Li River Cruise

When one hears the name Guilin, one usually pictures a serene and beautiful landscape, with majestic karst mountains rising up out of the mist and a lonely bamboo raft gliding down the Li River. Well, one would be wrong.

Guilin probably did see such idyllic and poetic times once, but those times are no more. With greater prosperity in the world and online access to pictures of Guilin’s picturesque landscapes, tourism has since conquered the peace of nature and placed its loud, commercial banner in the ground. There are A LOT of people in Guilin. A LOT. When I used to think of China, especially during the holiday season, I imagined streets completely packed with people and filled with street vendors of every persuasion, giving the impression of complete chaos. This is actually not true of most of China. Yes, there are many people, and cities with less than 4 million people are hard to find, but it is quite orderly, all in all. Not so in Guilin. Guilin fulfills the aforementioned imagination of China. The atmosphere is very different from Nanjing. Without noticing specifics, the city feels different immediately. It is much dirtier. No matter what time of day, there are always a lot of people, everywhere. Instead of a lot of taxis, or just a lot of cars, there are countless tour buses roaming the streets. There is trash everywhere. You can’t walk down the street without being approached about some kind of item up for purchase. Still, in all of this I was happy to notice that western tourists where rare. Guilin is a very popular vacation spot among Chinese people as well.

Waking up in the morning and walking the streets, I lived in constant uncertainty of being “ripped off”. I understood the tourist nature of Guilin and I felt that any purchase, even food, would be a bad deal for me. Despite this looming uncertainty, Jenn and I went out in the morning to get some breakfast. We settled on some dumplings and an egg wrap sort of food, things we had eaten before. It is worth to note here that breakfast is not actually distinguishable from other meals here, except that they offer soy milk with it. The meals consist of noodles, rice, meats, much like lunch and dinner; all meals are created, and treated, equal. Confirming my fears about tourist traps, the breakfast was not great (but cheap). But we decided to treasure the experience of buying food from a real Chinese street vendor with bad teeth and moved on.

This morning we were scheduled to go on a tour of the Li River, a must do for visitors to Guilin. A man with actually really good English had called us that morning at 7 to confirm. He will pick us up at 8am in the hotel lobby, he assured us. Good, we thought. The confirmation email we had gotten from the Tour company was probably the least formal confirmation email ever sent to anyone, so we were wondering if this was a real tour company. Come 8am, we were waiting in the lobby. Come 8:20, we were still waiting in the lobby. Finally a lady showed up who approached us quickly. She pulled out a white piece of paper, showed me that my name was handwritten on it (among many other chinese names) and asked for the payment of 900 RMB (about $150) for the tour. After payment was received, we were informed that more foreigners were joining our tour, which she had to go get and then she left us. We were sitting there and were now really wondering if we had been the victims of a trap. Where was the man from the phone call? Who was this lady, who’s phone number no one had? Was our money already half way to Hong Kong? Some time went by (probably another 30 minutes) and, to our relief, the lady returned and we joined a group of 20 something Chinese people on a bus, headed for the Zhujiang pier, where our river tour was to begin. Alright, this is the real deal! We were actually going to see the river!

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The tour guide spoke with amazing speed, both English and Chinese. Here English was great, but the strong Chinese accent and unusual ways of wording things will always be amusing for us (this is not meant to be degrading at all; I find the accent and quirkiness of the wording endearing). The river cruise was introduced, we where warned that there would probably be no food left for us on the boat's free buffet, because Chinese people were greedy and took to much food for themselves. Yes, she said that. She said a few times that Chinese people were loud and selfish. She did not seem to like them. Then she switched to Chinese and addressed the rest of the bus, in a much nicer and Chinese loving tone. The bus fought its way through the ever present traffic jam and we made our way the Zhujiang wharf. 

Getting off the bus we met one other non-Chinese couple on this cruise, Chris and Cindy Groves. Chris is a MBA student doing a semester of studies in Guangzhou, followed by a semester of Internship. Yes, almost the same structure as what I am doing, except that he was not in any intense Chinese classes. (Side note: we discovered that he knows Bastian Körlin, who is studying in Guangzhou right now as well. ) Cindy, his wife, is visiting him for a few weeks, as she did not move with him to China, due to their three year old daughter (and one more on the way). They were really nice people and we spent the rest of the tour together. This was only partially on purpose, as the tour guide also treated us as a “group of four foreigners”, seating us together on the boat. 
The situation on the wharf again illustrated the popularity of Guilin, as there were countless tourist groups vying for seats on the river ferries. The seemingly simple task of following the little green flag of our tour guide became quite the challenge and served as a proxy for a morning jog. The tour guide clearly walked the talk. (That is to say that she walked the same way she talked: fast.) But holding fast the guidance of the green flag we come through the ocean of people and made it to our boat, where a ship captain with proper attire and a humorous chin beard greeted us. All aboard, lets go!

