Guilin 3 Yangshuo (7/28/2012)

Saturday, July 27, 2012 continued
The Li River cruise ended at the town of Yangshuo. After disembarking and posing with the cormorants, we climbed some stairs and walked through a tunnel:

Red marks on the side of the tunnel note the levels of floods in 1954 and 2008.
Xi Jie/West Street, the pedestrian street:

You can see it had just rained.
Passion fruit that they eat with a spoon:

Lele and Kent:

A water wheel music instrument:

Quite a load of fruit, and plastic bags, too:

We went to the Big Banyan Scenic Area, with lotus ponds:

The Big Banyan is probably a Ficus bengalensis:

KSS

It is over 1,400 years old, and the trunk is 7 m/23' in circumference:

Several aerial roots have taken root:

And those aerial roots are as big as many mature trees:

KSS

A short cut?

Tourists can rent minority costumes:

Next we went to Moon Hill Village.
There you can pose with monkeys:

View of Moon Hill:

KSS

There are lotus fields here, grown as a crop:

You can climb Moon Hill and as you go you view all the phases of the moon from crescent to full in the shape of the cave/hole that you see.

Lotus seed pods:

Lotus seed pod:

A bit of a labor intensive snack: first you pop out a seed:

Peel the skin:

Break it open to remove the sprout:

Then eat the nutty seed.
Rice fields:

We were driven back to Guilin and given a little over an hour of free time at the hotel. We watched reruns of some of the opening ceremonies of the Olympics in London, and some badminton.
Later we were picked up and taken to another pedestrian street in Guilin, to have dinner at the Left Bank Restaurant:

The tour company, China Highlights, is careful to take you to restaurants where Westerners will be comfortable and where Western food is available.
We chose a couple local specialties, like Carp Braised in Beer Sauce:

We had forgotten that carp has a lot of teeny bones.
Panlong/Snoozing Dragon Eggplant:

Plus Fried Rice Guilin-style that was spicy.
Zhengyang Pedestrian Street:

After dinner we walked to edge of Shan Lake for the Two Rivers and Four Lakes Night Cruise:

The Sun and Moon Pagodas:

Heading towards Rong Lake:

The glass or Crystal Bridge appears modeled on the Palladian Bridge in Buckinghamshire, England:

Now we are blasting through a time tunnel to Gui Lake:

This bridge is a replica of Széchenyi/Chain Bridge in Budapest:

And this is the Golden Gate Bridge!

Low bridge:

Why, there are cormorant fishermen here!

This one tosses one of the birds in the water, who immediately dives and comes right back up:

The fisherman displays the cormorant on the end of his bamboo pole:

He holds the cormorant by the neck and jiggles the fish up and out into his basket:

The cormorant then gets a very small piece of fish that he can swallow past the constricting ring around his neck.
Part of Diecaishan/Folded Brocade Hill:

Looks like an image of a local prince is projected on the hill. The lakes are supposed to have been part of the moat system around Jingjiang Prince Palace.
At the far end of Mulong Lake, there is a music and dance show:

We turned around and headed back the way we came.
Mulong Pagoda:

An opera stage:

Water buffalo totems:

The locals worshipped the spirits of the water buffalo?
Traditional Chinese music:

A little bit of everything, except we didn't get on the two rivers (Peach Blossom and Li) during this night cruise! False advertising! (Maybe during the day they go on the rivers.)
Tomorrow in Guilin 4 and 5 postings.