guilin

It was nice to get away from Yangshuo and the pimps. I had been told Guilin wasn't worth a look but now that I have seen it, I disagree. It's cleaner, more modern and nicer place than I was lead to believe. Apart from after dark, of course, when the nightcrawlers are out selling their wares and dodging them becomes a task.

Guilin is a pretty useful place to get to see the 'dragons backbone'. This is an area dominated by terra paddy fields. This type of landscape is created by digging a series of steps along the sides of mountains. A process perfected over 800 years. They are amazing to look at. They look very much man-made but unusually, not at all out of place.

Although I booked myself in with a Chinese tour group, I was fortunate that the guide could speak English and he was happy to do so. I got more than I expected. The area is populated with an ethnic tribe whose last recorded income per head took place in 1997. It was a princely sum of 36 euro's. Imagine that. In 1998, 80% of their wooden village burnt down! Poor buggers. There are a number of other ethnic tribes in the area and we visted two others. One was a village where no one cuts their hair ! Ever! The other was less exciting.

The sights in the city are much the same as the other city's I have been in China. Pagoda's, temples, etc. I went for something different with a little Chinese opera. Opera, it wasn't. Chinese, it was. The show was a kind of fusion of ballerina's, acrobat's and some badly timed 'broadway' type dancing. It was called 'the dragons heart'. The music was prerecorded. The best part was a scene called 'The magnificence of the jug". The performers made themselves look like jugs (yes, jugs!) and all to the background of a song by Enya. How very Chinese. It was something else. Unmissable.