More of Yangshou

The view from the restaurant where we had lunch after the rafting trip.

Before our cooking class, we went to the local market to buy the ingredients. This woman was picking out a chicken for her family's dinner. Talk about fresh!

Kelly, the chef, looks with approval at her appreciative students.

Now that is a perfect dumpling! Made by Chef Sara

Hill dropped us at the hotel after the rafting trip and Mary and I made a beeline for the shopping street, while Tom and Neil scouted for a restaurant for lunch. We met at the appointed hour and went to the restaurant they had picked which overlooked the river and according to the guys, was frequented only by Chinese and no Big Noses.

The food was excellent. We had Chinese eggplant with pork, one of my favorites and the best I’ve ever had, and local shrimp that were so tiny you could eat them shell and all. We also had more of the beer fish which is an elaborate fish dish cooked in beer and served in a beautiful skillet surrounded by vegetables and covered with a divine sauce. We were congratulating the guys on their fine choice when about mid-way through the meal, in walks a whole busload of American tourists. It was so funny, because if they had been there to start with we would have turned up our noses and refused to eat there. They were actually the only Americans we saw in Yangshou.

Hill was going to pick us up again at 3:30 for our scheduled cooking class, so we had to hurry. If you remember, we had a class with Miss Vy in Hoi An, Vietnam—a wonderfully classy affair with white linens and carefully arranged platters of raw ingredients and the beautiful Miss Vy to explain and illustrate the techniques.

This cooking class was no Miss Vy. It was a little rough around the edges, but still worthwhile if only for the cultural experience. First, we went to the local market with “Kelly,” our hostess/chef, to buy some of the food—a trip to the market seems to be part of every cooking class but it really is just to show us the market and to be able to point out some of the strange foods. We all love markets and roaming them has been a highlight of the various countries we have visited. This one, though, was a little too authentic even for my tastes. There were live animals in cages—chickens, rabbits, all varieties of fowl, snakes, frogs, wriggling baby eels, and some creatures unidentifiable. And the locals were shopping earnestly, picking up pheasants and chickens and hares to check for plumpness. Some of the things that were available I don’t even want to put in the blog because of innocent eyes. Suffice to say our worst fears about the eating habits of the Chinese were realized. Kelly just shrugged at our shock and talked about the Yin and Yang of eating.

After the market we went back to Cloud Nine, the restaurant that Kelly claimed had been featured on the Yan Can Cook TV show several months ago. I’ll have to check that. The actual class was an open air affair on the roof of the restaurant, where Kelly demonstrated the techniques while we dutifully copied her. We made eggplant with pork (we had it for lunch!), Szechuan chicken, and some really delicious dumplings that are now going to be a permanent part of my repertoire. I definitely had a knack with the dumplings!

I thought it was kind of fun, but Mary and Neil and Tom to some extent hated it and pronounced the food greasy. The alert among you will have noted that we had two big meals within about four hours. Not to worry, we are now world class, Olympic quality, championship eaters.

More of the Raft Trip

Truly beautiful scenes

We stopped to sample a fish from a streamside fish fry. That's Hill on the right.

We only got one fish for the four of us. Big mistake. It was the BEST!

Songs of he done me wrong and ain't it a shame and where is that drinkin' cheatin' so-and-so

Rafting on the Li River

This is the type of raft we rode up the tributary of the Li.

Just one of many boatloads of happy Chinese waving and shouting Hello! How are you!

A cormarant fisherman. The birds were tethered to the boat, the man would slap the water with an oar and one of the birds would dive in and instantly pull out a big fish (one to two feet long!). The bird couldn't swallow the fish because he has a metal ring around his neck. The fisherman gently (or not so gently) eases the fish out of the bird's gullet and puts it in the basket. Then the whole process starts again.

A scene on this beautiful river.

The next morning we were scheduled to take a raft trip up a tributary of the Li. This too was a surprise. I knew the river would be beautiful, and it was, and I hoped it wouldn’t be too touristy, but it was—in a good way! The river was full of happy Chinese doing exactly what we were doing—enjoying a beautiful morning drinking in the scenery and having fun. Every boat we passed would wave and cry Hello! Many if not all of the rafts had, in addition to the boatman, a lady singer dressed in local costume singing traditional river folksongs in their eerie high-pitched voices. Of course, we couldn’t understand the words but one can imagine that the words must be tearful accounts of unrequited love and sad tales of loss and unfulfilled dreams. Just like country and western, I would think.

Guilin to Yangshou

The underground lake in Reed Flute Cave, Guilin. It's hard to see but it looked like the skyline of a large city at dark.

