Travels of a Danventurer as a Young Man: Guilin Part 4: On shore in Yangshuo

May 29th, 2013
Chartres, France
Song of the Day: Without You by David Guetta ft. Usher
Mood: Rested

Back on shore

Welcome to Yangshuo

Once you’ve arrived at Yangshuo, there are a few activities to do. As is the case anywhere, there is people watching and cultural appreciation among the tourist traps.

"We only sell good coffee, not sell STARBUCK coffee" ZING!
A rare diss at American premium products

If 3D is awesome, imagine how great 5D must be!

In the airport, there is the date in lunar and "normal" calendar formats

Who would ever buy this for their wedding? If a groom bought it as a gift, it could be
misinterpreted as a thinly veiled threat. Also, who wears a lip ring at their wedding?

No striting (and don't you forget it!)

Banyan Tree Park

There is a great Banyan Tree park nearby

Old banyan trees are amazing because they are so wide.

This is one massive tree

This site was used in a love scene in an old famous Chinese movie Liusanjie. For the record, love did not blossom here for me.

In addition to the big trees, there is even more gorgeous scenery.

Impression, Liu Sanjie - Massive ethnic dance performance
My favorite activity was going to an incredible show of hundreds of performers. The show is designed by Zhang Yimou, who was the choreographer of the Beijing Olympics. The theater claims to be the world's largest natural theater and is literally on the Li River.

Thousands of people come every night. Spotlights light up the hills in the distance.

Transportation

I loved all the different boat taxis there were:

Country house
As part of my Yangshuo experience, I went to the house of a family in a local village. They still live there and had preserved many parts of the house from several decades ago.

In America so much of the process is mechanized, but here I saw local
farmers that relied on their own strength

Their living room gave me a much better impression of how revered and respected Chairman Mao was.

The perception of Mao has changed over the last five years. The Chinese government once said that Mao was 70% right and 30% wrong. People used to focus on what he did right (e.g., military victory, women’s rights, infrastructure) and wrote off his failures. For instance, five years ago, a good Chinese friend generously treated me to dinner. When paying for the bill, he pulled out a 100 yuan note and pointed to Mao and simply said, “Great man. Great man” As a guest in a foreign culture, I wanted to be respectful and better understand, but I was flabbergasted as in the US, we hold Mao responsible for the deaths of tens of millions of people from starvation during the Great Leap Forward (he let his people starve while exporting food as aid to other countries). As well, his persecution and murder of intellectuals, as well as the destruction of historical artifacts, during the Cultural Revolution adds to his infamy.

Now the tides have turned. Throughout China, people openly criticize Mao and acknowledge his terrible deeds and feel a great sense of loss at his destruction of traditional Chinese culture. I am shocked at how complete the opinions have shifted in such a short time. It would be like people saying that Presidents Washington or Lincoln were actually terrible men. Perhaps some revisionist historian will find something that shifts public opinion, but that shift would take decades and not just a few years.

Bird keeping

Old men in this part of China love to train birds as pets. Some men keep them at home to show off for guests. Others bring their birds to the park to meet other birds and their owners. And there are fishermen who train cormorants.