Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Day 12 Guilin

Got up early to have breakfast and walk the pedestrian market area of Yangshou without getting hassled by the vendors. Met up with the rest of the group at 10 to start our day of touring.

First, the drive back to Guilin, on the backroad not the highway we came down on, passing fruit groves more than the rice paddies that we had seen south of Yangshou. Oranges (large and small) and pomelos are ripe now, kumquats are just about ready, and the apple, cherry and peach trees are all in bloom. The road was full of potholes so it was a lot of bumping up and down. The drive took about an hour.
 
We stopped at a gallery-art school to see how Chinese paintings are created. A young artist demonstrated with ink and brushes. There are 3 kinds of painting…portraits, landscapes and flowers and birds. The bamboo is a favourite subject because it means longevity. Then we toured the gallery, browsing through the beautiful paintings and of course we walked out with some purchases….some of us more than others!
 
Then on to lunch at a local hotel in Guilin. We tried an interesting tea that was made from a local fruit that we don’t know the name of in English, that is used as an artificial sweetener.

Elephant Trunk Hill was next on the agenda, a park where the Li River and Peach Blossom River meet, with a hill that looks like an elephant. It looks like Los Arcos, in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico and several formations along the Great Ocean Road in Australia. Then on to the Reed Flute Cave, an amazing cave….one of the largest natural caves in the world. There were little scenes of stalagmites and stalagtites that were given names as to what they looked like….. A Snowman, Mountain Sunrise over Jungle Lion and Bumper Harvest of Melons and Vegetables.
Dragon Eggplant

Bamboo raft and boatman

YingYang soup

There was one big open area called the Crystal Palace that featured a short light/music program.
 
By this time we were ready to see our new hotel…the Guilin Bravo Hotel, on one of the four lakes in the city. We have been put on the 4th floor….there is never a 4th floor in China as it is a bad luck number…so we figure they only put “round eyes” there! (we have just had some drunk young Asian gentlemen rattling the door trying to get in. Maureen scared them when she opened the door and said “wrong room!”)
 
Dinner was next on the agenda, our last dinner with this group…tomorrow 3 are heading back home and 2 are heading to Hong Kong and we 4 will continue on to our last stop…Chengdu. Well, this meal was the best yet….in the Long Zhe Tea House….first course was the Ying Yang soup (see picture) and then a vegetable, nut, chicken dish shaped like Elephant Trunk Hill complete with a carved raw carrot pagoda on top, then a veggie dish shaped like a heart and then a bamboo raft with rice wrap basket appetizers and a little boatman. Then tempura eggplant shaped like a dragon with a sauce on the side. Then several more delicious dishes ending with water chestnuts coated with a sweet sticky batter…..all very yummy. All this in a bookstore/restaurant with a woman playing a pipa zither in the background, Auld Lang Syne and Red River Valley were some of her songs along with traditional Chinese songs.
 
Then back to the hotel and a quick trip to the local supermarket for a bottle of Great Wall white wine. We have decided that we like Guilin the best so far….a very pretty city, it’s very green and not as smoggy as the others we have been to and “smaller”, only a million people! At night all along the river and on the lakes it is lit up.

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