Chinese New Year in Yangshuo

I've realised that in the last entry I forgot to mention that, when we went to the Couchsurfing KTV Chinese New Year outing in Guangzhou, Joanne and I both sang Karaoke although there don't seem to be any photos to back this claim up. For the record, Joanne sang "Should I stay or Should I Go" by the Clash, and I was surprised to find a selection of Metallica songs, so I entertained everyone with my rendition of "Battery", a paricularly upbeat piece of music from "Master of Puppets".

We arrived in Yangshuo on the 25th January, totally knackered. Although it had been an overnight bus, it wasn't classed as a "sleeper", so it didn't have the deeply reclining chairs that the sleeper had, and the driver seemed to think that this made it OK to talk really loudly the whole way to all the passengers, especially at the back of the bus judging by the volume of his voice. To make matters worse, the bus stopped at a garage, not at the bus station we had planned the route to the hotel from. We had read about a well known scam where they drop you miles away from where you are meant to be so that they can get kickbacks from the taxi drivers who pick you up. But everyone else got off, so we though it must be OK.

West Lily Hotel in Tangshuo

We did quite quickly find our way, ignoring all of the annoying taxis and rickshaws who kept trailing along next to us as we lugged our huge rucksacks up the pavement. It was about 7am, so we thought we might be able to ditch our bags and go somewhere for coffee until our room was ready. To our delight, the hotel owner gave us a key and said "your room's not ready yet, so you can go to this one to sleep and shower, then come down later to check into yours". He seemed very nice. After a rest we were shown to our room, which was massive. So far, we have paid less in every place we've gone and ended up with better room; it seems the further you get from Hong Kong the cheaper everything is.

Pantao, the main road in Yangshuo

Yangshuo is stunning. The town is surrounded by karst peaks, which are formed when a soluble layer of bedrock is weathered away leaving behind shear peaks of insouluble rock. The scenery all around is peppered with these almost vertical spikes of rock. There are also a couple of rivers through the town which sets it up to be a beautiful tourist attracting town. It was also pretty busy, especially considering the perishing cold. Guangzhou was cold, but now we were wearing everything including our thermals and we were still too cold.

The Yu Long (Dragon River)

It was a welcome change to be in a touristy town having spent a few days in Guangzhou, which is probably the last place most tourists would go. Most of the tourists were from other parts of China, but the town certainly caters for westerners; one of the main streets is called "West Street", having recently changed it's name from "Foreigner Street" (in Chinese).

A family setting fire to things

From when we first ventured out there we fire crackers going off, and as the evening progressed the frequency continued to increase. The Chinese attitude to fireworks seems somewhat different to a western attitude. If I were to sum up what it appears the attitude says it's "fireworks are harmless fun, which couldn't do anyone any harm". I witnessed plenty of children who couldn't have been older than 3 , some definitely under, lighting banger and throwing them at other children; some where lighting rockets and throwing them at people; others were standing holding fireworks which were spitting out volleys of fire.

Two generations apart, lighting bangers

I was of course, horrified when I saw the first few, thinking, "where are their parents, and why aren't they watching them tonight?". Then I saw a parent appear, and show their two year old how to hold the firework at the correct angle, and hold their hand while they lit the touchpaper. Incredibly we didn't see anyone get hurt, but they must suffer thousands of injuries. They must! The whole night was chaos: car alarms going off constantly because of the huge explosions of the biggest fireworks; rockets bouncing along the streets horizontally; grandparents and children ganging up to throw fireworks at the parents simultaneously.

Chaos on Chinese New Year

The whole town was full of smoke all night. The pavement was almost completely covered in the remnants of fire crackers, which sometimes seemed to be set off by the thousand.

Of course the adults behave at least as irresponsibly as the children. Two of the people in this photo are American, but I think they were just getting into the culture.

On the walk back to the hotel we were able to see that Yangshuo is also very pretty at night, although some of the lights must have been for the Spring Festival (which begins with Chinese New Year).

Remainders of EXTREME chili Sichuan chicken dish

Monday, our second day there it rained quite heavily, so we just stayed in and read. It was the first chance we'd had really, because Hong Kong has been so busy, and then the couch surfing in Guangzhou meant we were socialising more; in fact we spent more money there, eventhough we weren't paying for accommodation. We only ventured out to eat. I decided to try something that wasn't a local dish and go for Sichuan Chicken. It was ridiculously full of chilis. Unfortunately it only occurred to me to take a photo after I'd eaten most of it. Now I like hot food. I like really hot food. But this was just a plate of friend chilis with a few bits of chicken through it.

Countryside around Yanshuo

On Tuesday it had stopped raining, although it was still very cold, so we decided to get a bit of exercise and hire a bike to get a better look at the stunning scenery. We decided to have a wee look at "Dragon Bridge" then head off back in the other direction past our starting point, where there were some other places of interest. We just couldn't find it. There were no signs for it, and everywhere we went people were offering to guide us, or give us a trip up the river on a bamboo raft. It was as if they had conspired so that western tourists would get lost and fall prey to these touts.

View from Dragon Bridge

The map seemed useless. I had a compass, but I wasn't at all sure that the top of the map was north and north certainly wasn't marked on the map. We kept bumping other westerners (Australian, Irish, German, French) and nobody knew where they were; about half of them seemed to be looking for Dragon Bridge. Some had given up and turned back, while others had given in to the bamboo pimps. We hooked up with two german girls on the same mission and eventually we got there.

The bridge was not worth finding, but the view was very nice. On the way back I worked out that the map was not to scale; the 0.5 km of the town which was on the map was the same size as the 9 km we had to cycle back (along the main road, rather than the muddy paths we took on the way out).

Chinese New Year in Yangshuo

Yangshuo, China