A typical scene of the karsts as taken from the car.


The main shopping and dining street in Yangshou. It reminded us of a Chinese Bourbon Street before the hurricane.


A typical souvenir shop, as you can see, something for everybody.

After we drove the two hour drive back to Guilin from Ping An and did a little local sightseeing, we proceeded on to Yangshou, where we would spend the next two nights. We had pictured Yangshou as another sleepy village plopped into the middle of the karsts and the rice paddies. If I didn’t mention it, Hill, our guide, while sweet enough, was fairly clueless and couldn’t explain very well what was coming next, so we had a few surprises on this leg of the journey, Ping An being the first of these. Hill, which is the translation of his Chinese name, is 25, his English was pretty poor and his pronunciation almost unintelligible. This was unusual because all of our previous guides spoke good to excellent English.

But sometimes it’s better not to know what’s in store because then your pre-conceived ideas can take over and color your attitude pro or con. It was kind of nice to just relax and take what comes.

When we drove into Yangshou we were surprised to find that it was not a quiet little village, but a booming resort town where mostly Chinese come from all over China for a little R and R. Our hotel, the Paradeso, was at the top of the main tourist street which teemed with people shopping, eating, drinking, and socializing. There were some Big Noses, but not many. Yangshou sits on the Li River, a beautiful meandering waterway surrounded on both sides by the legendary karsts, so the scenery alone would be a reason for its popularity. But there is more there than the scenery.

We arrived late afternoon and Mary and I couldn’t wait to investigate what looked like the best shopping opportunity we had had in some time and maybe the last of the trip. We were not disappointed. When evening came the four of us started to explore the street and look for a restaurant, but the shops were most tempting and it was hard to think about food. Eventually, though, husbands prevailed and we found a sidewalk cafe that wasn’t too crowded and ate some local food (beerfish) and drank some local beer and enjoyed some of the best people watching of the trip. The shopping would have to wait.

The Lian Lodge and the Long Haired Ladies

This is the entrance to the hotel. The hanging things are real bamboo roots.

Our room, the Celadon, with windows on both sides and spectacular views.

One of the antique wood carvings in the hotel. The artwork was amazing and I wish I had taken more pictures.

This is as close as we got to pictures of the long-haired ladies. The real long hairs had their hair wrapped and pinned up but you could see how much hair it was. They looked top-heavy. I don't get it myself, why anyone would want that much hair...

Ping An Continued

I might be overdoing it on the pictures of our trip up the mountainside, but I'm so fascinated by the whole process. This is at the beginning when we are still unaware of what lies ahead. At first, the guys said Ok you ladies can get your luggage toted, but we will carry our own and walk. Why spend money on such indulgence? Mary and I thought it was silly to scrimp on such a small thing and we won. Believe me, this was the best money we ever spent! If you are curious, it was about $16 each for the sedan chair ride and about $3 each way for the luggage toters. A major bargain if you ask me.

Two of the sedan chair "drivers." Don't they look like they are thinking, "Wait a minute, we need to charge by the kilo instead of by the person!" They did stop to rest two or three times on the way up.

This was my luggage lady. She was very protective of my precious stuff and the next morning she immediately grabbed the same suitcase and computer case and took off down the hill.

Look how easy they make it look! We told Rosely that we felt guilty letting them carry us because it seemed so unfair, but she said they do it every day and it is their choice. I wonder.... By the way, I hope it's clear that we walked down the next day under our own power. Aren't you proud?

More Pictures of China

This picture will give you an idea of what Ping An looked like while we were being carried up to that wonderful hotel.
The buildings are mostly of wood and quite densely situated.
More of the rice terraces.
A woman working in the rice fields.

After we left Beijing, we flew to Guilin which is the area of China that is so famous for the limestone karsts and terraced rice paddies. We didn't stay in Guilin, but went directly to Ping An, the perched village I've already told you about. The scenery from Guilin to Ping An was spectacular, although the weather was a bit hazy so a lot of the pictures didn't turn out very well. The people in these small villages are living just as they have been for hundreds of years. What a hard life it is but they seem really happy. One of the villages is famous for its women who supposedly have the longest hair in the world. They only get it cut three times in their lives--once when they are 18, once when they are married and one other time (can't remember when), but even then it is only cut a little bit and their hair is many feet long. They approach you and say Long Hair Long Hair you want picture? Then they charge you if you take a picture. We were feeling a little exploited by that so we didn't bite.

