After buying a 2nd ticket for Arthur, this time with the right name on it, we could board the plane and fly out to the picturesque Guilin. We got the first impression of the landscape already in the plane with all the rice fields, the farm land between the hills. It looked like somebody threw some dices. The name Guilin has it's roots in the Osmanthus tree. Or maybe in the cinnamon tree or Cassia. Hmm fake cinnamon...... 

We were also wondering about the Suzhou bridge in Guilin? How could this one come here? Anyway, the town itself is really nice and quite old (from the Qing Dynasty). The twin pagodas are not old but really marvelous. Also the tree is quite old, at least 1000 years.

Frankly spoken, the best thing in Guilin is, that it's the starting point to board a boat for the trip on the Li river to Yangshou. The Li river is translated as "clear as glass" and the name is no fake at all. The water is cristal clear but with all the amazing mountains around most of the people forget about the water. The landscape looks like a picture - that's also a reason why the front page of a lot of books about china shows Guilin.

The lunch was delivered pretty fresh to the kitchen on board. The fisher men sell their catch directly from boat to boat without stopping. The buffet was really nice with plenty of choices for us. Well, some guys from the US ordered steaks a nd were wondering, that the taste isn't the same as home in Texas...... 

Less good business as the fisher men made the swimming market sales men. They offer a lot of jade in all varieties, but nobody bought anything. 

On the river there are two sort of boats: the one for the chinese tourists and the others for the western tourists. The western tourists usually want to have a quite and calm travel, the chinese tourists want to have a lot of music, karaoke and stuff like this. So it's maybe not a too bad idea to separate.

As soon as the buffet was opened, the ship reached the high light of the journey: the mountains which are the motive for the 20 Yuan note. So we decided to cancel the first course and shot a really original tourist photograph.

First stop in Yangshou was the "hello-street", which is the local market street. With a temperature more than 33°C and pretty high humidity even the sales men were not highly motivated to do the "Hello" shouts. Arriving in the hotel we first jumped into the pool to refresh and to get fit for the tour through the farm fields around Yangshou.

Kiwi-, Orange-, Grapefruit and Pipafields are changing with rice- and peanut fields. Also a lot of vegetables are grown here. Sun and plenty of water are guaranteeing good harvests. 

And in between always the green mountains. The mountains in the next two have the name Man mountain and Woman mountain. Guess which one is named how.....

Our guide is now since more than 8 years in Guilin and knows some farmers here. So we were able to visit a farmer family and get some insight of the live here. For sure, it's a tourist farm but anyway it seems to be close to reality. At this farm a bio gas system is running to fire the stove in the kitchen. Wow, we didn't expect a thing like that here. 

It was also promised that there are plenty of water oxes in the fields. And yes, we saw some of them. Some farmers found out, that it's easy money to come to the road and get some pictures taken by tourists. It's much easier money than working in the fields.

Ok, also the cormorant fisher was posing for us. But still the sea ravens are used for fishing. The birds get a tight ring around the neck so they can't swallow any fishes. The fisher man "harvests" the fish directly out of the throat of the cormorants.

After the traditional and really yummie dinner with beer fish we visited the open air musical "impression Sanjie Liu". Zhang Yimou, the same choreograph of the opening ceremony of the Olympics, runs a big show since 2003. Background of the musical are the river and the mountains in Yanghsou. Around 600 actors and singers are performing a show which expresses the daily life of the minorities here. And it's told, that all the people are from these minorities (Zhuang, Yao, Hui, Miao, Mulam). It was lovely.

The last highlight of our trip was when we arrived at our apartment in Suzhou. A worker was in our bed room to seal the window. From outside. Well, we're still living in the 25th floor.......

How we coped with this, how well the worker did and what MuP in the last days of their stay in china experienced, well, that's again another story......

no climbing.....
......not only for the street sweepers......