Journey in the Fairyland - Guilin, Longji, Yangshuo

Thanks to weeks' planning, our long experience in passenger flights and excellent assistance of China Odyssey Tours and our friend, Lois, we did our four days tour in Guilin and its surroundings at the end. We took a very affordable package that included flights, accommodation and even guide and driver! No such a tour we could afford can be found in Italy ... 

For me, the "hills of Guilin" were more than just a beautiful place situated at a reasonable distance from Hong Kong. As a child, I heard about it from both my grandmother, a great lover of China, and my mom, and my curiosity even grew in this myth. I imagined Guilin as a place of fairies, sugar-loaf hills that emerged from the mist, creating magical landscapes and silent, like a city in an ancient Chinese painting. Actually, I found I was not mistaken after the nice tour.

But beyond my poetry-like imagination, the trip started with losing of the ways. We had lost the bus ride to the airport in Shenzhen; we thought one hour and a quarter would be enough to get there, but had no idea about why we were monstrous late. By taking a some up-priced taxi ride, we arrived panting at the airport and discovered that they had canceled the flight, with the next one just 10 hours later. And my ATM card was not working there. So it may be necessary to take several ATM cards to China if possible. It all served us like grip on the ground, but we downloaded all the bad luck at the beginning and from then on everything went wonderfully!

Longji Terraced Rice Fields & Tea Ceremony

The first day, with our fantastic guide William, was dedicated to visiting the Longji Terraced Rice Fields. The place is famous for its wonderful view of terraced hills, which changes depending on seasons. The peculiarity is the presence of ethnic minorities who retain special customs and traditions: the Zhuang Minority, who builds beautiful wooden houses and for whom the song is one of the key criteria for choosing their partners, and the Miao Minority, with women in colored clothes and long hair rolled up in big hairdos. The village from which we depart for hiking in the hills is spectacular, all wooden houses with roofs of slate, and the life that flows slowly and quietly. Sellers of chillies, vegetables, sweet potatoes sat leisurely along the lanes and rice cooked on the grill inside the bamboo cane, a delight that we got to taste!

Not content with climbing, we went also to see a tea plantation, where you could also do the tasting. A beautiful young lady taught us how to behave properly at a tea ceremony. For example, you should never thank directly, but tapped on the table if you are single and two if you are married. Big question for us is how many fingers were to use when drinking, but we solved that. After that, William beat a finger and Tom and I both!

Tired but happy, we returned to the hotel. Our room was very nice; the bed may be the world's largest (like two double beds put together) but a little harder, like sleeping on bricks! However, we found that in China it is the rule, and Chinese people used to sleep on such beds for thousands of years!

Li River Cruise, Countryside Cycling & Impression Liu Sanjie Night Show

The next day, we reached a port with many river boats and we boarded one to begin our Li River Cruise in the direction to Yangshuo. On the way, we passed through the famous hills that overlook the river, and everything has been miraculously enhanced rather than damaged by the rain and fog. The landscape was really surreal, the hills bathed in mist that gradually became clear as we approached and then disappear again behind us, making us feel like inside a cloud.

In the afternoon, the rain stopped. So we asked our guide if we could do a bike ride in the countryside around Yangshuo. The village would also be nice if it was not destroyed by tourism, a souvenir shop after another, and even McDonalds and KFC. We wanted to get away a bit and take a ride through the villages and rice paddies, the real Chinese villages a little or less contaminated by tourists. That was the best experience of the whole trip! Say the truth ... Tommi credit for everything that has insisted. Majestic landscapes, quiet villages, poor but with dignity, people working in each corner, the silence in some places really were such different things to us. Then, we take a bamboo raft on the enchanting Yulong River, with the boatman who spoke Chinese for all the time. The tone seemed friendly and we knew the contents, by some guessing!

On the way back, we stopped at a house of a farmer who kindly showed us his house. The Lord, an octogenarian, was the chief of the village during the Cultural Revolution and still kept the sayings and writings of Chairman Mao on the walls of his house.

In the evening, we went to enjoy Impression Liu Sanjie Night Show, a famous ethnic night show in Yangshuo, which attracts visitors from all over China and also from the rest of the world. Impression Liu Sanjie Night Show is directed by Zhang Yimou ( the director of known films like Hero, Crouching Tiger & Hidden Dragon, House of Flying Daggers ... and choreography at the 2008 Beijing Olympics Opening Ceremony). 12 hills of the nature and 600 participants in a show were artically located and directed and all the performonces took place all over the water, thanks to the rafts and special boats. It is not a musical, in a strict sense, but more highly choreographed spectacle in which every part is dominated by one color, to evoke different feelings, and which also exhibit ethnic minorities with their beautiful songs and costumes.

Seven Star Park, Reed Flute Cave

The next day, we had enough time for a good rest. After returning to Guilin, we spent the day visiting the city. We started from the Seven Stars Park, with its beautiful views and animals never seen before, including a clever black bird which flew from India to greet us Ni-Hao (and even some words in Chinese!). We then continued towards the famous cave - Reed Flute Cave, a huge cave with stalactites and stalagmites of breathtaking beauty. The most striking have a name that recalls their shape. The lighting of the cave should highlight these similarities but I think it's too shocking: colored lights everywhere, even though the facilities are so beautiful that lighting would not have made much more simple that enhance the natural perfection.

The trip ended better than the first leg, with no particular hitches to the airport!

But in reality nothing, neither these tiny confusion, neither wind nor rain, have ruined this wonderful four days and our enthusiasm, and our hundreds of nice pictures will ever make it worthily.

The hills all around with their mirror reflections in waters, the rice fields and enchanting rivers, the silence, the smiles of the people and their extreme simplicity, clean air and light, spicy cuisine and the delicate fragrance of jasmine tea, and the delicious Rice Noodles for 30 cents are all incredible. At the contrast between the daily work of local farmers, with water buffalo and wooden plows, and we who buzzed around for pictures with contraptions, we seemed to be from another era, if not from another planet. we LOVE Guilin.

I would like to thank:

- Thomas, who has supported the insanity of doing this tour and had the idea with the world's most beautiful bike ride;

- William Liu - the best guide ever - worried about everything for us, always, being able to accommodate our needs and explaining many interesting things ... Thanks to him, we could have a romantic contact with the panda as well as the nice lunch on the boat and the other tourists have had to make do with what was left after our move!

- Lois Li, our fabulous travel consultant and also our good friend now, helped us organize it all with a budget that fell day by day ... and very patient and prompt to our ten thousands of mails, you deserved our sincere thanks! Great Lois!

This travelogue was translated into English from Ari's orginal edition which was written in Italian and first posted on blogspot.com (http://ongicongi.blogspot.com/2009/04/viaggio-nel-paese-delle-fate-guilin.html).