Train
Betty's got top bunk. legs cut out from underneath them, they were still beautiful to see and we did agree that before industry took over and prior to the dam flooding the area, this had to have been an awesome sight to see. We happily disembarked in Chongqing and took a long bus ride to our next destination, Chengdu.
Chengdu seemed like a small city to us because of its manageability and lack of massive skyscrapers, but is actually China’s 5th largest city with a population of over 13 million. While there we visited the Panda Sanctuary and watched the Pandas sit around lazily eating mounds of bamboo. That made us hungry so we visited the vegetarian restaurant at the Wuhou Temple that made “like-meat” food. If you did not know any better and ordered the spicy chicken or the sweat and sour pork here, you would have never known you were eating vegetarian. Afterwards, we walked through Tianfu Square to Renmin Park, where we stopped for tea and watched the locals celebrating May Day, or China’s Labor Day. We ended the day with a show at the Opera House and got up early the next day for our flight to Shianghai.
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jesyka
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ballet
i knew taking you to the swan lake would open your eyes to more ballet performances. :-)