China - Yangshou

For our first foray into China, my mom and I first stopped by the city of Yangshou.  The scenery in this area is famous for being on the back of the 20 Yuan bill.  This was our small city respite between Hong Kong and Beijing.  We planned our itinerary to alternate between large and small cities, adjectives which have different defintions in China than in the United States as I would find out throughout the trip.  There is no doubt that Yangshou is a tourism oriented city.  I thought we were going to be staying in a small quaint town setting, which was partially true other than the street of bright neon lights, bars with booming rap music, and county fair style games such as shoot the balloons and shoot basketball hoops to win prizes.  In many ways, this area reminded me of the road to Manuel Antonio in Costa Rica.  The closer you get to the beautiful beach area, the more brightly lit signs, booming bars, and hawkers selling goods appear.  It just seems so absurd juxtaposed next to the beach, or in this case next to the beautiful towering peaks adjacent to the city and Li River.

The next morning we started off our day by bicycling to the Yulong river.  We followed a man on a moped out of the city and through the countryside on bumpy dirt roads all while taking care to avoid small dogs and chickens while rolling past corn and rice fields.  We arrived at the river launch point and sat down on our 2 seater bamboo raft.  The moped man then pushed us downriver using a bamboo stick for the next 2 hours.  It was a relaxing mid morning activity through the countryside.  There were floating snack stands selling food and water.  Every once in a while our guide would tell us to lift our feet and the raft would drop down 5 ft due to the nature of the river.  The river felt relatively unspoiled unlike the city and was a relaxing retreat.

  

We hopped of the raft and were greeted by our bicycles which we rode over to Moon Hill a rock formation with a half moon shape missing from the middle. 

We then bicycled all the way back to the hotel and took a short break before heading out for our afternoon river adventure, this time on the Li River.  This boat ride took us up and down a very picturesque portion of the river on a motorized 2 person boat.  At the turn around point my mom and I took a touristy picture with two cormorants.  Fishermen in this area use cormorants to fish.  The birds dive into the water to catch the fish, but are unable to eat their prey because the fisherman have put a ring around their neck.  The fisherman gather the catch and allow the birds to eat every 7th fish.  The photographers although out in the middle of a river had nice digital SLRs, a photo printer, laptops, and a laminator although I couldn’t tell where they were getting power from on this rocky beach.  So long to getting away from technology.

  

We headed back and ate a quick delicious vegetarian meal before going to see Impressions, an artistic performance by the same director as the 2008 Summer Olympics Opening Ceremony.  It featured 600 local fisherman and other performers dancing and moving across a section of the river amidst some towering peaks.  It was a love story although I actually have no idea what was going on since it was in Chinese.  It was an interesting show but I preferred the opening ceremony.