Yangshou - The Tourist Destination

   Our second main stop in China was the picturesque area near Guilin of Yangshou.  The entire town was set up for tourists (again, mainly Chinese tourists) and we adored every minute here just as I imagine Nixon, Carter, and Clinton all enjoyed their stays in the same town.  The streets were filled of venders selling the Chinese goods that we buy from China and think are cheap when we purchase them in Walmart as well as an assortment of Chinese-only goods-stores such as chopstick stores, lighter stores, T-shirt stores with ObaMau insignia, and stores devoted to Mau paraphernalia.  At night, the streets were alive with lights, terrible Kaoreoke singing, dancing, and card playing (yes, even at midnight people were playing cards at the bars!).  It was what I imagine a college would be like if alcohol were not allowed.

This area of China is featured on Chinese currency for its beautiful Karsts (sharp rock formations that jut out of the ground as if something was trying to stab its way out of the earth).  Upon arrival we took a gorgeous boat ride on the Li River after we rode for 3 hours on bikes watching people take rice and shake the grains off in the fields (rice grows on TOP of the pieces of grass upon which it grows).

During our bike ride we had the chance to climb 800 stairs to take a beautiful view of countryside.  In 90 degree heat and high humidity I was drenched after about 10 feet.  Fortunately, a 65 year-old lady from the local village carrying a cooler with 10 water bottles and coke attached herself to me and fanned (seriously) me the entire way up and down in the hopes that I would buy the drinks that she was selling.  While the others in my group tried to ditch their ladies, I was pleased to be able to talk with someone born and raised in the farming village next to the park as well as to support directly her and her presumably very poor family with a couple of dollars of charity in exchange for a coke.  The lady (Li) had three sons and a farm that they produced rice and all of their food on.  She had learned English by walking up and down with tourists and had only had primary schooling.  Like all mothers, she was very proud of her children and said that the money that she was raising was for their town's school that did not get public funding and did not benefit from any of the ticket price that I paid to have the privilege of climbing the stairs directly beside her village leading to the overlook.  China gives hard work a new name. The pride that Li took in her farm, her children and her task to provide for her village's school with great physical labor were awe inspiring and a true testament to how China has grown so fast and so well.