Guilin, in southeast China, provides the background scenery for every painting you’ve ever seen depicting ancient China. And on my last visit to the middle kingdom I decided it was time for Nick Yates to take a gander at Guilin’s famous and mysterious conical mountains.
A quick flight out of Canton deposited me in Guilin, and it was only a matter of buying a ticket on one of the tourist boats that make the daily journeys along the Li River’s scenic waterway.
The next morning found Nicholas Yates taking in some truly spectacular scenery, on a slow moving river trip lasting much of the day. I shared the idyllic journey with several dozen Chinese, many of them either newlyweds or retirees. The Li River, after all, is perhaps the premier beauty spot in all of China’s varied topography and it’s unique, karst mountains have absorbed the flashes from millions of tourist cameras over the years — all hoping to capture some of the artistic allure found in the paintings of the masters.
And the antics of my fellow passengers were only slightly less photogenic. Including one young American buyer for a blue jeans concern (the only other ‘foreign devil’ on board) who spent the whole trip plugged into his i-pod, frequently singing along — discordantly — to his favorite tunes, seemingly oblivious to all around him including his fellow passengers.
Despite the distraction, I managed to fill my camera’s memory chip with an overload of panorama and human interest shots that would do justice to any China travel blog. And the city of Guilin itself provided still more — if of a decidedly more everyday-China flavor.
It’s a pity more foreigners don’t resist the lure of hectic Beijing and its sights — and take in instead this bit of timeless Chinese tranquility.