China the Unexpected

China! What an amazing pleasant surprise! Quite frankly, in the initial planning of the trip I was lukewarm about including China at all. I felt we had to at least hit a few highlights, but I didn’t expect to really like it all that much. I was going for the “educational” experience. I expected drab clothing, long faces, gray buildings, dirty streets, military bearings, and…well, you catch my drift.

Not so! China is alive with color, smiles, cleanliness, beauty, happy people, HIGH fashion, amazing architecture and sights like we’ve never seen before.

Beijing, as you may remember, has been chosen as the site of the Summer Olympics in 2008, beating out, among other cities, our own Big D. After seeing Beijing and the preparations that are underway for the Olympics, all four of us agree that the very idea that Dallas could compete in the world arena with a city like Beijing is both ludicrous and naive. Of course, we love Dallas, but let me explain.

Beijing, a city of 13 million people, is so big it defies the imagination. Everything is huge—the buildings, the squares, the parks, the boulevards, the hotels, the billboards—everything. Although the buildings aren’t as tall as New York, it makes New York feel smaller because the scale is so much more grand. You don’t walk across the street in Beijing—there are underground passageways. Otherwise you would cross about 10 lanes of traffic, which, like most cities in Asia, don’t pay attention to lanes anyway. Happily, our hotel was within walking distance to Tienanmen Square and the Forbidden City (thank you, Gwenna), but a walking city it isn’t. You would walk your feet into bloody stumps before you would get anywhere.

You could eat off the streets in Beijing. I don't think I've ever seen a city so clean. In spite of a massive building campaign, everything is neat and tidy. We saw a few of the new stadiums that are being built for the Olympics, as well as the structure which will be the site of the opening ceremonies (the bee hive, I think it's called) and they are so impressive. New hotels are going up, there are signs everywhere advertising the Olympic slogan, One World, One Dream, and the energy fairly vibrates throughout the city. Unlike Bhutan, where we sadly question whether the necessary renovations will be complete in time for the coronation of the king and the attendant ceremonies, Beijing WILL be ready and the world is in for a treat. It is clear the the Beijing Olympics will top anything we have ever seen before.

In our short time in Beijing, we didn't even begin to scratch the surface of what the city has to offer. . It would be worth going back to.

More of Ping An

These ladies carried our overnight bags in wicker baskets on their backs all the way up the hill and then back down again the next day. At least they didn't have to carry us!

A view of our hotel, the LiAn Lodge, from above.

This hotel was among the most unusual we've ever stayed in. Designed and built by a Chinese man, Keren Su, an artist and photographer of note who lives in Seattle, it has 16 rooms, all different and each filled with antiques and fine art. Apparently, Mr. Su discovered Ping An in 1997 and decided to build this hotel there. There are other small hotels and guest houses, but this is the most unique. It is entirely made of wood with no nails, all tongue and groove. We were the only guests and Rosely, one of the three hotel staff, was our personal guide and chief cook and bottle washer. She walked us all through the village (yes, we walked on our own), lower where the shops and restaurants are, and higher where the above view of the hotel was taken and then later she showed us every room in the hotel so we could see for ourselves the genius of Mr. Su. I've never seen anything quite like it. Each room has a name and a theme--ours was Celadon, and there was Batik, Rock, Calligraphy, Music, etc. Our room was done in soft greens with antique porcelain pieces around the bed and windows on two sides. Not large, but so beautiful and comfortable. The way the hotel is perched on the side of the hill is amazing. Ping An is like an Asian version of a European "perched village" where all you do is wonder at the people who managed to build it at all.

Rosely has a great command of English and we all loved her. She is only 23 and was hired sight unseen by Mr. Su right out of college where she majored in "Management of Agricultural Economy." She is a bit lonely though, because as you can imagine, Ping An is a bit isolated and the young people are few. Rosely diplomatically said she had great respect for the hill people, but had a bit of trouble relating to them and one can see why. We all predicted a great future for Rosely as a tour guide, which is what she wants to do next, after she completes her "obligation" to Mr. Su. She has so much charisma and personality, she will do fine and we encouraged her to get her resume out there now. We've already received an email from her and we plan to keep in touch.

Ping An continuing up the hill

I'm taking this picture looking back. Can't move too much because it jars the sedan chair carriers and the front one turns around and glares. So it's difficult taking pictures but the sights are unbelievable.

The view from our window in the hotel. More about this amazing hotel later. These are the famous rice paddy terraces that are the subject of so many paintings and photographs.

our hosts, Cassandra and Rosely with Tom. Rosely is so adorable, more about her later as well.

Ho hum, just another view from our window.