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Immediately after we had been shown our designated foreigner seats, the boat did take off to begin the celebrated Li River tour. And I have to say, the praise is merited. Pictures will not do it justice but give the idea of the beautiful landscape. Limestone mountains rise out of the earth as giant, steep rocks. It is the exact landscape one thinks of in connection with Guilin. In most aspects, what we saw fulfilled what I had written about earlier, and what we had hoped. Except one aspect. We were as far away from “one lonely bamboo raft” as one could possibly imagine. This was high season and the river was crowded with cruise boats. It felt like a busy highway, with a traffic jam, except on the water. This lead to something that is very common in Chinese traffic situations: honking. Honking fixes all problems, at least that is what the people believe. If a car in front of you is not moving in a manner that suites your wishes, you honk. And not just a few honks, but you hold down the horn for as long as the problem persists. We knew this situation well from Nanjing, but did not expect it on the serene Li River cruise. But as the boats in front of our boat came close, the ship captain blew the horn. And these horns are very, very loud. On more than one occasion, Jenn (and I) jumped as our conversation was suddenly interrupted by what could only have been a trumpet signaling for battle. Taking pictures on the deck was a risky adventure because at any moment the ship could blow its horn at another ship coming up.

Enjoying the sights!

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"Li River Snails"

Only the beginning...

As was recommended to us multiple times, we did order food and chose to not participate in “der Schlacht am kalten Buffet”. We ordered a meal that would surely feed the four of us, we were assured by a waitress who was impressed with the chinese these foreigners spoke. Lunch time arrived and the food was served. The pictures should illustrate what we enjoyed that day. The first plate was river snails, in the shell. Then we had tiny crabs, breaded and fried (the menu listed them as fried crads). Then we had much, much more food. The waitress recommending the food must have believed that one foreigner eats as much as 3 Chinese people to recommend that meal to us. We remembered four items on the menu, but we received far more. Fried eggplant and other breaded things. Cabbage, tiny shrimp, some kind of fish sliced up and cooked, a huge bowl of rice, meatballs, chicken, noodles, and maybe more. Our meal took up the whole table. We tried our best, but in the end, we only ate about half of what was offered to us. Everything was tried, including the snails and the miniature crabs you had to eat with shell and all. The crabs tasted like potato chips and the snails like not much at all, but not bad. It was a good meal, but we felt bad that so much had to go to waste. While we were fighting and obviously loosing battle against our food, we were offered to buy more food, in case we wouldn’t have enough. Needless to say, we declined the offer.

There is not much more to say of the trip, except the scenery was indeed beautiful. Despite the business of the river, the karst mountains looked fascinating and the bamboo rafts on the river did add to the feeling of the scene. It was a nice trip and took about 4-5 hours in total.  I have to mention here that this scenery is featured on the back of the Chinese 20 RMB bill. Our guide pointed out to us the exact moment when the scenery of the bill is in view. We then had a precious 10 seconds to take a picture before the exact view had vanished. Of course, we did not waste those 10 seconds. (Besides the 20 yuan scenery, we also saw mountains like the Hello Kitty Mountain. )

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On the boat, we were offered an extra tour for just a little bit more money. This tour, we were assured, would only be offered to foreigners, Chinese people had no chance to book it. This was told to us many times, as if it was a major selling point. I really don’t mind Chinese people on the tour, but the guide was eager to assure us that we would be uninterrupted by the loud Chinese. The extra tour sounded fun, so we four foreigners chose to take it.

Once we arrived at the end of the river tour, which was in a village called Yangshuo, we had about 30 minutes of free time before we met up for the next tour. Yangshuo was built as a small fishing town on the river, and I’m sure it was that once. But Yangshuo is now the place most people go to get a taste of rural China, and with its popularity, came its commercialization into tourism. Among arrival we were attacked by an army of locals trying to sell all kinds of things, from little flower rings to wear on one’s head to photo books and other trinkets. I had done research beforehand and read that you shouldn’t buy anything in Yangshuo. Everything that was offered was available basically anywhere else in China for a much less. Thus freed from the burden of buying, we wandered the streets just looking around. The amount of tourist shops was astounding.Every local must work in the tourism business. We walked up the most famous street in Yangshuo, called west street, and looked at all kinds of places. Ocarina shops, kissing fish foot massages and much more. This street was also the most crowded street in all of Yangshuo, so we closely watched our belongings; we had been warned of pickpockets. Weaving through the crowds proved to be a slow way of getting around, so we headed directly for the meeting spot, in front of the most crowded store in Yangshuo, KFC. There we met Jane, our tour guide for the extra tour. She told us that she was waiting for a group of Chinese tourists to join us and our old tour guide had to jump in to explain that these Chinese tourists had booked this extra tour in advance with other tours. That’s how they managed to get into this foreigner only tour. (We were suspicious that the other Chinese tourists had been told that no foreigners were allowed on this extra tour). Jane led us to yet another bus, which then fought its way through the jammed traffic of Yangshuo to Dragon Village, a place just north of Yangshuo. Dragon Village is a much smaller and rural place, albeit a touristy one. There we saw the Dragon Bridge, which has been featured in at least two major motion pictures, one of those American, and also in a screen wallpaper of Windows 7.

