guilin and yangshuo

Up early and fingers crossed.  We are on our way to what’s billed as the best river cruise in the world.  But the endless fog has continued and during our short stay in Guilin has greyed out all but the closest mountains, leaving us feeling short changed.

We had explored the town and its parks and pagodas, and legged it up the nearest precipitate mountain to a tiny pavilion perched on top, but when we get there it’s just a sea of grey.  The town is pretty enough, but all this grey is starting to get to me.  Hong is convinced the air is wonderfully fresh, because that’s what everyone says about it.  But sorry, not when it’s full of fog and the fog smells of coal-fired power generation.

So waking up the next day and looking out of the window, we are prepared for the worst.  Not helped by the early start and a prattling tour guide, who manages to talk continuously in Engrish and Mandarin for the full half hour to the ferry terminal.  I’m allergic to organized tours at the best of times, and all that stuff about mountains shaped like camels and the one that Chou En Lai said was like nine horses, and the one that’s on the 20 yuan note, and the biggest this and the oldest that, made me a little grumpy and wondering if I had done the right thing.

We get herded on to our tour boat, one of many that make this trip at the same time of the day, and pretty soon we cast off.

Well, all that grumpiness soon falls away.  Out on the roof you can escape the commentary and just watch the countryside drift by.  And miraculously, the mists start to lift and the vast mountains show themselves.  I’ve visited limestone karst country before – in southern Thailand, Halong Bay in Vietnam, but this is something else.  The River Li slashes though this mountain range, sometimes nudging against cliffs hundreds of metres high, sometimes bending to give a distant view of extraordinary profiles.  Many years ago when Chinese scroll landscape paintings became known in the west, they were thought to be fantasy images, but not so: they are realistic views of this country, its high domed peaks, its wizened trees and the lingering mists.  As we progress for several hours through this countryside, the sun forces its way through the grey and I actually see blue sky for almost the first time since arriving in the country.  The mist still fades out the more distant mountains, very prettily, in delicate water colour shades, and in the foreground, small fishing boats dart about, water buffalo wallow, and the green river grasses shimmer in the clear current. 

We are headed for Yangshuo, which appears before us after several hours, a fantasy town wedged in the gaps between several huge mountains that loom above it, and spilling down steep slopes to the river pier where we dock.  Inevitably this town is tourist central, and there are swarms of trinket sellers and food stalls as we tug our luggage through the narrow lanes.  Hong has found us the hotel room with the best view in the world, and we sit quietly on the balcony as the sun sets and the mist starts to reassert its hold, drinking it all in.