Today we are taking a trip down the Li River from Guilin to Yangshou, where we are going to stay overnight coming back to Guilin tomorrow evening. So we are travelling light; just small daypacks. The pick up is from our hostel for the initial coach journey to the wharf about half-an-hour away. The weather is very misty at 8am in the morning and by the time we reach the wharf it is raining quite heavily – and of course we’ve not brought any rain gear with us. We have carried two ponchos all the way from London and this is the first time we’ve needed them and they are back in the hostel! The river trip takes four-and-an-half hours through the most spectacular karst scenery. This was one of our top destinations in China, up there with the Forbidden City, the Great Wall, the Terracotta Warriors and the Yangtze, and it doesn’t disappoint. The hills rise straight up from from the surrounding flat river valley as if simply dropped from the sky. They take the most wonderful shapes with names such as River Snail Hill, Five Fingers Hill and Writing Brush Peak. Apart from lunch, we spend the whole trip up on the top deck taking endless photos and marvelling at the beauty of the landscape.
We arrive at Yangshou around 2pm. It is a very tourist-orientated town on the banks of the Li, and the main street is full of shops aimed at the visitors who descend on this town every afternoon from the many cruise ships arriving here. It has the atmosphere of a small holiday village and is a refreshing change from the gigantic cities. From Yangshou we take a trip into the countryside to visit an old village, take a bamboo raft ride and watch a display of cormorant fishing.
The old village is more reminiscent of an rather untidy farmyard – dilapidated buildings, some falling down and others under construction. Old women sit on corners supervising small children and what pass for streets have broken and uneven surfaces interrupted by a small stream coming down from the hillside. Afterwards we take a lazy ride on a bamboo raft compete with tables and chairs perched rather precariously it seems, under a fixed awning. There are six of us on the raft, sipping tea and eating peanuts whilst a villager dressed in the local costume sings for us; a couple from Mumbai and an Italian couple now living in the States, but who used to live in Blackheath! We stop to take a walk in the rice paddies, which are a patchwork of small plots in differing stages of the the rice growing cycle. Here two crops of rice are grown each year and some of the paddies have already been harvested and sheaves sit in neat rows whilst others are still in the growing stage. In one paddy there is a small manual threshing machine which is operated by a foot treadle. By the waters edge there are water buffalo grazing.
On the return journey a local fisherman gives a demonstration of how the villagers used to fish using cormorants. (If anyone saw ‘Paul Merton in China’ you will be familiar with this amazing partnership between man and bird.) The fisherman ties a cord around the cormorant’s neck so that when it catches fish it cannot swallow them. The cormorant is incredibly adept at diving into the water and catching the fish. As it surfaces the fisherman hoists it from the river using a pole and deposits it on his bamboo raft. He then squeezes the fish from the bird’s throat. Amazing to see!
Everything is so peaceful here – absolutely no traffic noise, no music blaring. Oh what joy after the unceasing cacophony of the city.