Note: There is not much here about
aquarium fish!
To see more fish, go directly to: Part 3b:
A Visit to the Guilin Ocean Aquarium
A Tour of China in Winter
Part 3a
The Spectacular Scenery of Guilin
By Howard Norfolk
Original to Aquarticles.com
After historic Xi'an, my friend and I flew south to the city of Guilin.
 
With its 1.3 billion people, China is a densely populated country.
As we flew over some mountains we could see the little roofs of houses in every tiny
valley. A less snowy farming area had an intricate pattern fields, with not many roads.
Click on photos for enlargements, then
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The spectacular mountain scenery around Guilin has attracted artists and
poets for hundreds of years. Founded more than 2000 years ago, the city is a
transportation hub and a provincial capital, with a population of 1.3 million. Today
Guilin prospers from tourism. Visitors from all over the world, as well other parts of
China, give it a cosmopolitan flavour which is enhanced by its many local minority group
residents.
 
Guilin straddles the Li River. We had a wonderful view from our room
in the Osmanthus Hotel. The trees along the river are decoratively lit at night.
 
Down by the river, the promenade has recently been rebuilt. I liked
the carved stone benches!
Lijiang (or Li) River Tour
As the Berlitz China guidebook says, "the transcendent tourist experience of
Guilin - and perhaps of all China" is an 83 kilometre (52 mile) day cruise down the
Li River. The locally produced brochure calls the river "a jade ribbon winding among
thousands of hills."
The unusual hill formations, called karst, were created when the soft
limestone was cataclysmically lifted, then flooded by the sea, and then lifted again.
 
We boarded a flat-bottomed boat and drifted downstream in the middle
of a long procession of tourist boats, which make the journey every day.
 
A loudspeaker on our boat told us of the romantic names that many of
the peaks and pinnacles have been given, such as "Wangfu Rock," which
"looks like a woman carrying her baby and yearning for her husband's return."
The river was shallow in places, and it took skillful bursts of
engine power to navigate the large boats though the rapids. Our boat sometimes scraped
along the bottom with a loud grinding noise.
Boys ran along the shore with nets, hoping to catch coins and gifts
that the tourists threw to them (despite the signs).
Other locals seemed almost like pirates. They manouevered their
little bamboo rafts alongside our moving boat and aggressively peddled souvenirs through
the windows. One of our seatmates was not too lucky - he bargained for and bought a large
carving, and then saw the exact same thing in town at a beginning price of half what he
paid!
Fishermen train cormorants to bring fish to them. The cormorants
have their necks tied so they can't swallow their catch.
That fisherman might live in this village, which like much of China
looks to have been recently rebuilt. Or perhaps he lives in this picturesque cottage.
We had lunch on our boat as we drifted past more and more scenery.
Our cruise ended at the town of Yangshou, where all the boats
gathered and waited to let off their passengers. One of the boats was worth a photo - this
'goldfish'!
Elephant Trunk Park
Elephant Trunk Park is in Guilin itself, at the juction of the Li and Peach Blossom
Rivers. It gets its name from a rocky hill that looks like an elephant drinking in the
water.
Elephant Trunk Hill
 
This fisherman in the Peach Blossom River was using a cone-shaped
net. He lowered it to the bottom in the shallow water and then poked systematically with
his spear, hoping to impale any fish that might be trapped.
Other fishermen used the trained cormorant method. These cormorants
were waiting for their master.
 
Girls in traditional costumes were posing for photographs with
Elephant Hill as a background.
We walked around the park with our new guide, "Susan."
  
The elephant is Guilin's animal mascot, and the park had ornaments
that stressed that theme.
 
Labour is cheap in China. Here a sluiceway was being put
together with minimal use of machines.
 
A small Buddhist temple had a little outdoor shrine.
We walked around the back of Elephant Hill until we reached the
elephant's trunk.
  
A cormorant fisherman had some small fish in his basket, and had
also caught a good-sized carp that he'd kept alive on a string. He sold the carp to a
bystander, then drifted away to fish some more.
Reed Flute Cave
There are many underground streams and caves in the soft limestone hills around Guilin.
Reed Flute Cave is an "AAAA Tourist Attraction."
A pathway, sometimes wide like this and sometimes narrow with
ladders, led us through the extensive cave system.
   
The rock formations were colourfully lit. Many of the features had
romantic names, according to what people thought their shapes looked like. (But our guide
seemed to stop telling us about these after I said they looked like my toilet!).
  
There was an underground lake.
On leaving the cave we ran the usual gauntlet of souvenir sellers.
Here are some tourists being approached.
Wood carvings are a local specialty.
Tourists could ride this camel. It didn't really look at home with
the forested mountains behind it, but China used to trade extensively with Arabia and the
West using camel trains along the 'Old Silk Road' (which commenced at Xi'an), so perhaps
its ancestors came here then.
There are lots of other caves, parks, hills and attractions to visit in
Guilin, but there was one more thing that I particularly wanted to see....the Guilin
Aquarium.
Go to the next in this series:
China Tour Part 3b: A Visit to the Guilin
Ocean Aquarium
The whole Tour of China in Winter series:
Part 1a: Introduction, and the Tourist Sights
of Beijing (Tourist sights)
Part 1b: A Visit to the Beijing Aquarium
(Public aquarium)
Part 1c: An Arcade of Aquarium Shops in
Beijing (Aquarium shops)
Part 1d: The Beijing Museum of
Natural History (Tourist sights)
Part 2a: Xi'an and the Army of
Terracotta Warriors (Tourist sights)
Part 2b: An Aquarium Market in Xi'an
(Aquarium shops)
Part 3a: The Spectacular Scenery of Guilin (Tourist sights)
Part 3b: A Visit to the Guilin Ocean
Aquarium (Public aquarium)
Part 4a: The Space-Age City of Shanghai (Tourist sights)
Part 4b: A Visit to the Shanghai Ocean
Aquarium (Public aquarium)
Part 4c: Jiangyin Road, a Street of Aquarium
Shops in Shanghai (Aquarium shops)
Part 5: Fish Seen in Chinese
Restaurants (Native fish)
Part 6a: A Photographic Visit to Ocean Park,
Hong Kong (Public aquarium)
Part 6b: The Goldfish Pagoda at Ocean Park,
Hong Kong (Public aquarium)
See also (after a previous visit to Hong Kong):
Tung Choi. The Amazing Aquarium Store Street in Hong
Kong (Aquarium shops)
Or, back to:
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