No Bike, No Yangshuo

Hello from sunny, Yangshuo. After an overnight sleeper bus ride, my entourage and I arrived in Yangshuo, Guangxi which is famous for it's karst landscapes and the Li River. The scenery is spectacular but as usual in most places in China, the pollution spoils the natural beauty.


For those who have heard of or are thinking of coming to Yangshuo in the future, if you can't ride (or don't like to) bikes don't bother coming. Like the title of this post says (which I stole from a local bike rental shop): "No Bike, No Yangshuo". The best parts of Yangshuo are outside of the town. To the north are small villages that are accessable on narrow bike paths. You can literally bike through farmer's fields, it's really cool. We were invited to a sit down with a local farmer and met his new month old grand daughter and family. They offered us some pomelo they grew out back and had a good chat.


Farmer Wang showing us his beautiful month old granddaughter.


A bike trail beside the Li River and biking through farmers' fields.




Take a wrong turn and you may end up in a quarry. They were blasting and bulldozing karst limestone for use in bricks and mortars.

South of Yangshuo is the more scenic karst area which are seen in most photos of Yangshuo. The karsts just go on and on; the photos are stunning. Unfortunately, as usual in most parts of rural China, the landscape is marred by excessive pollution: noise (traffic/construction), air and land pollution.

Yangshuo is famous for it's Xi Jie (West Street). The street is home to all these western bars, coffee shops and restaurants. It's unlike anything i've seen in China before. We've sampled a few of the restaurants as well as a few Chinese restaurants. It must be the only city/town in China where the western food is better than the Chinese food! Of course, Guangxi isn't reknown for its food, I'm not illiterate in Chinese, the famous dishes here in Yangshou are Li River Carp cooked in beer (I hate carp) as well as the rice noodles which are OK. The western food runs the gamut from pizza to burritos, cheesecake to apple crumble. And it's pretty decent, not great but very good by China standards.

Tomorrow is our last day here in Yangshuo. We're going rock climbing tomorrow, not sure if it is a karst face or mountain we'll be climbing.

In the afternoon, we'll head to Guilin (1.5 hr bus ride from here) for a few days before we head to Longsheng in northern Guangxi province to check out the terraced rice fields and minority villages and culture. Hopefully the Chinese food is a bit better up north. More updates later..