We took a one hour bus ride to Mopan Hill Wharf outside the city of Guilin for a 52-mile boat trip on the Li River to Yangshuo. The trip took us through the most surreal landscape I have ever seen, dominated by karst topography (check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karst for a full description of the features). It was a 4-hour trip that had us spell bound with wonder as we watched what seemed like as endless number of these strange looking peaks drifted by our boat.
From Left to Right - Donna, Merrilee, Debbie, Jim (our national tour guide), Joel, and Jeannie, relaxing on the boat trip on the Li River.
River "Pirates" drifted by us and occasionally hooked onto our boat and tried to sell tourist junk off their small crafts. It too was an amazing sight, if for no other reason than the skill it must take to grapple the boat, tie on and try to entice us to buy their wares, all while they stood barefoot on an unpowered bamboo raft no more than a few feet wide.
On our arrival in Yangshuo we checked into the Sovereign Hotel, a lovely 4-star hotel with absolutely enormous rooms. We were on our own for dinner, and we decided to take a "Tuk-Tuk" (their local open air cab) to the city center to eat at a vegetarian restaurant we noticed on the way to the hotel. Our local tour guide called the Tuk-Tuk for us (none of the hotel staff spoke enough English to communicate something this complex), but even there we had an amusing mis-understanding, as the driver thought we wanted a 1-1/2 hour tour of the area, while we only wanted to go about 1/3 mile to the restaurant. She insisted on 250 yuan for the four of us, but we said we would only pay 20 yuan. She took us about 3-blocks, demanded the 20 yuan and kicked us out of the Tuk-Tuk. Jim, our national tour guide was with us to make sure we ended up at the right place, and was as totally flummoxed as we were. As it turned out, it would have been very easy to walk there from the hotel, something we didn't realize at the time.
Dinner was exceptional, and including a bottle of wine from (Argentina as I recall) the bill came to a total of $35 for the four of us. We had to hurry back to the hotel as we were going to an early evening performance of "Lui Sa Jie" directed by Zhang Yimou, who also choreographed the opening ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympics. The show was as magnificent as the river trip on the Li, all performed on a lake with the Karsts forming a backdrop for the production.
These three pictures were taken just before the production began. While hard to believe, the Karsts in the background were stage lit for the performance, and the boaters on the lake formed a few of the cast that totaled over 600 with an additional 250 behind the scenes handling effects and sets.
The actual production was difficult to photograph, but here are a few samples of the lighting and production we saw, all reminicent of the type of mass synchronized movement and lighting of hundreds of actors in perfect harmony and unison.
I hope you can get the idea, but the actual performance was breathtaking. It's performed every day that the weather permits (and ticket sales warrant). The vast number of tourists in the area are Chinese, which is understandable as they are 1.5 billion strong and eager to travel. As their economy continues to grow, we are sure to see them in ever growing numbers as fellow travelers where ever we go.
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