Magnificent Guilin — Fantastic Views at Lijiang (Li River)

I was only spending one day in Yangshuo and by the afternoon I had decided to take it easy. The boat tour of Lijiang River would be departing soon at 3pm on Binjiang Road, so I hurried to the pier. This 1.5-hour boat ride will feature iconic views that are memorable, these views are what give Guilin its fame for natural landscapes. For a 1.5 hour ride the ferry would take us between Yangshuo and a town called Fuli and back, going the southern downstream direction. The boat ride cost 120 yuan. It is possible to take a ferry all the way from Guiling to Yangshuo. The whole scenic route on Lijiang would span a good 67 km, known as the “living gallery.”

In Chinese, we say Guilin’s landscape is best of the world. When I arrived in Yangshuo, people were saying that Yangshuo’s landscape is best of Guilin. And there was no doubt in my mind that I would be seeing the best of the best scenery there. The day was blessed with plenty of sunshine.

The Boat Tour of Lijiang 

Photograph: In Yangshuo, by the pier of the boat tour

At 2:50 I boarded the ferry. We were seated as directed (selection of the window seats was not available, everybody had to be directed in the seating). There was some introduction and we were handed a menu. I ordered the Changshou fish, which is a river catch from the Li River itself. It’s a fried fishies dish and it was not too bad.

There is a standard way of appreciating Guilin scenery. The imagery is often compared to some common ideas, and usually the names are either fun or poetic. Naturally, a tourist would try very hard to see the scenery in the light that its supposed name suggests, but very soon you would find that to be a very tiring exercise. Some of the peaks clearly match their names, but others would quickly be lost on an untrained eye.  On this part of Lijiang River, I was supposed to have seen the White Crane Drinking Water, The Thumb Peak, The Straw Hat Peak, The Saddle Hill, and the Incense Burner Hill. No, I did not manage to take any photographs to illustrate how the Chinese people associated these peaks with their poetic imagination; it was hard enough to catch the Chinese name, let alone understanding the tour guide’s quick pointing at these hills for the descriptions. There were tens and tens of these peaks exhibiting their own individual grandeur on that sunny afternoon.

About 20 minutes after the boat departed from the pier, we were able to go up to the deck and feel the embrace of the peak clusters all around us, rolling on endlessly above the meandering river. Surely, the natural beauty of Lijiang was an incredibly pleasing sight, but I found the occasional human footprint to add an interesting touch to the natural scenery. We saw some fishing boats, some town establishments afar, and some interesting structures by the shore as well.

Lijiang

The Li River is part of a river waterway that spans all of Guanxi Province. With its origin at the Maoer Mountain, which is the “first peak of South China” at an altitude of 2141.5 meters, Lijiang refers to “the upper reaches of the Gui River in northeastern Guangxi, China. It is part of the Xijiang River system in the Pearl River basin, flowing 164 kilometres (102 mi) from Xing’an County to Pingle County.” Furthermore, the ‘upper course of the Li River is connected by an ancient Lingqu canal with the Xiang River, which flows north into the Yangtze; this in the past made the Li and Gui Rivers part of a highly important waterway connecting the Yangtze valley with the Pearl delta.”

Afternoon Tea at the Mingyuan Café

A few doors away from the Riverview Hotel there was a very nice and classy coffee shop called Ming Yuan. I could not resist and went in for a pistachio basque cheesecake and a coffee with litsea, a kind of ginger-like root that comes with a very special fragrance. The litsea is common in China, but perhaps not in Hong Kong. I had my first litsea coffee and it was such a pleasant surprise. It has a hint of spiciness but the flavor felt balanced and “rounded,” as in not having the sharpness of ginger. I like to compare it with ginger because in Chinese the name of litsea is “wooden ginger.”

This was a perfectly relaxed day for me. For those who would not mind rushing through some more sights in Yangshuo, there are the Moon Hill, the Silver Cave (Yinzi Cave), and the Yulong river boat rides. Because these sights will involve renting a car (or booking a tour), I had not made arrangements to see them.

Sources

Descriptions on site in Yangshuo.

The Wikipedia on Li River.