Day 7: Yangshuo

Day 7: Yangshuo, originally uploaded by t-and-a.

A 12-hr bus ride later and we disembarked, bleary eyed in the city of Yangshuo. While we were completely out of it, the local hotel touts were bright-eyed and bushy tailed and ready to sell us everything from a hotel room to myriad tours, tickets and otherwise. We finally gave in to Larry (surely that was not his real name) to hook us up with a nice room and train tickets to our next destination.

Yangshuo is notable for its scenery of karst peaks and its setting on the river. This was our first exposure to the tourism boom currently happening within China. When after a morning of wandering through the residential part of town, we stumbled upon the 'tourist section' full of shop after shop selling everything from DVDs (at a dollar a piece), fake jade and personalized fans (we couldn't resist getting one of those). This was a far cry from the market we walked through earlier in the day, which offered up all kinds of interesting fungi, meats (sitting in the sun all day - yummy) and every kind of vegetable, fresh off the farm.

Nonetheless, Yangshuo was a very charming stop on our trip. We enjoyed both the 'real' side of it, seeing how people live in a small chinese town, as well as the bustle of the tourist side.

One other point of note is the young gguys we met hanging out by a scenic spot on the river. It was amazing how eager they were to learn English. In fact, their sole intent for hanging out there was to practice their English with the tourists. Also amazing how well informed these guys from a tiny Chinese village were... and the questions!! The first question out of their mouths was our thoughts in the impact of globalization on Chinese culture!!