I heard you got some rain... looks like we're in for the same.

We've had a fantastic time this week! We had a tour around an ancient village, had some taiji, calligraphy and chinese knitting lessons and roamed about the countryside. The weather has been pretty awful, wet and rainy and cold, but we've managed to enjoy ourselves. We climbed Moon Hill, which is a tall karst with a natural hole in the middle at the top. There are 800 steep steps to the top but the view at the top was fantastic - the best so far of the trip. We were supposed to be cycling out to the hill but the weather was so terrible we took our minibus. The rain was good enough to hold out until we were halfway back down! Later in the afternoon the clouds lifted a little so we took the bikes out for an hour or so and cycled to the villages behind the school and along the river.
Yesterday morning we were taken to a village belonging to a group of minority Chinese. It had been made into a tourist attraction - the story was that a tribe of around 3000 of them lived in the forested mountains of south-west China and 3 years ago the Chinese government relocated 300 of them to Yangshuo. We were told by our Chinese guide that the tour would take us round the village where we would meet some of the villagers and see their way of life. Well....it was like Chinese Disneyland. Lots of "villagers" wandering about in "real" animal skins (more like printed pyjamas) who were aparently too scared to leave their village but were perfectly happy for us to tramp around their village. We were even greeted by the queen, sitting in a courtyard with a 2nd Chinese guide ready to take photos - obviously no queenly duties to attend to! It was really awful, there was clearly no tribe living in the area - these were all locals employed to dress up and dance around all day. We were pretty disgusted actually - the tribe of 3000 does actually exist in the south west and we felt that this village really made a mockery out of them, especially as the owners of the park claimed it was all genuine. The price of the entry ticket was very high, and at every corner there was someone waiting to take your picture and charge you 10 yaun for it, and you can bet hardly any of it gets back to the real tribe. The day improved dramatically after lunch - the weather was much warmer and drier so we cycled about an hour out of Yangshuo to a village along the Li River where it's popular to jump off a very high bridge into very cold water. I had to really psyche myself up to jump but I did it! It was great fun, the water was a lot warmer than I thought it would be, and getting warm and dry afterwards was OK as well. Instead of cycling back the same way, 4 of us hired 2 bamboo rafts to take us back down the river towards Yangshuo and then we would cycle the 2km back into town. Earlier in the week we had taken a boat trip on a different part of the river through an area famous for being depicted on the 20 Yuan notes. It was pretty, but with so many other tourists on the water (plus it was pouring with rain) we didn't enjoy it so much. This 2nd time on the water however, was absolutley gorgeous! For the whole hour and a half of slow punting we didn't pass another raft, and the scenery was maybe not so dramatic, but much nicer and so peaceful! We were right in the middle of the countryside, slowly drifting past tiny hamlets and along rice paddies. When the rafts dropped us off we had to cycle down tiny, very muddy paths winding through the farms and villages and past hundreds of graves and burial grounds. Eventually we got back onto a bigger road which then stopped back at the river and there was no bridge!! On the other bank there were loads of rafts, it was obviously another popular place for tourists to get on the water. We were charged an obscene amount to have some-one take us across, but we had no other choice - we were already so late for dinner and we had no idea how far away the nearest bridge would be! From the other side it still took us about and hour to get back to the school, we were so exhausted! It was quite an adventure! After consulting a map we were angry because when we had been dropped off from the raft they had put us down on the wrong side of the river - obviously in cahoots with the people further down who could then charge as much as they wanted to get us back across! And it was far more than 2km into town! But we really enjoyed the scenery and the exercise so all in all we were happy to have had that experience. Today however, I am aching!!!
We now have the weekend free and then on monday we start trekking! I really hope the weather gets better!!!!

I heard you got some rain... looks like we're in for the same.

Yangshuo, China