Impression – Li River

The introductory pamphlet on our “luxury” cruise for the local Chinese describes the dramatic karst peaks which envelopes the winding, emerald green Li River that runs, in part, from Guilin to Yangshuo as “grotesque peaks”. Cannot really blame the cruise company. After all, what better word to describe these oddly shaped and bizarre-looking mountain peaks than the word “grotesque”? The Tang Dynasty poet Han Yu described them as blue jade hairpins running through a green silk belt which is the Li River – and if you imagine blue hairpins plugged on top of a piece of green silk the image isn’t particular that poetic either.

I have visited the Li River some fifteen years ago with a Hong Kong tour group and did not have such fond memories of it. All I remembered from the trip was the tour guide’s continuous reminder of how beautiful Guilin was with the saying, “Guilin’s landscape triumphs heaven and earth, Yangshuo’s landscape triumphs Guilin” and waterway caves lit up with tacky rainbow-coloured lights. I had left thinking, “So, this is all there is to the world-renowned Guilin!” I learned a couple of years later that when you travel with tour groups from Hong Kong, “this” would be all there is no matter where you go. I vowed soon after this realization never to travel with a Hong Kong tour group again.

My impression of Guilin was therefore scarred for a good fifteen years, to be redeemed only until the recent film The Painted Veil, which was set in the ancient town of Huang Yao along downstream Li River. Intrigued by how beautiful the area looked with Edward Norton in it I decided to take a trip to Guilin to see for myself...

We arrived in Guilin on a late night flight and departed for Yangshuo straight away the next day via a 4.5 hour luxury river cruise from Mopanshan (Ink Plate Mountain) Pier, which is where the local Chinese board the cruise. Foreigners travel via a different pier which charges almost twice the price as Mopanshan. Expect a very local Chinese experience – waitresses haggling you to 1. pay for extra food because the meal included in the ticket price is “VERY basic” and 2. to pay for pictures to be taken at the scenic peaks of Wangfushi (“Waiting for Husband”), Jilong Shan (“Chicken Coop Hill”) or Baxian Guojiang (“Eight Immortals Crossing the River”) because it is impossible to take such a wide-angled and beautiful photograph using us laymen’s cameras. However, the scenery on the Li River was enough to make up for all the cruise’s deficiencies. Each bend of the river unveils a new juxtaposition of peaks so exquisite and unique it almost doesn’t seem real, especially with the mist lifting, water buffalos grazing or bathing lazily nearby, village women chopping and preparing supper along the riverbanks, and men gently punting bamboo rafts like a gondolier. Here time seems to have stopped and inhabitants go about their daily lives as they did hundred of years ago, even the fish are still caught using cormorants – big, fierce-looking vulture-like birds with a silver coil looped around their necks to prevent them from swallowing the fish.

The cruise ends in Yangshuo, a backpacker’s, rock climber’s and biker’s haven. To a certain extent gentrified like its westward sibling Lijiang, Yangshuo is overflow with western styled bars and restaurants, even a cooking school and martial arts studio geared towards foreigners interested in soaking deeper into Chinese culture. However, behind the endless T-shirt stalls and souvenir stands lining either side of the popular West Street the more authentic Yangshuo comes to life: Chinese doctors with plastic bag-full of Chinese herbs and men getting a clean shave in Yangshuo’s small alleyways, al fresco. If you like noodles you will equally be impressed by Yangshuo’s version of the Guilin rice noodles at Bao Quan on Bao Quan Road. You can choose from the more chewy, round version or the flat, ho-fen like noodles in either spicy or non-spicy broth. The spicy version (don’t ask me why the non-spicy version differs) comes with a crispy fried dough and which adds that bit of a kick to the dish. You can even have it in a dried version to take away for the long journeys ahead!

We started our first day in Yangshuo cycling to the ancient waterfront town of Fuli, a good two-hour workout roaming through villages with increasingly interesting and dramatic mountain backdrops. When we reached Fuli we decided to be even more adventurous and kayak to Liugong, another ancient town on the bank of the Li River. Our guide Qing Qing, a bubbly and highly competent lady (who speaks very good English, and some Israeli too!) from nearby old town Xingping, was our make-shift photographer for the day and was responsible for taking pictures of us arduously paddling our way through the Li River while handing us snacks from a small steamboat that followed us the entire way. As strenuous as the 3 hour exercise was, Liugong was worth every minute of the trip. We had missed the market at Liugong (every old town on the banks of the Li River has specific days of the month where markets are held. In Xingping for example, dates ending in three, six or nine are the big market days), neither was there any festival going on, but the quaintness of the place was what made Liugong memorable for us. We had a simple lunch of stir fried potatoes and braised eggplants on the terrace of Mr. Li’s restaurant (“Leon Lai’s ‘Li’!”- Mr. Li’s own emphasis) while watching the waters glistening against a couple of tiny fishermen’s huts sitting on stilts and an old woman trying to hail a raft from the other side of the river over.

However, the highlight of the day was Zhang Yi Mou’s multi-million RMB stage production, Impression Liu San Jie. Liu San Jie is a old Chinese movie about a Zhuang minority songstress but I had no idea how much the movie meant to the Chinese, especially the people living around here until I was cornered by a boatman on the way to Fuli. He did not waste a single minute of the boat ride telling me how he had helped out on the set as a kid. If you like Zhang Yi Mou’s more recent films you will be completely awestruck by the sheer grandeur and impact of the production. Set almost completely on the Li River, the production wins you over within the first five minutes when the signature peaks of Yangshuo are lit up in the background. The show opens with Liu San Jie’s singing followed by hundreds of fishermen moving in unison behind strips of red ribbons, forming a sea of red waves so beautiful it was almost eerie. Then you have the countless Zhuang women, dressed in traditional costume and lit up in an ethereal silver light, walking out hand in hand from one shore to the other as if walking on water. This is a production that is all about ‘impressions’ and imagery but no storyline, but what powerful imageries these are.

As we walked out of the theatre (along with the throngs of both mainland and foreign tourists and tour buses) in the cool September breeze we both started getting more excited about our trip. If one day alone in Yangshuo could be such fun, we cannot imagine what more of Guangxi awaits us in the next four days.