Guilin & Yangshuo, China

From Zhangjiajie, we headed back to Changsha for one night and then took a train to Guilin!

We got to Guilin in the evening and had some time to rest after two consecutive travel days. We made some arrangements and also got the chance to do some much-needed laundry. 

The next day, we went to the Longji rice terraces. This, to me, is one of the essences of China. Of course, rice is such an essential part of life in China! We arranged a driver/carpool through our hostel, who dropped us off in the morning and came back to pick us up at 4pm. We had the late morning and early afternoon to walk around the fields and villages on the mountainside. 

We were absolutely blown away by the landscape. The terraces are just being planted and filled with water. The best time to come see them is in October, when the rice plants bloom and the terraces are covered in golden flowers. The benefit of coming in February was that there were no people! It was also a rainy day, so there were even fewer people. That was great.

We ended up walking to the furthest village from the parking lot and eating lunch there. We left there about an hour before we needed to be back at the car. The woman who ran the guesthouse where we ate lunch gave us wrong directions and we ended up getting lost in the rice terraces. We ended up following a farmer's path and then we were just walking in the paddies.

We had to go back to the village where we ate and were an hours walk from the car still. We asked multiple locals and eventually found the right path. It started to rain about the time we got on the right path, so we walked for an hour all the way back to the car. We hope it gave us some sympathy points for the people who we shared the car with, who had to wait an hour for us.

We hung out that evening at the hostel. We had a drink and played pool. It was a nice evening indoors (and under blankets)!

The next day, we wandered around the town of Guilin. I found a really cool food market with lots of vegetables and strange animal parts.

dog meat noodle soup!

I found a temple on top of a hill with a great view over Guilin. Look how steep those stairs are!

I also walked through a really nice park with pretty bridges and old ladies dancing.

We spent the afternoon having coffee and shopping (rather unsuccessfully). It was really relaxed day.

The next day, we had a late breakfast and a slow morning, then headed to Yangshuo. We took a bus then a boat (!) down the river to the village of Yangshuo.

This area is famous for its strange-shaped mountains and karst land formations.

Cruising down the Li River was a great way to see the mountains.

We also stopped at the place that is on the back of the 20RMB note! That's pretty cool.

We then got convinced to continue on this tour of a 'ethnic minority' village nearby. It was kind of sad. All the ethnic minority traditions and costumes are just used as a tourist attraction. There are dances and musical performances that each last a minute or two, which you see as you follow the designated path through the village of traditional architecture (which of course has all been recently built or renovated). It's a bit too gimmicky and touristy for me.

Here, we got on another boat and went into a cave!

After visiting this village, we headed into Yangshuo. In the evening, we walked around a bit on the main shopping street.

The next day, we had the whole day in Yangshuo. We were pretty tired by this point. It was the last day of the trip. After a month of traveling all day every day, we decided not to get on a bus (or any mode of transportation) other than our feet. We walked from our hostel up to the top of a hill, where there is an abandoned TV station, which has a good view of the town (or it would if the air had been good).

We walked all the way through town down to the river to see if there were any fishermen. The fishermen in this area are famous because they use birds to help them fish. The birds are trained with a collar to dive and catch fish then give them to the fishermen instead of eating them. It's pretty incredible. This kind of fishing isn't really done anymore. These men by the river were really just posing for photos for money. It's another sad art lost to modernization.

We spent the rest of the day shopping in the neat little shops and drinking coffee. Again, we were so exhausted by this point that we didn't want to do that much. Luckily the small town atmosphere means that it was a really relaxed place and there wasn't that much to do. We had a nice time there, but we were also really ready to go back by this point.

The next morning, we woke up really early to get a bus to the airport. We flew to Shanghai, then got a bus to Hangzhou from there. This trip was honestly such a formative time for me. I really learned a lot about myself. I got to reflect about my time in China so far and make plans for the time I have left here. My love for China only grew. I have complicated feelings about China, because there's a lot of aspects I really don't like, but somehow I just like it more and more anyway. Especially as I see more different parts of China. I can't wait to keep exploring this incredible country!