Vignettes of the World
Tin Hau is a haven of good food in Hong Kong. Restaurants serving Hong Kong’s favorite beef brisket noodles once sprawled in this area. The well-known one was Tai Lee. Now there are just about a couple of good ones, namely Sister Wah and Eight …
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 …
At the hotel I inquired about a private car ride to take me to Xianggong Shan for sunrise viewing. After a day, I was told that there would be no one else to join me on this ride, and therefore I would be fully responsible for the RMB 180 yuan fee for the car and the driver. I was happy to pay that, although I already knew that the weather conditions would not be favorable.
Bright and early at 5:30am I waited outside of my hostel for the driver to arrive at 5:50am. Surely the drive came a little early at 5:45am. He first took me on to a rubber raft to cross the Li River, the pier of which lies right by the hostel. He parked his car at the other shore.
The way up Xianggong Shan is an easy 20 minute climb. The car park was at a high altitude already. Topping up with a 20 minute climb, I ended up at a very high vantage point to savor a 270-degree view of the karst peak clusters.
It was pitch dark when I made my way up. I quickly secured a viewing spot, as I was a little surprised how many people were doing the same as I did (and why did none of them join me and share my cost for the ride).
It takes little imagination for one to see how beautiful an experience it would have been had the sky been clear. At that viewing platform I could see quite clearly the town settlement that lies by the river and enveloped by an endless rolling of karst peaks. The fog did bring forth a somewhat melancholy vibe to the scenery, like a classic Chinese ink painting.
The day was not only gloomy, but with thick, heavy overcast that prevented the proper appearance of sun rays, let alone the sun itself. I was lucky enough to be able to observe a progression of light in my hour spent there at the peak. Perhaps a little surprisingly, I found the half hour before the sunrise to present more intriguing views of the scenery, when the lights of the underlying town settlement were still visible in pitch darkness.
I visited Guilin in January and so anyone doing a sunrise tour must bundle up with warm clothing. A down jacket, a scarf and perhaps a beanie would be necessary.
I have seen much of the three ancient towns of Huangyao, Yangshuo and Xingping on this trip. It is a good idea to share a few brief insights about these three towns.
Huangyao is the most friendly to tourists that look for heritage and learning. Throughout my stay at Huangyao, I saw clear signs explaining the history of old structures. In Xingping, the businesses were more catered to the interests of those tourists looking for leisure and relaxation. The restaurants there came with a much greater variety, the shopping was more diverse and interesting. In terms of heritage, there was not a focus in Xingping on imparting historical knowledge to the tourists, although the antique quality of the town’s character was clear and it was just as beautiful.
Of the three ancient towns, Xingping seemed to exhibit the most authenticity in terms of being a town with its own local life. Both Huangyao and Yangshuo strike me as locations that lived and breathed the economy of tourism. Xingping, however, seemed to show a life of its own besides the heavy tourist presence.
As to Yangshuo, I have passed the age when I could have liked it for the party atmosphere at night. The so-called heritage sites in Yangshuo are for show (meaning instagrammable pictures) only. But for tourists looking for a good time at hip bars with the latest dance music, Yangshuo certainly is the place to be. The food choices in Yangshuo were also more “local,” as compared to the wide selection of western styled foods in Xingping.
However, the river views of Yangshuo really does top all that of Guilin, as it claims itself to be. Seeing it is believing it.
Li River was always known and praised for its beauty. The Yellow Cloth Shoal, a scene of the karst peak clusters at the Li River, is featured on the RMB 20 yuan bank note. It brings the Li River to the fore of China’s national …
The fishermen of Xingping had engaged in the cormorant in their fishing practices for centuries. This very special practice has drawn many interested tourists and I was keen to see it when I went to Xingping. There are two options in terms of boat rides …
The Asia Society Hong Kong is a nonprofit and educational organization that aims to promote mutual understanding in all matters of culture, arts, policy and politics in Asia.
Located in the former Victoria Barracks area, the Asia Society has taken over the former Explosive Magazines A and B as its venue of events and exhibition. The whole area comes with a holistic approach to historical preservation, art, ecology and architecture.
The Asia Society established its branch in Hong Kong in 1990. The current site for the Asia Society was opened in 2012. The site consists of a new building and four other heritage buildings, with a connecting bridge and a podium with art exhibitions.
There are a few heritage buildings in the Asia Society complex. The Starr-Greenberg Building is now the administrative office for Asia Society. Former Magazine A is now the Chantal Miller Gallery and it is the venue for exhibitions. Former Magazine B is now the Miller Theater. Some of the original features of the magazine turned out to serve unintended benefits for the theater. Finally, the GG Block close to the entrance of Asia Society is now also the office space for administration. The rest of the Asia Society complex were newly constructed in 2012 with the support of private funds and donations, and it is fully owned by Asia Society.
