I’ve lost track of what round we’re on (part 1)

I’m having trouble coming up with a snappy opening line, so I’ll just out with it – we recently got a nice little spring break, and, as is my habit, I took off for a bit of adventuring. This time I went to Guangxi province (southeast of Sichuan) and Tiger Leaping Gorge, back in Yunnan province (south of Sichuan). To keep the post lengths under control, I’m going to split them up. Today will be Guangxi and I’ll talk about Tiger Leaping Gorge in the next one (because really, it deserves a whole post all to itself).

In Guangxi I visited two cities – Guilin and Yangshuo. Although the weather was less than ideal (foggy, rainy, and depressingly chilly), the scenery was still beautiful. Guilin is known for its unique geological formations called karsts. Karsts are rather large hills made of limestone. According to a geology buff that I met along the way, limestone is a very soft rock that erodes quite quickly. Cracks in the rock are easily invaded by water, which creates large cave systems running through the hills. Some of them cave in, creating these really cool-looking gumdrop-shaped hills. For further information, consult Wikipedia, which tends to know a lot more than me about most things.

The karsts make for quite a dramatic landscape. Since the sides are steep enough that you can’t really build on them, cities like Guilin and Yangshuo just incorporate the karsts into the town so that a wide panorama of the town is speckled with verdant hills. In the case of Yangshuo, it’s more like a bunch of karsts with as much town as possible crammed in-between.

Of everything I’ve seen so far in China, this was by far the greenest. It was great! There were trees and grass and hills and more green than I’d seen in months. I found myself wondering if the people who actually inhabit these places knew how lucky they were, how unique and distinctive and beautiful their living space is. Never in my life had I seen anything even remotely resembling this. But then, of course, they’ve probably grown up there, and even if they didn’t, they probably wake up every day, look out their window, and say, “Oh look. Another large hill. What a surprise.” In any case, I thought it was exceptional and magnificent, but maybe they just see large, useless obstructions. For me, though, it was great; if I got bored, I could walk a few feet in order to reach the base of a large hill and then, woohoo!, climb right on up.

Aside from climbing up random karsts, in a business deal that I’m pretty sure was illegal, Andrew (he’s in my program, I was traveling with him) and I paid one of the locals to take us out on the river on his bamboo raft. Let me tell you… that little bamboo raft was not very efficient. It was very long and rectangular-shaped with a tiny motor, so it didn’t move very quickly. But then, I suppose that wasn’t really the idea. In any case, we got a nice look at some karsts from the water.

Another highlight of Guangxi was the Seven-Star Cave, which was this huge cave system in one of the karsts in Guilin. They were really artsy about it, which made for a fantastic visit through the cave; they lit up the stalactites and stalagmites with pretty, colored lights.

As far as adventures go, though, I didn’t really have any because of the weather. In fact, the weather was so horrendous in Yangshuo that I was unable to do any sightseeing at all, unless, as they say in China, I wanted to be 落汤鸡 (like a drenched chicken). However, in Seven-Star Park (which is where Seven-Star Cave is, I’ll bet you didn’t figure that one out) I wandered off the trail and climbed some large rocks, but that was about as crazy as it got.

Next time, Tiger Leaping Gorge – by far the best place I’ve been so far in all of China. And on that note, I’m signing off, knowing I’ve left you all in a delicious state of suspense until the next post is up.

I apologize for the not-nearly-as-exciting-or-interesting-as-usual post, but I’m compensating with lots of pretty pictures!

Pictures:

1-2. Seven Star Park


3-4. Seven Star Cave



5. Practicing my Asian squat next to Seven Star Cave

6-7. Karsts


8. The glorious night-life on Xijie (West Street) in Yangshuo