July 2014 – YuSmith

We spent Thursday Friday and Saturday in the above 2 towns located on the map below. Zhuhai is the red circle near Hong Kong.

The occasion was the 10 year celebration of the factory being in busness. Mary loaded up about 90 of her 130 employees on buses and we all went to Yangshuo. Here is the group that went

posing in one of the park areas where we went to to look at a 1000 year old tree.Or maybe it was 2000.
Thursday morning started waiting for the 2 buses to arrive to start the big tour thing. Yangshuo is not a normal Chinese city as it is a pure tourist town. Very crowded and busy at night and buses everywhere. Here is the quiet time, morning rush hour.

There were also many of these, the local equivalent of a pickup truck.

Our first official tour stop was at one of 2 caves we would visit. The view from outside the entrance.

Because the area is full of karst mountains (limestone upcroppings) and water there are many caves. After visiting two of these caves one thing stands out, that being the Chinese look at a rock shape, give it a name and just generally make shit up.

That afternoon we went to the river to see a little river scenery. The trip was a couple of miles up river to near its beginnings and back.

The boats were these bamboo rafts (in reality PPVC pipe) with a motor and propeller shaft hanging off the back like the boats in Thailand.

Up toward the beginning of the river on a island some farmer had managed to get his cows onto the island to graze. No buffalo roaming here.

The return trip was more of the same just from a different angle.

The whole purpose of this place is that the landscape is so unique (it was and ocean in the past) that artists have been painting it for a long time and the back of the 20 yuan bill (about $3 our money) has an engraving of these very mountains.

Of course there is the opportunity to take tourist pictures for insertion into key chains and such. Here are a tourist couple doing such a thing.

With the touring all but over for the day you could get a snack of honey, bees and all.

The next day was scheduled to be a half day after which everyone but Mary and I would return to Zhuhai and we would continue on to Guilin. But first we had to visit another cave. Which required another group photo.

After the cave it was lunch at a restaurant village near (here we go with the rocks, names and shit again) the moon rock.

Not only did we eat lunch but we could pose with monkeys

or dress up and pose as if we were holding the moon rock in our hand.

After that excitement everyone else headed back to Zhuhai and Mary and I hitchhiked back to town caught a ride in a car and finally a taxi to the hotel in Guilin where on Friday night Mary determined that there was not great shopping in the area and we had a nice Italian dinner. The next day we did have to shop/look at crap in the hotel expensive shop. I did find some great art.

Guilin is not as tourist oriented as Yangshuo but is still not quite a typical Chinese city. The river and surrounding lakes have tour boats running all day and half the night.

We went to the local museum but it wasn’t that great and Mary learned that the thing this town is known for is silk and that the big factory silk outlet was just up the street so of course we had to go. We learned about silk and watched the silkworm weave a blanket or something like that. and then listen to the sales pitch to buy comforters and sheets which Mary was predisposed to do anyway. At least the sale lady was doing this in English so I could follow along. It tended to sound like one of those late night infomercials. When she got to the part where the silk was so silky you could sleep naked I pointed out that that was great because she was lucky we had clothes on at that very moment. For some reason most the rest of the selling and purchasing procedure was conducted in Chinese. End result is I’ve got about 50 pounds of silk to bring back to the US.We spent the rest of the day just wandering around. I thought we should go to the WO but Mary wasn’t interested.

So we went back to the hotel to prepare for the evening boat tour. The view we had.

That’s a swimming beach down at the bottom.And right next to it is where we boarded the boat for the boat tour. The first part was going up river with the guide pointing out stuff most of which seemed to be, again, rocks with names and made up stories. We then entered some locks and were lifted 4 meters to the lake level with the first lake having a pagoda and a bunch of lakeside entertainment and lights or something.

I’m not sure why the silk lady was talking about sleeping naked when it appears that bath taking requires clothes in China.

There were some totems but that was about it other than just being on a boat on the city lakes.

We got back to some locks and dropped down to the river and finally got back on land and walked to the hotel area, had dinner in a Spanish place and headed to the hotel to wrap up the weekend as we were flying home in the morning. So here we are entering the hotel in the midst of Chinese rule following.