Mountains beyond Mountains

Yangshuo is a small tourist city located at the confluence of two rivers among dazzling limestone peaks; and also is where I spent my past week of vacation. Splitting time between the trinket shops and western-aimed bars and restaurants of the downtown and the sublimely refreshing haze of endless mountains in the countryside, my travel buddy and I biked, sailed, cooked and ate our way though the Chinese New Year.

While the city of Yangshuo is the namesake of an ancient people, today it houses souvenir shops where bargaining seems to result in the very opposite, and bars serve both western and Chinese style food, neither of which is all that impressive. Picturesque enough, with cobble stoned streets and long pedestrian thoroughfares; the city has just enough charm and scenery that it may be forgiven for the western imposition on the town. As thumping nightclubs usurp calm cafes, and shopping gives way to the people of the night, the extent of the tourism is revealed by the spiraling drink prices. As they say, “a nice place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to stay there.” We didn’t; we moved to a hostel in the countryside after 2 nights – it was perfect.

The countryside is full of level farmland and orchards punctuated by steep limestone karsts reaching hundreds of feet into the sky. The ground is either quite flat or extremely vertical, allowing easygoing bike rides snaking along riverbanks and between monolithic stone towers. In some places the rivers melt into the future rice patty beds, crossing the man-made banks and footpaths. In other places where the limestone cliffs protrude up and up from the water, an imposing closeness looms on the small bamboo boats that sputtered along beneath the walls. Emblazoned as the image on the back of the 20RMB note, the scenery in the countryside is more than enough to make Yangshuo one of the top destinations in China.

The weather was disappointing, better than the snow Shanghai had received before we left, but hardly the weather you’d expect for a February vacation, much less for a trip during ‘Spring Festival’. It remained consistently cloudy, with some days being less cloudy than others. Direct sunlight was out of the question, and my scarf and winter cap never left my side. It never snowed or rained and the mountainsides were covered with greenery from the near-tropical foliage, but the endless haze and lack of fresh plants created an all too familiar feeling of dreary Shanghai. Yet despite the weather, the awe striking beauty of the place was evident, causing my desire to return for a long weekend when the sun is shinning the rice patties and pumpkin flowers are in bloom.