Our Year in Asia: 2020

YANGSHUO
(陽朔縣, Yángshuò Xiàn)

6.8.2013
Our next destination was Yangshuo, where we wanted to see new sights, such as the traditional cormorant fishing. We had missed it before and since our trip in China was soon coming to an end, this was our last chance to see it. We also wanted to go rock climbing in this climbers paradise. It would be sad to miss a climbing experience in a place like this with karst mountains everywhere you look.

After a morning walk around the old town of Xingping we took a local bus to Yangshuo, which cost only seven yen. The busses leave frequently, at least every twenty minutes, and the trip only takes about thirty minutes. Yangshuo has two bus stations, North and South, to keep traffic away from the city center. You can even take a raft there from Xingping. Yangshuo is the terminus for all Li river cruises.

A local bus from Xingping to Yangshuo

Yangshuo is a much bigger place than Xingping, but the city center is still easy to cover by foot. It's a busy, yet nice city, although the shop keepers and sellers get to your skin trying to get your money. Renting a bike here and seeing the sights are popular pastimes. In the 80's Yangshuo was a popular backpackers destination and because the place has been popular among foreign and domestic travelers ever since, many local people speak English and signs are written in both Chinese and English. The area around Yangshuo is world famous, probably because it has been featured in Star Wars Episode 3!

Karst mountains are everywhere

Yangshuo city center is surrounded with mountains

Busy West Street

West Street

Seing the sights is easy with a rental bike

The city has two tourist streets. One is called Diecuilu, which is close to West Street. West Street is the most popular street, where you find clubs and bars and foreign owned restaurants serving all kinds of food. And of course McDonald's and KFC are here. Some of the most attractive bars and restaurants are on balconies overlooking a creek that runs through the city center. West Street (西街步行街, Xī jiē bùxíngjiē) also has nice bridges.

Yangshuo has many hotels. We stayed in West Lily close to the main street and pedestrian street. The staff was nice and spoke English. We booked a cormorant fishing trip through them and it cost only forty yen. In other cities the price was 200,- so we got a good deal. Otherwise Yangshuo is an expensive city, where you really need to bargain.

Some of Yangshuo's restaurants are situated by the
picturesque creek that runs through the city

Restaurant avenue by the creek

Yangshuo center

Some of the sights in Yangshuo are;

- Liugong village (留公 Liúgōng), 15 km from the city center. You'll find old houses, an old town gate, a temple with pretty view, a mud cave and local farmer food.

- Yulong River valley (遇龙河流域 Yù lóng hé liúyù) offers similar beauty as between the Yangdi-Xingping stretch (which we rafted earlier). You can cover the area by cycling, rafting or trekking parts of it. Besides the valley beauty with karst mountains, you will also find farming villages and stone bridges, which are beautiful in China.

- Moon Hill (月亮山, Yuèliàng shān), 8 km from Yangshuo. A hill with a hole the shape of the moon. Great scenery opens up from the top. Rock climbers also take advantage of this beautifully shaped hill, which has plenty of routes to climb.

- Big Banyan Tree Scenic Area

- Antenna Hill with a great view to Yangshuo

- Assembling Dragon Cave (聚龙潭, Jù lóngtán), between Big Banyan Tree and Moon Hill, with both stalactites and stalagmites.

- Silver Cave, 18 km from the city, runs through twelve hills. Its different types of stalactites are crystal clear and sparkle like silver, giving the cave its name. The cave has three layers and more than ten scenic spots. The three most famous scenic areas are Snow-Mountain With Waterfall (雪山飞瀑, xuěshān fēi pù), Music Stone Screen (音乐石屏, yīnyuè shí píng) and Jade Pool Wonderland (瑶池仙境, yáochí xiānjìng). Yangshuo has other caves as well and even water caves with hot springs.

Moon Hill (photo by Frodosleveland)

Windows of Yangshuo

Casablanca theme in Yangshuo

Dragon Spring bridge

Windows of Yangshuo; Red Cat = 紅貓, hóng māo

Life-sized statue of Sun Yat-sen; the first president of the Republic of China (1912–1949)

Xilang Hill pavilion 卧云亭

Li River after sunset

TRADITIONAL CORMORANT FISHING

In the evening we went to the harbour and jumped into a rickety boat to see cormorant fishing. You may have seen programs about it in National Geographic and Animal Planet. This traditional fishing method, using trained cormorants to fish, has been practised since about 960 AD in China. Nowadays it mostly functions for tourism though and has also been practised in Japan, Korea, Greece, North Macedonia, England and France. From an animal lovers point of view the tradition seems a bit dubious, as the fishermen tie a snare around the birds throats. This prevents the birds from swallowing larger fish, but they are still able to swallow smaller ones. When the birds catch a big fish, the fisherman makes the birds spit it up. This seems harsh, but as we saw it, the fisherman was gentle with the birds. The birds are, after all, the source of livelihood for fishermen, so they need to take care of them.