The dragon village was indeed quaint. The weather was perfect and the buildings looked old and made us feel like we were indeed in rural china. But whenever we thought we had gotten away from it all, there was always the constant yelling from vendors to remind us that tourism had brought us to this place. The Bridge was crowded, but pretty. The views from the bridge down the dragon river were breathtaking. Our tour guide had a Windows 7 screenshot on her to show us how this bridge and we were part of electronic history. Not wasting time, the tour guide then pushed us to the bamboo raft docking station next to the bridge. Jenn and I shared a bamboo raft and a young boat rower, I’m guessing about our age, jumped on board to take us around. The rafts are made of bamboo and nothing else, and were provided with two chairs for us to relax in. The rower used a long ore made of bamboo to push the raft down, and up, the river.

Our first stop was to see the ancient practice of cormorant fishing. This was a major selling point of this trip and is something most people have heard of. This practice involves the use of cormorant birds to substitute for a fishing rod. Once a common technique of fishing in the Li River, it has now become almost extinct and chiefly done for tourists. Our tour guide had explained to us, that there are only five fishermen left who have the patience to train these birds for three years in order to use them for fishing. All the other fishermen, greedy as chinese people are (the guide’s words, not mine), had left to Shanghai or Beijing to follow the lure of the filthy lucre. But by golly, the guide was going to track one of these five fishermen down so we could see the practice with our own eyes. And she must have been successful, because no sooner had we left on the bamboo rafts than we saw one of these five masters with our own eyes. The fishing itself was fairly mundane. The fisherman threw a small fish out and the bird went after it. A quick dive in the water and the proud bird emerged with the fish in its beak. In order to keep the birds from gobbling up the loot, the fisherman ties a thread around its neck that keeps it from eating all but the smallest fish. One of these birds can catch as much as 5/50 kg of fish a day.

Here I should mention that most of the above description we did not actually witness, but were told in advance. Our boatman was not eager in showing us the fishing practice and once we had a glance of the man with his fishing bird, he turned the raft around. I protested and asked him to show us more of the fishing practice. No way, the man replied. There were too many people there. There is nothing to see. There is no way to turn around if we wait, too many other rafts. With that, we left the bird fishing in the rear view mirror and left, with our other American friends still watching with front row seats.

The rest of the river rafting was very nice. It was very quiet, as there were only bamboo rafts and no motorized boats. The serenity was only disturbed by the boatman yelling in the local dialect at other boatmen and boatwomen, and the occasional Chinese tourist yelling “Hello!” into our direction. Jenn and I felt like as much of a tourist attraction as the bird fishing. As advertised, the rafting lead down the river and across two 50 cm waterfalls. Much like Disneyland’s Splash Mountain, there are people taking pictures as you crash down the 1.6 foot waterfall. Our boatman told Jenn to raise her left and me to raise my right hand, that would surely make for a great picture. After we had descended down the admittedly somewhat scary drop (we were on a raft of bamboo after all) the photographers assured us that the pictures were “beautiful” and were thoroughly disappointed when we did not want to buy them. Along the river cruise, there were a couple opportunities to stop and buy trinkets and as we kept declining, I feel our boatman became less and less happy with his stingy customers. But all in all we had a great rafting trip, one of the highlights of the day and whole Guilin trip. We all agreed that we actually liked the extra trip better than the original Li River cruise. The landscape was absolutely beautiful. That’s all I can say about it.

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Before returning to Guilin, there was one more item on our itinerary: feeding a water buffalo. How can we resist! We were given some corn husks and shown the animal. Water buffalos are very calm animals. This particular specimen did not even move a muscle. As we asked the old man who was guiding the buffalo about his animal, we learned that this one was 7 years old. We asked, “What’s his name?” to which the man replied: “Water buffalo”. I guess naming animals is not something that Chinese farmers do. After having fed old Betsy, I wanted to ride the buffalo. This was advertised as well, but both tour guides, separately from each other, had added that we should be gentle, this is not America, no Cowboys, and not Spain, no bull fighting. I think even if I had been a Cowboy or a Toreador, I would not have been able to elicit anything from this peaceful creature. The old farmer said himself, “He doesn’t move”. With camera ready, Jenn took a video of me mounting the buffalo. Luckily she only started filming on my third try, thus avoiding embarrassment for me. After this authentic Chinese Cowboy experience, we were ready to head home. The bus was ready and the tour guide ushered us into seats. On the drive back to Guilin, we got to see some beautiful scenery, flooded with the colorful light of a setting sun.

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Once we got to Guilin, we said goodbye to Chris and Cindy; they were heading back that same night on a train to Guangzhou. But Jenn and I were not done with the day, oh no! We hopped in a taxi and made our way to the “Dreamlike Li River” theater. There we bought tickets to the “Dreamlike Li River” show, starting in just a few minutes. We had read about this show and were excited for some Chinese dancing and acrobatics. And we were not disappointed. The show was another highlight of the trip, featuring many different acrobatic stunts, juggling and dancing. It was not quite “Ka”, although the stage did tip just a little bit at one point, but it was well worth it. The tickets we had were perfect. The show must have been updated recently, as it also featured a juggling number to the song “Gangnam Style”, to which the juggling court jester frivolously blew his whistle. In any case, this show was the perfect ending to a very fun day in Guilin. It was also exhausting. Good night.