Vignettes of the World
“Ah Jie, I tell you the saying that we have about the ethnic minorities of Guilin,” Xiaohuang was keen to introduce me to the territorial politics of the province, “ages ago, the different ethnicities fought for land. It is said that those who won the …
Guilin, in Chinese, means “a grove of osmanthus.” The osmanthus is, therefore, in every way representative of Guilin. From the way that osmanthus trees wave fragrance in their native habitat, to the way that its tiny yellow flowers perfume in coffee, the osmanthus stands tall …
My family wanted to visit Guilin for their biannual trip. Unlike my last trip to Guilin, which was a solo adventure in the same year, I had to plan for a group of five adults. There are two older members of the family. As such, all planning was a little more rigorous than when I went travelling alone. Hotels had to be top of the line, food had to be scrumptious in comfortable restaurants, and a chaperon was hired to take us all over different locations in Guilin for a good five days.
I enjoyed this trip for exactly this reason. Having a driver enabled me to go to a whole lot of places that I would not be able to go on my own. For many parts of China, the places of great scenery often require hiring a driver. Traveling solo and hiring a driver was not a kind of expense that I was willing to make.
| Day 1
(Guilin) |
Day 2
(Longji) |
Day 3
(Yangshuo) |
Day 4
(Yangshuo) |
Day 5
(Xingping) |
|
| Morning | Elephant Trunk Hill
Shopping and Lingzhi Farm |
Moon Hill, Tong Ethnicity Village | Xingping sightseeing boat ride (Yellow Cloth Shoal) | ||
| Afternoon | Arrive in Guilin from Guangzhou South Station | Yao Ethnicity Long Hair Village
Longji Terraced Field |
Yulong River Bamboo Raft | Silver Cave
Ruyi Mountain Cable Car |
Return to Hong Kong from Yangshuo Station |
| Evening | Liu Sanjie Impression Show | ||||
| Accommodation | Elephant Trunk Hill Hotel | Moye Sanqiu Homestay | |||
The driver offered a large 7-seater for our trip. Readers that would like to hire this reliable driver should DM me by email (quotation@chestnutwriters.com). Although we did not require his service for hotel booking, he was gracious in taking us to the best restaurants that he knows. If you so require, he will set the whole itinerary for you in Guilin, and also make bookings for the hotels that meet your expectation.
In Yangshuo, we wanted to see the Liu Sanjie Impression Show directed by famous director Zhang Yimou. It was not so easy to look up the proper ticket sales online. He got that covered for us, no hassles at all.
To be sure, December is certainly a low season for traveling in Guilin. The main reason being that the water levels are low in the winter, and a lot of the great sceneries in Guilin are waterfront sceneries. That said, there certainly is a great advantage in terms of ticketing, crowds and queues when you travel in the low season. We experienced no frustration with the crowds throughout this trip, even for the hot touristy spots.
The high season for traveling in Guilin is late spring and summer. The scenery would be notably different in different seasons when you visit the famous terraced fields of Longji. When we went, the harvest had been done, and we saw rather baren fields (there will be an entry on Longji). To be fair, the scenery wasn’t too bad even at the least interesting time of the year.
From Hong Kong, we first went to Panyu, Guangzhou on a private car. From Guangzhou to Guilin, we simply took the high speed rail. I have discussed before how the train pulls into Guangxi and the scenery changes into a series of rapidly rolling karst peaks. That was itself quite a scene. I do highly recommend taking the high speed rail to Guilin.
To book tickets for the high speed rail, be sure to watch out for the day that sale is open, which is typically 14 days prior. In certain peak times of the year, tickets can be sold out very quickly. I wanted first class tickets, but did not manage to get any of the first class high speed rail tickets even though I put in a preorder at the first available prebooking time. Good enough that we did secure the regular tickets without issue.
It came as a great disappointment for me that all the days that we spent in Yangshuo were overcast and cold. We had some pretty good days in Guilin, but Guilin city is actually not known for beautiful scenery, so to speak. The greatest beauty of Guilin is in Yangshuo and Xingping. Our driver told us that it was good enough that it did not rain heavily when we went. I will take that.
