cindypepper! » Guilin 2008

xvi: rice fields are more exciting than the name suggests, part two.

Cindy — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 08:48:12 +0000

… and part two.

Once I got to the top, the rain stopped and I got lunch and took heaps of photos. However, once I made the descent, it started raining … again. Let’s just say that at this point, I had fully given up on the rain jacket and umbrella.

xv: rice fields are more exciting than the name suggests.

Cindy — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 08:39:39 +0000

I guess by “soon”, I meant five minutes later! Somewhere out there, a dialup user is pissed off at me for slowing down les Internets.

The next day (Wednesday), we had to wake up early to catch the bus from Yangshuo back to Guilin. After the hour-long bus ride, we had to take a two-hour ride from Guilin to the Longji Rice Terrace Fields.¹ The first half of the ride was sleep-inducing, but the second half consisted of a steep ascent and multiple picture stops. The moment we got out the car to climb the summit, Mother Nature decided to take a piss on us. Umbrellas, sadly, were no match for the massive downpour as we made our way up to the top.

The view was worth the soaked clothes though. Behold, visual proof!

(click for larger view)

Part two coming up, for loading time’s sake.

xiv: not a fan of beijing weather, just saying.

Cindy — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 09:28:06 +0000

Ah, yeah. So. Back in Beijing. I seem completely incapable of forming coherent thoughts ever since I’ve arrived. After a 12-hour sleeper train, I spent most of the day sleeping or editing photos that I even forgot to eat. I only just got done with editing the 2,000-some Guilin photos. (Ha, don’t get me started on the Beijing photos. Or the majority of my Columbia photos that I have yet to post on Facebook.)

Now, to begin where I left off. The second day of Yangshuo was a more relaxing day, which I guess isn’t saying much, considering that the break’s been pretty chillax in general. I biked around the countryside (read: mountains and lots of ‘em), went on yet another bamboo raft to the other side of town, and visited a few parks. I’ll post the rest of the photos from the trip soon; I’ve got two posts coming.

(click for larger size)

xiii: the old banyan tree looked down on me

Cindy — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 09:27:13 +0000

I’m about to leave for a train to Beijing in less than hour, so it’s back to bad Internet and smoggy weather and memorizing vocab words for me! And I haven’t even finished editing more than half of the Guilin photos. But this should be a start, right?

(click for larger view)

These are all from the second day, right after I arrived in Yangshuo via boat. Anyway, I’ve got to go, so see you all when I’m back in Beijing!

xii: en route to yangshuo

Cindy — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 02:50:04 +0000

(click for larger view)

On Monday (July 21st), we took a four-hour cruise across Lijiang to the city of Yangshuo. I’m pretty sure I spent the entire four hours out on the deck taking pictures instead of sitting in my assigned seat.

xi: ’tis a forest of sweet osmanthus!

Cindy — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 17:14:52 +0000

… and after Moon Hill, we had dinner of Guilin cuisine and a nighttime boat tour across the Lijiang and Peach Blossom River.¹

(click for larger view)

It’s so refreshing to have clean air, panoramic mountain views, and river water that isn’t brown.² Oh, and weather conditions that are actually livable! In between the endless pendulum extremes of heat blankets and torrential downpours in Beijing, there’s the happy medium that is breezy Guilin weather.

… so ends the first day of my Guilin / Yangshuo travels. I’ve still got three more days worth of photos to post! Hope all is well.

—–
footnotes:
¹: Why do the landmarks here have such pretty names? You’ve got Peach Blossom River, Reed Flute Cave, Seven Star Park, Moon Hill, etc. Even the city itself is called Forest of Sweet Osmanthus. Not only that, the places actually live up to their names. For example, Moon Hill gets its name from its natural crescent-shaped formation, and Guilin is known as the Forest of Sweet Osmanthus for … self-explanatory reasons. You’d never find such namesakes in Beijing or Shanghai, not that their rivers are really deserving of them anyway.
²: I probably mentioned how pollution is so bad in Beijing and Shanghai. When I landed via plane in both cities, I couldn’t make anything out from the window view except for white because of the poor air quality. And even so, nobody in the airplane really cares about the aerial view except for the particular girl with a big camera who simply has to take a picture. But when the plane was landing in Guilin, everybody wanted to take a look outside because the aerial views of the rice fields, mountains, and rivers are something to be reckoned with. That also happened to be the one time I let my brother have the window seat.

x: jumping over the moon hill

Cindy — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 15:38:34 +0000

… so it continues! After the Elephant Trunk Hill, we then climbed up Moon Hill. The view atop is amazing! The photos are from four different points; click for larger view.

…. and there’s still more photos from that day that I have yet to post.

ix: on the 18th day of the 6th lunar month…

Cindy — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 13:34:11 +0000

Ironically, the Internet in Guilin/Yangshuo has been 894383x better than any Internet I’ve gotten in Beijing and Shanghai. Take that, uppity Great Firewall of China.

(click for larger view)

I should probably start where I left off the other day. After visiting the Reed Flute caves on Sunday afternoon, I went bamboo rafting on the western bank of the Lijiang. The second photo is Elephant Trunk Hill, a hill resembling a huge elephant drinking from the river.

Coming up next: aerial views atop Moon Hill!

viii: with a cup of bitter tea?

Cindy — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 14:27:40 +0000

I’ll get back to the what-I-totally-meant-to-post-last-week series as soon as I can, since I’m currently in Guilin! I arrived from Shanghai yesterday morning, and the cab driver turned out to be a really good tour guide. His English was pretty good, and he did a great job showing us around and all. After local rice noodles for lunch, we went to the Reed Flute Cave, a series of illuminated karst caves. (Legend has it that the reeds nearby could be made into flutes.) And that was only until 3pm! I’ll tell more about yesterday’s happenings in a later post, but for now, here are the cave photos! (click on the photos for a larger size)

And ever since I’ve arrived in Guilin, I cannot stop listening to Bitter Tea (the Fiery Furnaces’ album), namely the title track. I blame it on the allusions to banyan trees and osmanthus blossoms, both of which are in full abundance here.

Oh, and Guilin is REALLY BEAUTIFUL. It’s one of those things that just goes without saying, such as “The Great Wall is REALLY BIG” or “Public restrooms are REALLY DISGUSTING”, but if you could be here, you’d probably want to reiterate it too. Unfortunately, the 2000-some amateur photos that I have taken can’t even do Guilin’s beauty justice.