The most amazing month ever... Yangshuo

We stayed in a cute Tea Cozy hotel. Once again, it was different from the modern hotel and apartment in Beijing and Shanghai and it was also very different from the simple hotel in the Ping An terraces. It was in the countryside and it was so cute!

Being in the countryside means that there are more big bugs! I am not great with insects and I had the shock of my life one morning. We were sat at a table outside waiting for breakfast. A waiter calmly said to us ‘one moment please,’ and pulled a giant beetle out by it’s antenna from a crack in the table right beside me! He then threw it over the fence before coming back and asking if we were ready to order. All I can say is that my face must have been a picture!!

We stayed in Yangshuo for five days. We were worried that we would be staying there for too long. However, we didn’t need to worry as there was plenty to do! Part of the reason why we stayed in this hotel in Yangshuo was to try and avoid the crowds of Chinese tourists as it was a Chinese national holiday at the beginning of May.

We were so lucky with the weather!! The hotel receptionists said it had been raining for about two months and while we were there it was the first hot weather they had had during the year.

The land is flat in Yangshuo but there are around 20,000 mountains all around. This makes the landscape unique!! It is really quite spectacular!! 

We wanted to have a family bike ride. My Mum can’t ride a bike very well so she had to learn quickly!! What a beautiful setting we were in for her to learn too! There was a grandfather farming with his young grandson near by. They must have wondered what those silly foreigners were up to!! My parents rode a tandem bike and me and my sister rode individual bikes.

What was supposed to be a little bike ride turned into a five hour adventure on our first day. We were a bit silly though, we rode in the middle of the day with barely any water, no hats and we got lost! (That’s probably why we ended up cycling for five hours!!!) We stopped in an old village and bought some traditional Chinese hats. (My mum thinks hats are life savers in hot weather. She’s probably right too but I don’t like wearing hats! They just don’t suit me! However, these hats were different! I love them)!

By the end of the day, I had a stupid looking t-shirt tan (ok so it wasn’t a tan, I got sun burnt!) and my fingers remained white because I had been gripping the handle bars all day!

We went on a few bike rides during our stay. We also went on one with our guide. We went to a cave. I have probably seen more impressive caves in the past but the fact that the whole of the caves were lit up in different colours made it very Chinese and therefore, very different! It was like a 1970’s themed cave. You could also have a mud bath there. It looked like fun but I am not a fan of mud. Luckily, I wasn’t wearing a swimming costume so unfortunately, I couldn’t cover myself in mud!

We also saw a very big and very old tree.

We went to a Chinese minority ‘theme park’. This was probably one of the strangest places I’ve been to in China! The government had collected people from different minority groups around China and put them in one place and made it into a park for tourists. You could take a boat trip around a lake where different minority groups had prepared small dances, songs and performances. We also walked around a bit and sang songs (well we mimed as we didn’t understand a word) and we danced with them. A woman also threw a ball thing out of a window and I caught it. It meant that I will have good luck in love. (This better be true!!)

My sister and I went on a night out in Yanghsuo town. We went the day after the Chinese holiday had come to an end and so it was pretty quiet! However, we went to a foreign bar and it played good music. Some foreigners invited us to play beer pong with them and we spent a few hours drinking and talking with them, exchanging stories about our experiences in China.

 Our guide, Lily said that in fifteen years, the town had changed drastically due to tourism. It has changed so fast and so many people have gone to live there that the Chinese government has had to make an entire new town near by! Unfortunately, to do this, they will have to destroy rice farms and this is destroying the countryside. On one of our bike rides, we literally rode through what looked like a big building site. It was dusty and ugly! Another example of a place being destroyed by tourism!!

We visited an authentic fan and painting shop in a nearby village that Lily knew well. The owner was so lovely and she let us help make a large fan that was in the process of being made. She also gave us a very good deal on her items. Everything was handmade by her family. The oldest member of her family was eighty years old and the work that the grandmother had done was amazing! We bought three fans and a hanging picture for 600RMB. (That’s like £60 for four items of original handmade authentic Chinese art)!!!

After going to see the Shaolin Zen Musical Ritual near the Shaolin Temple a few months ago, I thought I would never be able to see another show that would be as good as it. In Yangshuo, we went to see a ‘Light Show’. Yet another spectacular show in yet another beautiful location on a lake surrounded by mountains. The man who put it all together was responsible for the opening ceremony performance in the Beijing Olympics back in 2008. Therefore, the performance was obviously brilliant!!! There was a very famous Chinese singer in the performance too.

