I have yet to see a wookie.

While Yangshuo is pretty well known in China, I feel "the place where they filmed Kashyyyk for Star Wars Episode 3" may be the fastest way to give people a picture of what it looks like. It's a small town about an hour south of Guilin, completely surrounded by tall, nearly vertical mountains. It's pretty interesting because you can just be walking around and then boom, there's a sheer rock wall as tall as, well, a mountain. It's almost like someone used the landscape tool in Sim City 2000 to just drag a square of land as high as it would go. It's a very unique looking place, so this entry is going to be a little more picture heavy than normal.

To start, the cultural center of the town is West Road. It's not particularly unique by itself, many Chinese cities have "old streets" full of shops and restaurants. This one has a more "Thailand" vibe to it though, full of foreign food and bars with live music - a rare sight in Chinese cities outside of Beijing / Shanghai, and really unheard of for a small town. We got some German food for lunch, and was a bit blown away to find a stream through the road, which ended into a waterfall near the river. I can see why this place has a reputation, because it is quite beautiful. And we're only getting started.

 

 

 

 

 

The next day we rented a bike to go out to Shi Li Hua Lang, which is like a national park known for a mountain with a hole in it. The ride there was pretty, but a bit nerve racking being Ella's passenger. Maybe it's how exposed I was on the back of the scooter, or the mood I was in that day, but I was really not loving it. Fortunately the mountain is beautiful, and is a nice 30 minute hike to the top. It reminded me of my mountain hiking days in Taipei, where you're always greeted with a wonderful view of the town below. Funnily enough, President Nixon walked the same trail during his trip to China in the 70s, and so they named it "Nixon Trail". Per the information, he asked if the Chinese made the hole in the mountain by shooting a missile at it.

 

Nixon was weird ya'll.

 

Another stop on the list was actually a village about 30 minutes away. Yes, we went from a huge city, to a smaller city, to a town, to a village. Xingping is not known by name, but everyone across China is quite familiar with it, as it is the site of the picture on the back of the 20 yuan note. (Then again, in ten years probably nobody will remember what a "note" is. Seriously, I touch cash maybe once every few years.) But regardless of why we're here, this is seriously one of the most beautiful places I've been. I don't know where in my previous Top 10+1 list it would fall, but it was really awesome and nice to see. After lunch, we took a boat up the river to take in some more views. Along the way, a guy in a bamboo raft came along side, suddenly boarded our boat, and offered the chance to take a photo with his birds for 5 yuan (~$0.80). I do not know why this dude makes his living this way. However, I do like photos of me in ridiculous situations, and "paid bamboo pirate a buck to hold his birds" has got to be up there. So, here's some photos of this place, along with, I think, one of the best photos I've ever taken.

 

The note in question.

 

The site it's supposedly from, with some liberties.

 

 

 

I really like this picture.

So this is the point where we were going to go home, but of course, something had to go wrong. Ella's health code suddenly changed to red for entering an area in Shanghai that day... which meant we were stuck. For anyone not familiar with China - you need health codes now to travel (and sometimes to enter places). Red means that you were in a high-risk area, as in an area with someone who tested positive for COVID. However, this was certainly a mistake, because A) Obviously, we were not currently in Shanghai B) We had not been to that part of town, or even that district, in even longer, and C) My code was still green, and we've never not been together. So inevitably, this meant bureaucracy and waiting a day for it to get sorted. A slightly annoying hiccup, but eventually, after filling out forms and waiting, it all worked out. That meant an extra torturous day of coffee and food in a very beautiful place. Could definitely do worse.

I don't know if I've ever wanted to travel more than I do now. After months of being locked inside, I was beyond eager to get out of Shanghai. But exactly because of that lockdown, our options were limited. Many provinces required quarantine between 3 and 14 days on arrival. While 3 would be doable, it would be better to, you know, not. Fortunately the city of Guilin came to our rescue by being more chill, with nothing needed except a negative test.

