Serendipity: YangShuo and the Jade Dragon River

We've spent the last couple of days in Yangshuo, a smaller town to the southwest of Guilin. Though it has some wonderful geographic features (barely discernable through the mist), Guilin still has the any-big-Chinese-city feel to it. Yangshuo is smaller, more eclectic and not yet Disneyfied, without the shiny plastic "heritage" feel of Lijiang and other rebuilt scenic spots.

On Tuesday we took a boat cruise down the Li river from Guilin to Yangshuo. Though it was misty, this made it very atmospheric - see the photo blog for images from this trip. There were giant karsts along the way, very mysterious in the fog.

On Wednesday we decided to explore the area around Yangshuo by bike. We duly rented a couple of bikes and bought a map which was more artistic than accurate. Nonetheless we managed to find our way to one of the back-route bike paths out of town, but the track forked in several places, so we had to keep consulting the map. At one such point a passer-by stopped to help us: though she didn't speak English, pointing and nodding helped explain where we were and where we hoped to go. She was heading in the same direction, so told us to follow her. Gradually it evolved into her having appointed herself as our guide for the day - she led us through small villages and winding tracks, pointing out the scenery and telling us the name of each place. Mandarin is a tonal language, and we undoubtedly hopelessly mangled the names when we repeated them.

Though our guide spoke less than ten words of English ("hello", "beautiful", "big", "smallow") she managed to explain that she comes from a place on the Jade Dragon river where they use bamboo rafts. She guided us through fields and past paddies and fishing villages. After a couple of arduous hours (and a couple of tumbles on my part thanks to being distracted by ducks, deep muddy ruts, and a slightly too big bicycle) we wound up at her village. They offered us lunch, but the sight of villagers washing vegetables - and everything else - in the river, along with memories of Dali belly dissuaded us from eating. Instead we just sat in the shade to drink water and catch our breath.

After a rest we debated whether to ride back down the other side of the river or to take the bamboo rafts down. They looked a little flimsy, and the guidebook said that it was best not to go with unlicensed operators, since there had been a boating fatality involving a foreigner a few years earlier. I walked up on the bridge to look upriver and saw a bamboo "houseboat" at least triple the size of the skinny rafts, and thought that that would be okay, so we decided to go ahead with it. Further reassurance came when all sorts of official looking license plates and documents were produced when I paid for the trip.

It turned out that we were going on one of the narrow rafts after all... ten bamboo poles in width, it was lashed together with small gaps between the poles. A couple of deck chairs were wedged in the centre of the raft, our very muddy bicycles were carefully balanced one atop the other behind the deckchairs, and our guide's husband leapt aboard wearing wellies and wielding a big pole for punting.

We did a short turn upriver to admire the beautiful scenery on the other side of the bridge, then headed downriver. It rapidly became clear why there were gaps in the floor of the raft - the river was very shallow, and there were lots of weirs heading downstream, with drops of between one and six feet at each one. Our boatman navigated these adeptly, though the first one - just a few feet - had us rather alarmed. One slowly noses the raft forward over the weir, and it hangs half-suspended until the tipping point is reached, when the front crashes down into the water with much splashing. The gaps in the raft soften the impact and allow water to drain out once the whole raft is down. Very exciting!

The Jade Dragon is very lovely, though on a smaller scale than the Li. We had better weather than for our Li cruise, and had the river almost to ourselves. There was another raft following ours with a couple from Beijing - their boatman was a friend of ours, so the two of them chatted off and on during the two hour trip. At one point our two rafts were passed by the "express service" - a couple of similar but much faster moving rafts zooming by. Other than that there were just fishermen and peasants along the water's edge. A lovely and very relaxing counterpoint to the morning's ride.

Cormorant fishing

Peter:

In Yangshuo we got the opportunity to see the old practice of cormorant fishing. There are a number of photos showing the fisherman and his birds. Cormorants are large birds with long necks about the size of a small goose. The fisherman had about 6 trained birds that he fitted with a collar of string. After dark, he went out into the shallows of the river on his bamboo raft (only 5 bamboo sticks across) with a lantern and a basket. The light attracted the fish and he let the birds go into the water. The birds stayed close to the raft because of the light/fish. The birds would dive and are incredible swimmers. As they caught fish the collar on their necks prevented them from swallowing the fish. The fisherman would use his punting pole to reach out to the birds. The birds would hop aboard the pole and he would bring them back to the raft. The fisherman then tipped the bird up over the basket and the fish fell out. The size of the fish was limited, but the biggest we saw was about 5 inches long and quite thick like a perch, maybe 3 inches from top to bottom. After the fishing the fisherman cut the collars off and fed his birds.
You can see how well-trained the birds are by looking at the picture of me in my pirate pose with the cormorant on my arm.

ChongQing

Peter says:

After disembarking from our Yangtze River cruise, we had a few hours in ChongQing. We had a guide and driver in Chongqing as this was part of our cruise package. Chongqing is one of the "Three Furnaces" in China along with Wuhan and Nanjing. It gets incredibbly hot and humid in the summer. We heard last summer there were 40 days of plus 40 degree celsius weather (over 100 in F). Chongqing is a rapidly growing city - metropolitan area is 33 million! More people than in all of Canada. Downtown could be any big city in the world with skyscrapers and luxury shops. Definitely a lot of money sloshing about Chongqing.

Chongqing is a mountainous city where another river enters the Yangtze. During the WW II it was the capital of China as the Japanese occupied Beijing and the coastal regions. This was where the Flying Tigers - American fighter/bomber pilots were based and flew missions. Chiang-Kai Shek's Nationalist government was based here. Our guide's grandfather was a major general in Chiang Kai Shek's army (his army was routed by the Japanese in Nanjing) and the guide gave us a great history lesson. At the highest point in Chongqing there is a beautiful park with spectacular views (we had a rare clear day - no smog). The guide took us to one of Chiang Kai Shek's residences and showed us his escape route to an underground bunker for bombing raids. Of course if you didn't know where to look you would never know, or see this, as the nationalists lost to the communists and the victors write the history. Inside the house (now a store selling artwork), the guide opened a curtain and showed us pictures of Chiang Kai Shek and others during WW II. There was also the American General Stillwell, who I understand didn't particularly like Chiang Kai Shek and referred to him as "the Peanut". Seeing the photos I could understand! Deng Xioping was also from this area and there were photos of him as well.

After a quick tour of the city, the guide asked us what we wanted for lunch. Chongqing and Sichuan province are famous for hotpot, so I thought this was a great opportunity to try since we had an interpreter. I was a little wary because I'd read that they could be quite spicy and organ meets were favored dishes. For those unfamiliar, hotpot consists of a bowl of broth over an open flame on your table and you have a selection of meats, fishes, vegetables, etc and you cook these at your table. You have some condiments like garlic, sesame oil, vinegar, soy sauce, etc to make a sauce to dip your cooked food in. We had a smaller bowl inside our larger one. The large bowl was a water broth with vegetables that was quite mild. The smaller bowl was oil filled with chillies, ginger, and other spices. Cooking things in the oil definitely got the juices flowing. I was glad for our guide - some items looked like tripe (was actually bamboo) or squid (thick white noodles), but others were items on Vera's no eat list. Apparently in the summer when its really hot and humid, you eat spicy hotpot and wash it down with beer and after sweating buckets, you go outside where the breeze cools you down.
Well, we had an excellent lunch with beef, chicken, mutton, fresh and preserved tofu, various vegetables and noodles, and some fine Chongqing beer. Full belly for our flight to Chengdu...