We went on two boat trips. The first was a small raft that fitted two people. My sister and I paired up on one boat and my parents paired up on another. Their boat man seemed to know a lot more about what he was doing than ours. Ours must have been a beginner because he wasn’t very good at paddling. There are small drops all along the river and there is a special way to push the raft down without making it topple. The last drop was quite big. Our paddler missed the drop point and ended up going down a completely random part. Even from a distance I could see other paddlers looking at us in a worried manner. Luckily, our raft did not capsize and we remained mostly dry!

The other boat ride was a raft made for four people. Unfortunately, the weather wasn’t great and it gave the surrounding mountains near the lake an eerie look. It was a long boat ride, about two hours but it was strangely relaxing despite the rain!

We saw the location that is printed on the 20RMB note. It was raining and therefore I wanted to stay dry. I wish I had been more enthusiastic because it actually looks beautiful! My parents went and took lots of photos but I stayed dry in the car. How boring of me!!!

Another amazing thing we did was go on a cormorant fishing trip. We thought it would be a show but in actual fact, we went on an actual fishing trip. I have no interest in fishing whatsoever but this was something else!! The Chinese fishermen take the boats out at night and use these special birds to fish for them! So off we went in this boat with a fisherman and six cormorants on both sides of the boat.

 The fisherman unleashes them and sets them free into the water. They all have a string tied to their necks. The birds swim under the water, catch he fish and then come back to the surface. The fisherman catches them by the string with a hook and pulls them in one at a time. He then opens the bird’s mouth and the fish fall out into a bowl. It looks sometimes as though the bird might be getting hurt but it is harmless for the cormorant and this method has been used for thousands of years! It is really amazing! We were even allowed to hold them and have photos taken. My dad even took the fish out of the bird’s mouth!

Lily also took us to see a farmer's market. Bird flu did cross my mind briefly as we walked through the endless cages of chickens and ducks! There were so many crates of baby ducklings, chicks and rabbits. They were so cute! I really hoped that they would be for pets but I know the reality was that they were to be eaten! 

It was also my sister's birthday while in Yangshuo. She is a vegetarian and had a hard time finding vegetarian food while in China. A lot of people don't understand what being a vegetarian means here. Even Lily made us giggle by responding to my sister's vegetarian comment by saying, 'but you can still eat pork though right?' Luckily, we found a vegetarian restaurant for her. I have to say, I love meat but this restaurant had some of the best food I've ever eaten in China!!!

Yangshuo is a really great place. It’s very beautiful and charming. It is a place to go to experience real China!…But I am worried it will be destroyed by tourism!

Our next stop was… Chengdu…

The most amazing month ever ... Longsheng. The Ping An Rice Terraces.

The flight was late landing because we were sat on the plane for two hours waiting for it to take off. We were worried that our guide meeting us at Guilin airport would be annoyed or would tell us we don’t have enough time to do what we planned. However, as soon as we arrived at the airport, a happy little woman approached us. Our guide was called Lily and she was lovely and full of energy.

We drove for two hours to a little row of huts in a car park. We were told to leave our suitcases there unless we wanted to pay 50RMB to each local woman to carry each suitcase up the mountain. I was a little anxious because these huts weren’t exactly surrounded by security. However, we were told the men who owned the hut were there all the time and even slept there at night.

So we got back in the van and drove another forty minutes further up a mountain. We arrived at a little car park that was empty when we arrived. A group of village women ran to our van and peered into the windows to see if we had luggage. Their faces were disappointed when they saw that we didn’t and then hurried off to another approaching van to see if they had any luggage.

We walked up more of a mountain for another twenty minutes. This village really was not the easiest place to get to! Lily told us that the villagers only recently had a road made near their village! Before the Government was persuaded to make it, it took the villagers hours and hours to travel up and down the mountains.

We walked past many stalls that were selling crafts. We were told by nearly every shop owner that these items for sale were handmade. Many were. However others were not. Later in the week we went to Yangshuo town and I saw many of the same items for sale there! (How peculiar!) 

