Magnificent Guilin — Last Impressions of Guilin

One Last Look at Xingping

There was no need to get breakfast as eating breakfast is not my habit, but I was craving for one last good experience in Xingping. I would be leaving a little after lunch that day. At that hour of the morning after I returned from sunrise viewing, the only place that was open was the Shanzhong Suiyue Bakery (its name means “Times in the Mountain.”)

In this early morning the cafe was just getting ready for the day and the aroma there was overwhelming and mouthwatering. I ordered first a bagel in black sesame and paired it with a osmanthus flower coffee. Soon, the staff brought out another tray of pastries, fresh from the oven. I couldn’t resist so I ordered another hot monsieur. The ambience was peaceful and chic, totally the thing to do in an old, revitalized city.

The osmanthus flower coffee left me with a sweet taste of Xingping. Its fragrance gave me peace and comfort, a kind of zen that transcended the hectic schedule of this trip. I must say that the coffee experience in Guilin was fantastic. There are all kinds of creative interpretation of coffee in Guilin (including litsea in Yangshuo and the rice milk and osmanthus flower here), and that certainly is a memorable experience for a coffee lover.

Before heading out on the bus to the Yangshuo Station, I stopped by a restaurant to get a quick bite. I ordered a bamboo rice.

I liked the bamboo rice of Yangshuo much more than this one. The sticky rice in bamboo was not really my thing.

The Yangshuo High Speed Rail Station

I was leaving for Hong Kong from the Yangshuo High Speed Rail Station. One critical reminder for trip planners is that the Yangshuo Station is not close to Yangshuo, but in Xingping instead. From the Xingping bus stop (right by the ancient town area), the bus runs twice in a given hour, and arrives in the Yangshuo HSR Station in less than 20 minutes.

When I arrived in Guilin, I caught the headwind of a cold front there. It was significantly colder than when three days earlier, and the weather turned fierce with rain, wind and frigidity at the same time. As it turned out, a terrible cold current causing heavy snowstorms in other parts of China was about to arrive on the day that I left Guilin.

I was simply fortunate that the day to see the best of Guilin in Yangshuo was very sunny at the Li River.

Some Concluding Insights

Finally, I would like to share some of my insights about this travel experience in Guilin. This would be the first trip outside of the Greater Bay Area for me in years. I can’t even remember the last time I traveled to China beyond Guangdong Province. Needless to say, there has been a pandemic and it does change things.

The feeling that I got when I interacted with the Chinese was that China certainly has changed significantly, be it a consequence of the COVID pandemic or not.

First of all, as much as all of the places that I visited were tourist areas, there was a significant lifting of hygiene standards. All of the towns were well-kept. The public bathroom in Huangyao was speckless, so clean that it felt like home.

Secondly, in all of the places that I visited, I felt no pressure, none at all, to buy or to haggle over anything. Souvenirs, snacks, clothes, in any kind of store – nobody cared to engage in the back-and-forth just so that the tourist buys a little something. Where I had some questions, I sensed that the shopkeeper had all the patience of the world to explain things to me. The interactions were very pleasant throughout. This seems to arise from the fact that China’s economic conditions have improved, propelled, to a point of changing the mindset of the people, especially those that run businesses.

There is also generally a very good observance of no-smoking policies. People do not really bend the rules now on smoking. Smoking is banned on all trains, and many standard hotel rooms do not allow smoking inside either. There is also (generally) no smoking in the restaurants as well, and overall the environments in all of the ancient towns were very pleasant.

Finally, people do not overcrowd the waiting areas too much. Queues are naturally formed at all check-in points, and there is a palpable sense of civility, well, generally speaking. I say this because I had lived in Beijing two decades ago, when things were, to say the least, “a little wild.”

It was not so much that people were uncivilized then, but more so that the public facilities now are much more “people-focused.” Large, clean, open waiting areas with plenty of chairs to sit in—as a result, people probably do not feel the need to “fight” for things, such as personal space or a spot on the train, so to speak. In most of the public venues the structures are built with the vision that enough provision was made to accommodate the sheer size of domestic demand, and then some for the tourists. Of course, these could all still be flooded with crowds during China’s busiest holiday seasons of the year.

In this environment, the element of “adventure” is somewhat tamed, along with some of the old, typical annoyances of a populous developing nation. I embrace progress with just a little nostalgia here, but surely that I will travel to China regularly from now on.