After a whirlwind week in Beijing and Shanghai, it was time to down-throttle, so we took a plane to Yangshuo (Yahng-shwowe).
Gods let this be a chill place, I thought as we taxied to the airport gate. Or at least a place where I can breath with confidence.
It was. Almost.
The new English word I learned here was KARST. Karst formations. Mountains long eroded by constant rains, softish earth torn away by tunneling roots, silvery humps dotted with lush green things. Actually, mountains may be an overstatement. Maybe ten to fifteen stories, tops, and not snowcapped either. While we were there Yangshuo was pegged at 90% humidity with an equally tall temperature. Kind of a stewy feeling overall, like traveling in an enormous bowl of noodle soup.
Anyway, Yangshuo is beset with these karst monsters. Low-slung and beautiful, these blokes crowd around the Li River and the city like rugby players moving in towards a scrum. And the town loves it.
It is positively cosy. Think Aspen without all that skiing nonsense. Two, two-lane roads coming together in a wishbone formation make up the major thoroughfares. Both sides of the street boast wood-planked shops, colorfully painted, each hanging a shingle describing its wares, each feeling a bit unique. Tea, taffy, hand-crafted jewelry, hand-pressed paper shops, more tea, fabric shops, custom tailoring, ceramics, chandeliers, interspersed with all manner of clothing shops, each a bit boutiquey, that is, small and one-of-a-kind.
Food too, and not just of the Chinese variety. I don’t know the historical roots of the people who came or come to this place, but there are all types of food to accommodate. In fact, Yangshuo has the most diverse selection of restaurants I have yet seen in China. German beer gardens sit next to Sushi places, which lie across the street from an Italian restaurant, outside of which sits a small, glass-sided cart advertising fully-loaded baked potatoes, dressed to order.
As the sun sets, some clever hollywood types turn on the floodlights at the base of the Karst formations, throwing uplight and giving the mountains a foreboding, looming presence. A night market pops up, vendors crowding together selling elaborately carved wooden fans, or trinkets or combs, or pashminas, or t-shirts, and textiles, textiles and more textiles. It’s damn pleasant.
That is, until we take a turn down West Street. There, the pleasant vibe goes ferrel and electric. West Street is everything I’ve mentioned above distilled into a thick tarry concentrate, jacked up on MDMA, given glow-sticks and jammed into a kilometer long side-street the width of a Ford Taurus. Oh, and don’t forget the pole-dancing. That’s what this equation was missing! Pole-dancing.
Possibly every tourist in the area pours into this little chute after dark to talk, walk and gawk, and we were certainly no different. The place has its own center of gravity. After one hundred meters the street is packed, all shoulder-to-shoulder jostling, all moshy, borderline dangerous, and no one can do a damn thing except survive, or maybe get a baked potato.
No! I thought I had it! I thought Yangshuo was the salve for a week in Beijing and Shanghai, but this West Street, this…this…this…really was only one street. An anomaly. Maybe it’s what all sleepy towns need. One high-octane lane to come to when life gets too tranquil.
Because aside from West Street, Yangshuo is tranquil. It is relaxing. One day we rode bikes into the country, past Karst mountains, rice fields, and three local girls walking two hours into town for a soda. Every so often a scooter carrying a family of four passed us. The only mammals we passed on our $2-a-day bicycles were a wrinkled, weather-beaten man walking his water buffalo. All this, twenty minutes from the town center. The calm from a bicycle on a lonely Chinese country road was glorious, just what I wanted after Beijing and Shanghai.
Another day, we took on the mighty Li River in Bamboo rafts poled by lithe Chinese in cylindrical, straw hats. Actually the term ‘mighty’ is a tad aggressive. Lazy seems a better description, gentle, perhaps another. Over three hours we cover ten, maybe twenty kilometers. I don’t know really. Time got real fuzzy here. This little sojourn down the river could just have easily happened two hundred years ago as today. In some respects, it’s a minor miracle it actually happens today. If this were Thailand, those bamboo rafts would have been pushed aside by cigarette boats overflowing with bikini-clad girls.
In fact, things were moving so slowly on the river, I had time to ponder these deep considerations right then and there. To really soak it in and marvel.
This now, this here?
Damn pleasant. I could deal with Beijing if it were a stopover on my way here. This was one of those gems you find in your travels, places you have no expectations about, way-stations of wonder and beauty magnificence–
I was brought out of my soaking and marveling by the appearance up ahead of cluster of umbrellas on an anchored raft manned by two women poised over a small charcoal grill. What’s this? What was that glorious smell?
They spoke in that clipped gibberish that beggars belief and my brother, thank the gods, caught the gist. It was the same gist I got as we ‘docked’ on their raft and approached the heavenly aroma these women were creating. Chargrilled fish, fresh from the very river we were poling.
With only minimal reservations about food safety, I dove in, washing it all down with a warm beer that started with a Q. Who knew how I would enjoy this later, but I was truly enjoying it now. Salty, slighty sweet and peppery too. Eating chargrilled fish on the Li River, from our bamboo raft?
Yep. Damn pleasant.
This now, this here? This is why I travel.
Finding places like that is the reason you travel! That is the greatest part of seeing the world. There are so many fantastic places tucked away that the average person never sees. So glad you’re getting to experience all of that!
Nice!
As a traveler and photographer I’m reading loving your adventure wishing for images…(the constant photographer in me)… Settling into your word I realize you words have created that image. Well done… Still wish You had shot the woman and umbrellas…. Great shot….