Traveling to Guilin, Guangxi Province!

Apologies for how long it's been since I wrote a blog entry, I was busy exploring! But a lot has happened since the last time I wrote: I have now been in China for two and a half months, I've been in the process of moving into a new apartment with new roommates (Brendan and Stefano, both Yale '13 grads as well!), and I finished the summer session of IUP. After 8 weeks of hard work (with a weekend break to go hiking in the Bashang Grasslands- on the border between the provinces of Hebei and Inner Mongolia), a few other IUPers and I took a week-long trip to Guangxi province in southwestern China, staying mostly in a city called Guilin.

Guilin, by Chinese city standards, is a small city- the urban population is at about 975,000. (In China, less than a million people = small!). The city is on the Li River, surrounded by these mountains that jut out in seemingly random places, and the climate is quite humid in the summer. But it was beautiful, and the air was clean, and the pace of life was so relaxed, it was good to get out of Beijing for a bit. We were lucky enough to be able to stay in rooms at the Chinese Language Institute, and we explored Guilin for a couple days. The other great thing about Guilin is that there are a lot of nice day trips or overnight trips you can take from there, so we did a few of those.

The sun and moon pagodas in the center of Guilin

After a couple of relaxing days walking around Guilin, drinking delicious (and artistically beautiful coffees), we took a two-hour bus on an overnight trip to Yangshuo. A small town nestled on the Li River and surrounded by small mountains, Yangshuo has become a really popular tourist spot. For this reason, a lot of people try to stay away, but it's actually really beautiful and worth seeing. The view from our hotel was wonderful, and even though it rained most of the time we were there, it meant that the temperature was much cooler. And it didn't stop us from riding some rafts along the Li River! I'll mostly let the pictures speak for themselves.

The group poses in front of the Li River and the mountains in Yangshuo

My favorite cup of coffee EVER- Yangshuo 

At night, we hired another raft to take us to see the fishermen in the area who are known for their method of fishing: using cormorant birds! The fishermen tie a string around the cormorant's neck (not too tight so that it can't breathe, but tight enough so that large things can't go down its throat) and then they have the cormorants swim alongside the boat, trapping fish in their mouth as they go. After a while, the fisherman gets the cormorants out of the water and essentially makes the cormorants spit out all the fish that didn't go down their throats into the basket. And voila! Fishing.

He then let us play with one of the cormorants

 The following day, after a couple misunderstandings and getting on the wrong bus, we ended up not where we intended to be, but in a tiny town called Yangdi, which really has very little to offer except maybe some of the best views along the Li River. So, we decided (slash didn't really have a choice) to take the boat from Yangdi to Xingping, the town that was made famous because it's the picture on the back of the 20yuan bill. Even though we hadn't originally planned on taking this boat trip, it really was a relaxing hour and a half on the river, with some really great, albeit foggy, views.

the rafts at Yangdi 

The rock states that this is the scene that is used on the 20yuan bill 

a shop owner in Xingping lets us try her different flavors of 白酒(baijiu), Chinese rice alcohol

An alleyway in Xingping

 That night we returned to Guilin, had dinner at a delicious Sichuan food restaurant (spicy!), and got ready for our next day trip to the Longshen Rice Terraces, called Longji. In English, this place is called Dragon Back Rice Terraces, because according to the Chinese, the irrigated and terraced rice fields look like a dragon's back. It really is a beautiful, remote area, and although it was quite hot, it was a beautiful scene to take in.

Phil, Beckie and I hiking along the rice terraces

 I spent the last couple of days back in Guilin, part of it with some of my friends, the other part by myself (and with some friends I met at the place where we were staying!) and relaxing in this city. The pace of life really is much slower than Beijing, which was a nice, temporary change. And, as is usually the case while traveling in China, we made some new friends wherever we went!

At the top of Solitary Beauty Peak of what used to be the old campus of Guangxi Normal University (and was, for 14 generations, the home of kings and princes of the Ming Dynasty)