(Written by a former school teacher in Shanghai)
Guilin, situated northeast of Guangxi, has an ancient culture, and is a scenic area with green hills, clear waters, fantastic caves and rocks. On the stone below the pagoda in the photograph below, you'll see an inscription that reads, "Guilin's scenery is the best under heaven".
The osmanthus has been adopted as the city's flower, and when it blooms in the autumn it fills the area with its fragrance. It's therefore appropriate that Guilin's name means "forest of sweet osmanthus".
The city's cultural history dates back over two thousand years and has been celebrated by poets and scholars who have left behind poems and stone inscriptions that still enrich the area.
When my son invited me to visit Guilin with him and his family, I felt that it was a dream come true, and we visited first a place called the Longsheng Scenic Spot. It's situated about 100 km to the northwest of Guilin - close to villages known as the PingAn and Jinkeng Rice Terraces.
The mountain called Longsheng is 1916 meters in elevation, and my son wanted me to use a sedan chair, but I insisted on climbing, as I thought I could make it. It was a little strange that two men carried the chair and seemed to be following us, as we started the climb, and I told them I woldn't have a problem. At that point, I didn't know that I would get so tired that I could hardly breathe by the time we arrived about halfway up. How embarrassed I was when I agreed to sit in the chair, but one of the men said that the two of them had experience in climbing steep slopes, and they both appeared to be strong.
After being carried for about ten minutes, I recovered my strength and asked my two grandchildren if they'd like to replace me. They were very happy to do so and also used it later when we went down the mountain.
Other tourists were climbing the mountain at the same time, and the luggage they'd brought was being carried by farmers. Some of them were old women, and they carried the bags in bamboo baskets they carried on their backs. I thought it was terrible that women had to do such work, but admired how easily they did it.
We passed a village where people from the Yao minority live, and there we saw many women combing their very long hair. It's hard to believe, but their hair was so long that it touched the ground. They'd wind it around their heads where it almost looked like a hat.
Houses were different on the mountain, too. They had three stories with the ground floor having no windows or doors. It was used for cows, horses, and other animals. The kitchen and living room was on the second floor and the bedroom on the third.
Terraced field must be seen to be fully appreciated. They were built during the Yuan Dynasty and have been improved over subsequent generations. They wind down from the mountain tops to the riverside and have been in use for about 600 years. Their highest elevation is 1180 meters, and the lowest is 380 meters.
Viewing them from one of the heights, the terraced fields change direction infinitely according to the season, but the pattern one views is always graceful. A coiling line starts at the top of the mountain and proceeds laterally as it descends toward the river. In spring one sees layers of water glittering in the sun, as the coil winds downward, and in the summer the shimmering is replaced with green rice shoots. Layers of golden rice appear in the fall and are replaced with layers of silvery frost in the winter.
We had lunch in a restaurant that served a special rice called bamboo tube rice. It's stuffed with some meat and sauce into a bamboo tube and cooked in an oven. The tube is then cut open laterally so that the rice can be eaten. It smelled good, but I didn't like it.
Elephant Trunk Park is one of the famous parks in that area. It includes two rivers and an island, and there are so many legends about the place that I'm going to tell you one of them.
"One day the Emperor of Jade came down to earth with an elephant, but when he wanted to return, the elephant refused to leave because he was attracted by the scenery and Guilin and liked drinking the water of the Li River. The emperor becvame very angry and pulled out his sword and killed him. The elephant immediately turned into stone and became Elephant Hill. The emperor's sword became a pagoda."
The mountain actually does look like an elephant drinking water. His nose seems to be stretching into the river, and so they call that area Elephant Trunk Hill. My grandchildren and I played under the trunk.
We visited Folded Brocade Hill and many other places with fancy names. The whole area is beyond imagining; you just have to be there. Thinking about it again reminds me of Moon Hill. That's a very interesting place to visit, as it has a natural arch. It's just a few kilometers outside of Yangshuo and 83 km from Guilin if you go by water, 65 by land. We drove there, and when our car passed through the arch, I saw the moon change from half to full and then to half again. That happened because there is a wide semicircular hole in the arch - the remains of a limestone cave.
