The River

We started the day with a leisurely cruise on the Li river from scenic Guilin to quaint Yangshuo. This section of Guangxi province is known for some of the most distinctive scenery in China, and its camel back hills certainly form my picture of the quintessential Chinese landscape.

While no picture can convey the grandeur of a real landscape, one of the biggest advantages of an image is that staring at it is extremely unlikely to make you freeze to death. I, however, was forced to experience the scenery by the outdated expedient of actually being there, and thus spent most of the cruise in fetal position using the seat ahead as a shield from the oncoming wind. I stole a few glances along the way, and the nature is indeed superb, but not that different from, say, the bay of Phang Nga, where the only significant environmental hazard is sunburn.

We spent the afternoon strolling through Yangshuo, a purely touristic city that still manages to be pretty nice. As with many towns where tourism is the main revenue stream, all of Yangshuo's restaurants had basically the same menu, featuring a few local specialities but mostly international Chinese dishes and the staples of French, Spanish, Italian and (for some reason) Israeli cuisine. It also offered an endless supply of shops selling all kinds of counterfeited goods and  dreary souvenirs, providing an excellent occasion to practice one's haggling skills, as well as bars to help you forget how much you overpaid for your traditional chopsticks.

Close to sundown we rented bikes and went on a ride to nowhere in particular. While the most remarkable thing was the scenery, we also stumbled on a middle-of-nowhere open market, where all possible animals could be bought in any of three states: ready to cook, just slaughtered, or still alive.

As light faded out, we barely managed to return our rented bikes and catch the latest bus back to Guilin for a late supper.