Award-winning U.S. architect Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects designed the complex with restoration, conservation and adaptation in mind. The entrance hall of Asia Society is lined with artificial marble from Iran, with patterns that echo the natural granite of Magazine A in the site. This is part of the effort to incorporate eco-friendly concepts in the site design.
There are a few pieces of artwork in the Joseph and Josephine Lau Roof Garden, which is meant to be a zen garden and a place of respite within Hong Kong’s urban landscape. Artist Zhang Huan derived his inspiration for the copper and steel piece Long Island Buddha from a trip to Tibet. He observed the damages done to the buddha statues there and renewed his thinking about the Cultural Revolution. Therefore on this artwork some sections show intentional dents and damages as an artistic message.
The marble on the walls at the zen garden match with the environment and feature textured stones from Burma.
The Yasumoto Bridge is intended to be an ecological walkway, where pedestrians will enjoy bird viewing and their singsongs with the urban views of Hong Kong island on the side. On the hillside, the original fan palms there were preserved and new ones were planted to serve as a habitat for the short-nosed fruit bat. These fruit bats are seen at dusk.
This bridge was restored during the building period. It was supposed to be a straight bridge leading directly to the magazine, but the elbow bridge now provides a v-shape, pointed viewing point. During the construction, the fruit bats flew away but they came back when the fan palms were replanted.
Of the many heritage sites at the Asia Society, I found the explosives track to be the most interesting. The history of the Former Explosives Magazines must be understood within the larger context of British strategic defense in this whole area of Admiralty.
At one point in history, the Arsenal Yard was located at the seaside. Now this location is the Hong Kong Police Headquarters. Going north, the Arsenal Street used to be where the raw materials for ammunition and explosives were transported to the Victoria Barracks by the coolies. The workers must wear lint-free garment to avoid causing sparks when they transported the explosives. The architects have preserved the transportation tracks as a way to celebrate the unique history of the former Victoria Barracks.
Photo: The stones next to the former explosives-mixing facility are the foundation for the explosives transportation paths.
In 1865, the British army built the former explosive-mixing facility that would eventually become the Starr-Greenburg Building. This building comes with some typical colonial building features, including a veranda. Veranda A is where the stone path from a century ago as well as the stone foundation of the columns are seen.
The Boundary Stones were there since 1910, before the site was occupied by the British Navy. In this year the British army handed over this site to the Royal Navy, and the five boundary stones were established here. Admiralty acquired its name as the region governing the Royal Navy.
In a previous entry, I have shared about an exhibition of old photographs of Hong Kong held at the Chantal Miller Gallery, Former Magazine A. Magazine A had not changed except for the gate. It was built of granite. The entry hall’s granite, mentioned earlier, was meant to simulate this natural granite at Magazine A. Its wall is quite thick at 8 feet, one of the obvious reasons is to protect against explosion and to keep the temperature constant.
Photo: the cannons on site were discovered during the restoration. One is front-loaded and one is back-loaded.
Magazine B was built in 1905, of bricks. Bricks were comparatively easier and faster to source than granite. At the time of construction, the British army wanted to gain control of this site. It wanted to stop the civilian government from taking this land to widen Kennedy road. Therefore it used bricks as a measure of expediency.
For ammunition storage, originally there were four chambers to keep the explosives. During the restoration, the architect removed two walls. The theatre accommodates 176 people, and the plasterer roof is original. As it is now, the building is a double-wall construction, helpful for sound and temperature-proofing.
The corridor inside Magazine B was for inspection, and the inspectors took their oil lamps to peep through the small windows. The dome-shape corridor prevents catastrophe – in the unfortunate event of explosions, the force would push upward instead of sideways, and the corridor passage is for quick evacuation. The brick was bound in English bonding, one long brick against one short brick, double wall.
There are free tours conducted in English or Cantonese available for sign up at the Asia Society website. There is one Cantonese tour and one English tour held on the same day once per month, usually at the end of the month. Be sure to visit the website at the beginning of the month of the tour to book in advance, because they do get full.
The address of the Asia Society Hong Kong is 9 Justice Drive, Admiralty, Hong Kong.
Descriptions on site at the Asia Society.
The website of the Asia Society.
Free English tour of the Asia Society.
In the morning I inquired with the hotel staff the possibility of maybe joining a half-day tour to see the Silver Caves. To my surprise, (and this really is very surprising to me), the hotel staff advised me not to join those tours. They said …
I did not get to try the beer fish in Huangyao and so I was very keen to try it in Yangshuo. Indeed, when I just arrived in Yangshuo, I saw all these restaurants claiming to be beer fish specialists. That would be my dinner …
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.
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.
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.”
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.
Descriptions on site in Yangshuo.
The Wikipedia on Li River.
My first impression of Yangshuo was that it was a vast expanse of a no-man’s land. From the Edge of Yangshuo County to Yangshuo City Proper Bright and early at 8:20 am I was at the Qianxing Square of Huangyao Ancient Town and ready to …