The driver told us that when an American president visited there amd saw the moon changing, he didn't believe that the hole was natural. He said that it had probably been made by Chinese people. To prove that he was correct, he even climbed to the top of the hill to take a look, but then he saw the hole. It was easy to understand why he would have thought that the hole was man-made, but then again, maybe he was just joking and climbed the hill because he wanted some exercise.
When Japan invaded China many years ago, they captured Guilin in only two days, as all of the residents left the city and went to the hill, but then the Japanese found that they couldn't control the city and had to leave. That's an example of how helpful it was for the Chinese to have the surrounding hills in which they could live. It prevented a serious disaster.
Besides mountains, there are rivers and lakes in the area, and one evening we went by boat to see a place called Two Rivers and Four Lakes. The colorful lights made Guilin appear to be a water city as described in the poem "A Thousand Hills Stand around the City, a River Flows through it". The thirteen bridges that cross the river were made in the same styles as famous bridges throughout the world.
We took an 83 km trip on a Li River boat that took us between Guilin and Yangshou. It felt as if we were on a jade ribbon as we wound among the thousands of grotesque peaks. Along the river banks there were spectacular landscapes, strange hills and towering peaks. Variegated cliffs and odd-shaped crags reflected in the crystal-clear water. There were wonderful deep pools, bubbling springs and flying waterfalls everywhere. The reflection of the hills in the clear and greenish water created beautiful pictures. It has frequently been said that one hundred miles of the Li River is like an art gallery one hundred miles long.
We though the caves were fantastic and visited the Reed Flute Cave. It was originally explored during the Tang and Song Dynasties, and its miraculous beauty makes one think of a fairyland. The people who visited long ago included scholars and artists who etched poems and artwork on the rocks in the cave and on the cliffs above. That work was gradually covered with weeds and thick trees, but was rediscovered in 1959, the area repaired, and then reopened in 1982.
People still remember the story of how the cave was discovered. A long time ago, a cowboy used to graze his cattle in the field above it while playing various melodies on a flute made of reed. One day he fell asleep on the back of an ox who fell unexpectedly into the cave. Within it, he was surprised to find stalactites and beautiful rocks like emeralds and other jewels. It seemed like a fairyland, and when he told others of his discovery, they began calling it the "Reed Flute Cave". Some people think they hear the sound of a flute when they visit. That has become part of a poem called "Listening to the Flute Melody in Serene Land".
Entering into the cave, we seemed to be arriving in a magnificent underground palace made of jade and coral. The stalmites and stalactites have been formed by the action of underground water as carbonic acid dissolved the limestone. The process that made the wonderful cave included crystallization of sediment for thousands of years, and colorful lighting has been added to highlight interesting formations. Many of them resemble things we all know, i.e. a harvest scene with vegetables and frit piled high from the floor to the ceiling.
A waterfall flashes down one of the wall like a silvery chain, and that inspried the poet Libai to write "Flowing down for three thousand feet, the Milky Way seems to fall from the sky".
Two stalagmites hanging near each other were described as having "indomitable spirit", and when you looked carefully, you could see that one was actually connected to a stalactite while the other one was free standing.
There was one really large open space in the cave, and we were informed that it was 93 meters wide and 18 meters high. A yellow light had been focused on a ceiling rock formation to make it look like a chandelier, and it was referred to as a huge palace lantern. It did actually look like it belonged in a Crystal Palace as in the East Sea Dragon King fairy tale.
I was so anxious to see the wonderful scenes everywhere I looked that I only took a few photographs, but when I went outside, I found a CD that included everything. I bought one so that my friend could enjoy the trip, too.
Even though the Silver Cave is different from the Reed Flute Cave, many of the caves are quite similar. It's interesting to visit them and imagine all the things that might have happened there in years past.
There was a big show called Impression Sanjie Liu in the evening. I was surprised and very interested to see that the mountains and bamboo rafts replaced the usual stage for such performances. The story was traditional. Sanjie Liu was portrayed as a poor woman who fell in love and had many difficulties before she was finally married. There were 600 actors in the play - most of them from the farms. They work in the fields in the daytime and perform in the evening. One of them told us that he liked the variety it gave to his life.
My son and his children enjoyed floating down the river on a bamboo raft. I didn't go because I was tired after having so many activities in five days. It was enough for me to take a leisurely walk through the park.
It was wonderful to be with part of my family for five whole days, and we had an unblievably good time in Guilin.