Unless you're from China you've likely never heard of Guilin. It's got quite a reputation for being naturally beautiful, with lots of ancient writers saying things like "Guilin is heaven on Earth." Back when travel was more a thing, it was a backpacker destination not unlike Bangkok. Of course, different times now, and the streets I've heard that were filled with young foreigners now has only one, less young foreigner.

Me, I'm talking about me.

A Guilin specialty, Beer Fish

Which is a change compared to Shanghai for sure. I was much more of a Z-List celebrity in Guilin, even stopped and asked by people if they can take their photo with me. It's like when I first came to China over a decade ago, although thankfully I didn't have a baby shoved into my arms while walking down the street (which actually happened once in Xiaoshan). But anyway, how's Guilin?

It's nice. Actually Guilin city is not particularly renowned today, because it's a medium sized Chinese city of merely 5 million people. It was always more of a "jumping off point" for the surrounding region. Still, it has a bit of beauty left in it. You can see the nature showing through however, with large, nearly vertical hills that pop up between the buildings. Guilin city is more of a staging area to explore the region, which is what we plan on doing. But we decided to stay a day or two in the city, because it does have some things to do.

For example, Zhengyang Walking Street and East West Alley, which are connected pedestrian areas with lots of food and shops. But they're actually quite nice and don't feel like the tourist traps other pedestrian areas around China do. In fact, we mostly saw high schoolers, old folks, and families pushing around strollers. Honestly, with tourism in China being non-existent right now, I'd bet we were among the very few non-locals. We had a meal and went on to see Jingjiang Palace, which you know, is a palace. It's alright. It does have a hill in the middle with a cool view. But after climbing up that mountain, we needed to rest before checking out Sun Moon Lake, one of the sights you see on all the Guizhou stock photos. It's just a lake with a park, but has two large towers, one silver, one gold colored. Actually I thought they were really pretty, although Ella seemed less impressed. Then again, Ella was following the directions to our hotel, and it said "next to the clock tower". When she saw it, she quipped "You call that a tower?" I responded "Well, I don't know what else you would call it." I'll put a photo of that below, so you can judge for yourself if Ella has very "high" standards for towers.

There was one thing in Guilin I really wanted to do, called Reed Flute Cave. It's actually one of many caves in the area, some even being downtown. But we took a 15 minute car trip to this one, as it's supposedly the best. To be honest, it's fantastic and I'm very glad we went. Something they did though was really lean into the artificial lighting, which makes it look especially unique. Although simultaneously I was wondering if the rainbow lighting just "Disney-ified" the whole experience. Well, you know, aside from the movie projected on a cave wall and souvenir keychains. But lighting or not, it is a super impressive cave. Not that I'm a cave expert, I've seen maybe... 8? But this was one of the best. The rock formations seemed to be all named after animals and food, which, gotta tell you, it takes a LOT of creativity to look at this rock and think "Yup, that's a lion." Maybe their idea of a lion comes from Shanghai's Natural History Museum. Anyway, here's a bunch of photos:

 

After the cave, there was another "stock photo of Guilin" to see, Elephant Nose Mountain. Supposedly this rock formation looks like an elephant dipping its trunk into water. Fortunately it's free and right in the middle of town, so it's not at all difficult to get to. Which was good, because free and 0 minutes is how much I think it's worth. What I'm saying is, we were both very unimpressed. Look, I've been to hyped tourist sights before. I can look at something and think "It's not my thing, but I can get how others would appreciate it." But this thing had so much tourist infrastructure around it, not to mention the crazy crowds. Like, when we were coming back to the Guilin airport at the end of our trip (more on that next time), I saw street signs that were "50km to the Elephant! 40km!" I mean, all this just to see... that? I don't get it. At best, it's a pretty symmetrical arch, although I don't know how much was man made. It was so blah we didn't even want to take a photo, but since we were there we thought might as well. I'll let you be the judge - the spitting image of an elephant, or useless tourist trap?

Anyway, that was about it for Guilin city. It's quite a nice place that most want to get out of as quickly as possible to explore the region. Which is a shame, because I think it's definitely worth spending at least a full day there, probably two if you don't want to rush. But with Guilin now checked off, we were off to the Star Wars planet of Kashyyyk to see some mountains and wookies.