Cormorant drying its wings

We followed one fisherman in the dark evening along the slowly flowing Li River and watched as his seven cormorants were starting to get ready for the dives. They clearly knew the places where to dive and find fish, as they got anxious and soon dove in to the dark river. Sometimes the fisherman had to splash the water a bit to get the birds into action, but mostly they fished at their own pace. It didn't take long for them to surface with fish, either holding them in their beaks or halfway down their throats. The fisherman lifted those birds on the boat that didn't come to him themselves and took the fish from them. After the birds had done a couple of more dives the fishing was done and the fisherman took the snares off, so the birds were free to eat all the fish they want and dive freely. They seemed to be at ease all the time, even when I got to hold one on my arm. Cormorants are actually quite heavy, when they're sitting on your arm! You can watch cormorant fishing (鸬鹚捕鱼, Lú cí bǔ yú) also in Dali's Erhai Lake.

Local fisherman with cormorants

Cormorant drying its wings

Afterwards we ate at Pure Lotus Vegetarian Restaurant (暗香疏影素菜馆, Àn xiāng shū yǐng sù càiguǎn) and to our surprise they had seitan (made from the main protein of wheat, gluten) on their menu. It was delicious. The Chinese way of using sauces, spices and herbs is excellent and makes their dishes one of the best in the world.

The restaurant didn't seem to be popular among locals, probably because it was overpriced compared to the other restaurants in the area. There were only tourists inside and some of the locals funnily stared through the windows at them. To our delight we also found two Indian restaurants in the city.

Delicious seitan dinner

A beautiful setting of pure vegetarian food

7.8
ROCK CLIMBING

We woke up early to a noise coming from the street. A resident was blasting quite a load of firecrackers on our street. Apparently he does this every morning. What a wake up call for everyone! Tired or not, but today we headed rock climbing, yay!!! Some climbers spend months here and no wonder, the area has 70,000 mountains, according to some!

Yangshuo has about 60 crags and 900 climbing routes, most of them sport. The highest route is over 200 meters, which calls for another type of climbing, multi-pitch climbing. Climbing development was started here in the 90s by Todd Skinner, who first bolted Moon Hill. Climbing legends such as Wolfgang Güllich, Kurt Albert and Chris Sharma have also been here.

The city has many climbing shops to choose from and advanced climbers have their own meeting places. We climbed half a day close to the city with Spiderman Climbing. It cost 360.- CNY for two people (about 47 euros now). We had just started climbing in Laos last month (July 2013), so we had to go with a beginners group.

One of Yangshuo's climbing shops

Climbing is possible throughout the day, no matter the weather, with various rocks. Some areas are in the shade, others are sheltered from the rain by their own peaks. Fall is the best time to climb with mild weathers and lower rainfall from late September through November. Daylight lasts from 7:30 am to 6 pm.

The path to the climbing area called Swiss Cheese Wall was much easier than in Laos. We only had to walk an easy path for ten minutes to the base of the mountain, where as in Laos we had to trek for fifteen minutes through a jungle, cross two streams and then climb some twenty minutes up sharp rocks to the starting point. The Swiss Cheese Wall comprises two sectors offering single pitch climbs over a wide grade range. The Right Hand Wall with holes and scars has routes from beginners to intermediate and the Left Hand Wall offers more difficult and fingery climbs on a vertical wall.

View near the Swiss Cheese Wall climbing area

Our plan for the day was to climb four routes, from easy to two harder ones, 5.8 and a 5.10 grade routes with small holds, 5.10 being the top level for amateurish climbers, requiring proficiency in climbing skills and techniques. We were able to climb nearly all four, just missing the top from the hardest route. My endurance wasn't good enough for the hardest route and I was tired after three routes, which all were 28 meters high. The height and the fact that these routes were quite polished and slippery wore me out quite well. Kari had trouble with his operated knee on the last route and was only two meters from the top to finish it, like me. I got some blisters from the climbs, which you get when you haven't yet climbed much or at all.

5.8 route was like a walk in the park,
such an easy route to begin with.

Kari on the third route

On the last 5.10 route. It wasn't as easy as it looks.

The locals admired our climbing, took photos of us and shook our hands. They were amazed how fast we climbed, although outdoors climbing - and climbing in general - isn't about speed. For speed you can do indoors speed climbing nowadays and even compete at it.

I also got a young boy admirer. He wanted a picture with me, offered me one of his Snickers bars and just sat next to me for a long time. He said I was really good at climbing and asked how do I climb like that. I didn't know what to say because I was a beginner, I just did what I thought felt good on the wall. I've climbed everywhere since I was a kid, but not on rock, just the usual stuff most kids climb to. Well, I did scare my mom with a few places I climbed to as a kid, like the roof of a four storey apartment building, climbing up ladders where I could hardly reach the next step.

We both climbed over 100 meters altogether on this day, which counts as good excercise and start. The climbing day was so much fun, that we swore to continue climbing and so we have. Even later on this trip we climbed more, in Indonesia and Thailand.

Swiss Cheese Wall as seen from far

In the evening we had flights from Guilin to Shenzhen. We arrived there in the middle of the night and spent one day there. Next blog update will be the last post from our trip in China during our one year trip in Asia. This blog won't end there though, we still had seven more months ahead travelling around Asia and we needed to finish our divemaster course in Lembongan! Till next update from Shenzhen, I'll leave you with a bunch of Yangshuo photos.