(note: this was written while in guilin)

that line, written by tang dynasty poet han yu, is about the lijiang river – guilin’s main scenic attraction. i found the amusing quote in a river tour map, rife with typos and saccharine script glorifying the beauty of the karst landscape.

this morning, i was one of hundreds of tourists who filed into air conditioned vans headed for the top of the river. this is a BIG industry in guilin. on any given block you’ll find a handful of travel offices specializing in guilin’s offerings: li river cruises, evening cormorant fishing tours, ethnic tourism, outings to caves, epic performances (there’s even one directed by zhang yimou), etc.

when we got to the pier, we boarded a double decker “pleasure” boat (run down, filthy, but nonetheless earnestly practical)–part of a caravan–and cruised down the river for four hours. it was stunning and relaxing! i even got to sun my pale tofu legs. what i really loved was seeing the small fishing bamboo rafts pull up to sell the boat chefs fresh fish and crab from caught from the very water we were in/on. also, lots of the local folks, true to enterprising chinese form, would approach the tour boats, knock on the windows, and wave around their schlock for sale. on the boat, we were served a hearty chinese lunch. i was seated with an italian couple and three brit girls, and they were all suspicious of the food, so i ended up acting as food interpreter. amusing.

we docked at yangshuo, a downstream town that seems to have evolved around tourists, particularly western ones. upon arrival, you’ll see the entrance lined with kiosks selling every imaginable souvenir. even the local fishers have learned to capitalize on the heavy influx of travelers by offering priced photo opps with their cormorants, one on each end of a bamboo stick. down the main road (called “west street,” appropriately enough), every other storefront advertised housing! coffee! espresso! western food! internet! relentless haggling over knock-offs, handicrafts, and clothing was in the air. ethnic minorities (aka han posers) worked on their “traditional art” at store entrances to entice people inside. a woman asked one such minority member to pose for a photo as she was demonstrating silk embroidery. this stretch of yangshou kind i found a bit troubling.

but i soon got over it and was wowed by the “architecture.” with free time to kill, i just wandered around, sipped a milk tea, and people watched. yangshuo is quaint and sweet, with little creeks and foot bridges. would be nice to stay there for a night.

a woman making ginger candy – a local specialty

an A for effort

oh no, look what’s landed!

it’s interesting that the most concentrated number of non-asian tourists that i’ve seen is in yangshuo. who would’ve thought?
most white folks could be found clustered in the same areas, eating in the same cafes sipping cold beers and eating pizza. not that this is surprising or anything.

when i got back, i quickly changed into jeans and strolled along the lake. this is a sublime experience, because the sun is setting and EVERYONE’s out. couples and friends are meeting up, kids with familial units, and it’s just the perfect time of day for a walk.

this is my last night in guilin. i’m going to go check out the main night market. one thing i forgot to mention about this lovable place: when i got here, i noticed that many of the restaurants next to my hotel advertised freshness of their food by displaying caged ducks, geese, chickens, as well as tubs of crabs, fish, snails, and frogs. whatevs. but then i noticed restaurant after restaurant a fuzzy furball amongst the caged. turns out these were bamboo rats. imagine a cross between beaver and possum. big guys, kinda ugly. they were all lazy and sleepy from the heat. i saw one restaurant worker prod one, quite roughly, with some sort of tongs.

so why am i even mentioning this? it was deeply disturbing, but perhaps more disturbing was that it challenged my supposed progressive/liberal/cautious-but-non-judgmental “cultural cuisine relativity” attitude. the imagery of the beaver rats stuck with me for a while, and since it was the first thing i saw upon arriving here it cast a grim pall on things. of course, as you can tell from my flowery enthusiasm for guilin, it’s all good.

but i could never eat bamboo rat.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 24th, 2007 at 8:19 am and is filed under asia, travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.