great firewall of china part 7: Karst Dreamscape

9/5 Changed to my new hostel and then rented a bicycle. Another cool
thing about our hostel is it has the highest rooftop in yangshuo, so
it has magnificent views across the town, river, and karst mountains.
I took a backroad way to get to a tiny historic village called Fuli.
Along the way I met a chinese tourist also on a bicycle so we biked
together. He was really nice and it was helpful to have his chinese
to help us get around the maze of backroads. It was of course
beautiful biking through rice fields (and other fields), through tiny
villages, along the Li river, and of course with the towering karst
mountain all around. Fuli, which was reached by taking a short ferry
ride across the river, was quite cool and had the look of one of those
old chinese towns like you would see in the movies. Old ladies
playing chinese checkers and other games. Men sitting around drinking
tea. Everyone on their bikes. Just really cool. At Fuli I said
goodbye to the chinese guy as he wanted to head back to yangshuo. I
then contined for 20 more km's to xingping where the Li river met up
again. The ride continued to be stunning. More rural areas with
chinese farmers in their big chinese hats working in the rice fields
as water buffalo wallowed in the mud. Just classic scenes of rural
china. And of course the karst mountains, oh the karst mountains.
It's hard to describe their beauty. So gorgeous!! Just rising
straight up out of the completely flat and brilliantly green rice
fields. I wish I could do the area justice with pictures, but with
the cloudy and misty weather it's impossible. Probably would still be
difficult to do so with good weather though too, but if you want to
check out photos do a google photo search of yangshuo or Li river.
But really just stunning and breathtaking. I have actually seen some
similar karst things in n. vietnam when I did my motorcycle trip to
the border with china (I am now quite close to vietnam and that border
and waterfall I reached on that trip), but the mountains in vietnam
weren't as big or as impressive and it was in the winter so the rice
fields were all burned and brown instead of glimmering green like they
are now at the end of the rainy season (though it still is sort of
rainy season now I guess). When I reached xingping, I had some
gorgeous views over the river (another cute little old chinese town)
before it started to POUR. And down it came. I took off my shirt in
order to keep it dry (I always carry with me a dry bag and a
waterproof backpack cover when in se asia (this is now technically se
asia again) and rode off into the rain. It was coming down so hard
that at times it hurt my skin, but at least it's a quite warm rain and
it was like taking a nice shower to rinse all my sweat off (it's
insanely hot and humid here, more so than anywhere I was while in se
asia except for maybe the jungle, but then it wasn't as hot in the
jungle...you pour sweat hear even if you are doing nothing, it's just
that humid). The chinese sitting under shelters the whole way found
it quite humorous I think to see the foreigner biking away in the
rain. But I had to bike as opposed to grab some shelter bc I had 28
kms to go before it got dark. I was definitely pushing it, and it
felt quite good. When travelling, you hardly do any real workouts.
Felt like lance pounding through the rain, and of course what always
made it even more fun and made you go even faster was that on the bike
I could catch and pass the rickshaws (motorized tricycles/tuk tuks)
which always gave the drivers quite the surprise. Before I made it
back to yangshuo it stopped raining and I was treated to some nice
scenery of mist over the karsts.
That night after drying off I sat with the other guests of the hostels
drinking some beer, eating hot pots and dumpings and watching dear
john and then pirate radio (highly recommend this one).

9/6 I was going to do this one bike ride today, but I found out 3
people were doing this hike (that may be tricky in finding directions)
so I decided to join them. We took the bus to Yandi where we then
hiked the 22km along the Li river amongst the towering karsts to
Xingping before taking a bus back. The scenery along the river and
with the karsts, was of course just brilliantly gorgeous. Still
breathtaking. As the gal on the trip put it, she wanted to put how
beautiful the peaks are into poetry, but she couldn't think of it.
Though she did say that the skyline often looked like the ekg of
irregular heart beats. Not only was the hike great, but the group was
fun too. Everyone was quite funny and we had a good time. Richard (a
chinese american from the OC) is travelling through china for 3 months
and was quite helpful with his chinese. We had to barter for 3
different ferry crossings and also ask for directions at some point.
He also helped us to get an amazing meal at just some random home
along the river. Hano, from germany, who is a huge rock climber and
has been here for 40 days climbing. And the 3rd was Lauren from
Melbourne who is on a 9 week paid vacation. She works for the aussie
gov't (give me that job). But she spent 5 weeks of her vacation
volunteering at an orphange in cambodia. Perhaps the most interesting
thing about her is that she is on the australia national ultimate
frisbee team. She said most people aren't impressed by this, but I
was. She said that she was going to be carrying lots of frisbees to
give out to people while travelling and she would have given one to
me, but her boyfriend forgot to pack the frisbee bag into the car when
he drove her to the airport.

Tonight will be more movies and the a bike ride I think tomorrow. The
weather today, though not sunny, wasn't raining! So I hope this
continues. It is just really insanely gorgeous here. Wish I could
somehow describe it better, but I think you just have to see it. This
place combined with huangshan is like the china in animations or
cartoons. How they always try to make things more spectacular in like
cartoons...well this is it. Ahhh China, so beautiful!