Once again, I realised I wasn’t as fit as I once was! (Too much Chinese food!) We saw the following day that it is possible to sit in a chair and be carried up the mountain! Who wants to miss the experience of huffing and puffing up and down a mountain on a hot day though right?? Those people are missing out!! The little old women literally carry your suitcases in wooden baskets on their backs!! Poor women!!

Once we reached the village we went to see our hotel. I was so impressed by my dad’s hotel bookings! We had gone from an extravagant hotel in Beijing and a greatly impressive apartment in Shanghai to a very simple and traditional wooden home up in the mountains. Even though it was basic, it was still very comfortable and perfectly fine!

We went to another hotel to eat in the evening. After we finished eating, Lily came over and was amazed at how much we had ordered to eat. (We had ordered nine dishes between the four of us). To be fair, we were hungry and ate most of it. We made a family decision however that we should stop ordering rice because it just fills us up! Lily was also shocked at how much we had spent. (We spent probably around the equivalent of £25. (This included some beer). This was apparently an expensive meal!

There were no lights in the village at night and so we had to use torches on our phones to find our way back to our hotel. We were nervous about the weather. It had been raining the day we arrived and there was mist. There was supposed to be more rain and mist to come. The following day we wanted to go on a five hour hike but this did not look promising. We didn’t want to walk for hours if we weren’t going to see any of the views. We decided to wait until morning to make the final decision about what to do. Lily said, up in the mountains, no one can predict the weather.

It was so peaceful and quiet and my sister and I were about to fall asleep in the peacefulness of the night when suddenly…..music was heard in the distance. This was then followed by a lot of yelling (I assume drinking games were in full swing). I found this so funny! I thought this would be a quiet village in the mountains. It was…but it was also a backpacking area and therefore, backpackers need some entertainment at night!

I was asleep before I could even consider going to investigate what was going on!

The next day we were up bright and early, praying for some good weather. We decided to go on a shorter trek. It would only take two or three hours. Instead of hiking to another village, we decided to trek around the same village in one big circle.

So off we went. We walked past more handmade (or not) stalls and a place to dress up in traditional costumes for the equivalent of £1. There were many, many tourists in this part. For some reason though, all the tourists stopped at a certain point. Lily said it was perhaps due to the fact that they had no time because they were group tours. We continued onwards and found that before long, we were the only ones walking in the forests and mountains.

I therefore advise, if ever you visit the Ping An Rice Terraces, to keep walking as far away from the tourists as possible! Also, it is far better to go to places like this with a personal tour guide rather than as a tour group!

We were so lucky! The weather, as though by magic, just cleared up before our very eyes!

The views are spectacular! It must be so beautiful when it snows and when the greenery blooms during Spring time! The rice fields on the Dragon Backbone Terraces rise up to 1000 metres high. It’s so hard to work out how they have built them up the hillsides and that they are scattered everywhere among the minority villages!

We walked past a native woman from a neighbouring village who walks for hours to sell things to tourists. She offered to show us her hair for 10RMB, (£1). We were intrigued and so we gave her the money. These women are literally living Rapunzels!

This old woman unwrapped her hair from the top of her head and it fell down to the ground. She pulled away two separate parts of hair that had been cut when she was younger.

This woman was a Yao minority from a neighbouring village. The people in the Ping An village (where we stayed for a night) were of the Zhuang minority.

There are around 55 ethnic minorities living in China. Lily was of the Zhuang minority.

From now on, I call myself a minority within the UK. That’s how I now describe myself to the Chinese!!!

The houses in the village were unique wooden houses built up the mountainsides. There was a lot of building going on (as there is in every other part of China)! Lily said that it was a shame because gradually, the traditional wooden homes were turning into cement! There was one specific wooden house over a hundred years old! (The smaller one in the picture!)

People work so hard in the rice fields! They continue working until they are very old! I’m sure we saw people in their eighties or nineties still working hard in the fields and the village!!

We passed many women on the roadside cooking a speciality…a rice meal barbecued inside bamboo sticks. We wanted to try some but I did wonder how we’d eat them!

This was such a great experience! It was amazing to see a really traditional area of China and it was refreshing to see such basic living without mobile phones everywhere!

However, I can't help but worry that tourism will destroy the area! It's so beautiful. There are already too many tourists!! 

My next blog post will be on Yangshuo...