It is very difficult to know which days are good weather days for traveling to Guilin due to the advanced period of time you need to book or prebook the train tickets. Because we had a group with old people and working professionals, I was working with a tight and inflexible schedule. As such, the weather had to be an afterthought.
Considering the fact that this was the first time I organized a trip for my dear family members, all worked out quite well and I had no complaints. At the end of the day, we did not have any critical health issues during the trip and we enjoyed the company and the food. That was what really mattered.
Panyu is the haven of food in Guangzhou, which is a heaven of food itself. I took my family to Panyu because of the great food, and it certainly did not disappoint. The following is in random order and it is not a ranking. Baomaye …
In early December, the beautiful bald cypress at the Dafushan Forest Park had not yet turned red. There was a whole afternoon of free time, so I decided to take my family for a stroll at the Dafushan Forest Park anyway. In the wintertime, when …
There are endless things to do in Guangzhou, which is known to the Chinese as the City of Rams. In a recent family trip, I took my family first to Panyu, as part of Guangzhou, then we headed on to Guilin in Guangxi Province to experience its beautiful scenery.
For the Guangzhou leg of this family trip, I chose to stay mostly in Panyu because it is known to be a heaven for great food. Since food is the love language for my family, I took them on quite a few culinary excursions in that part of Guangzhou, and the experience was very good in all of the restaurants that we visited. Therefore, stay tuned for the foodie entry.
Panyu lies south of Guangzhou. The Guangzhou South station is roughly where the metropolitan area of Guangzhou ends and Panyu begins. For accommodation, we were staying at the Radisson Red in Guangzhou South Station.
It is just about an 8-minute walk from the station. Newly built in 2023, the hotel provides a speckless environment with user friendly facilities and good amenities.
The District of Panyu has a history going back to the Qin dynasty times. After the fall of the Qin dynasty, Zhaotuo, a Chinese general, established the kingdom of Nanyue in the southern parts of China, including parts of Guangdong, Guangxi and Vietnam. He established the capital of the Nanyue Kingdom in Panyu in 204 B.C. He named himself King Wu of Nanyue.
The days of glory of Panyu would slowly recede into the ebbs of history. As Guangzhou rose as the predominant city of Guangdong province, Panyu would eventually come under Guangzhou’s administration, and that fact remains to this day.
In the Panyu District of Guangzhou lies the 800-year Shawan Ancient Town. The ancient town began its first chapter during the Song dynasty. Cobblestone streets meander through the village, laying the groundwork for the area’s antique Lingnan architecture. A leisurely stroll in this ancient town will take about two hours. If you would like to visit the museums as well, then allow for more time.
The town was very crowded as we visited on a Saturday. The atmosphere in the ancient town was festive and business appeared to be booming. There are a whole lot of antique buildings in Shawan, and I will introduce just a few.
Of the He surname, the He Grand Ancestral Hall is a major landmark in Shawan Ancient Town. The very first He Ancestral Hall was built during the Song dynasty, in around 1275. It took 40 years to build it, and it was meant to be grand even at its very inception.
He Renjian is the first generation of He ancestor that settled down in Shawan. With the purchase of a large track of land in here by He Renjian, the He surname became one of the major clans amongst the Panyu five (the other four being Wang, Li, Li and Zhao).
Throughout its long history, the He Grand Ancestral Hall had experienced a few destructions. Yet the descendants had never let the significance of their ancestry slip through the cracks of history. Of the three major reconstructions, the current ancestral hall was rebuilt during the Kangxi reign of the Qing dynasty. It furthermore underwent a major restoration in 1986.
The He Grand Ancestral Hall’s grand architecture is itself of significance. The structure is of five hall, five bay layout, which, even amongst the myriad ancestral halls in the Lingnan area, is in the scale of being majestic. Other standard features of Lingnan architecture are carried through to a grand scale as well, including the 112 stone and timber pillars, the intricate clay sculptures that adorn the rooftops and the eaves etc.
The name of the He Grand Ancestral Hall, Liugeng, has the meaning of blessing the descendants by bequeathing with them the eternal virtues of the He family tradition.
It is perhaps enough simply to soak in the antique vibes in Shawan Ancient Town and just walk through its beautiful streets. Jinshi Lane is such a street with enormous cultural significance for the He’s in Shawan.
Jinshi is the title of the imperial scholar that sat and passed the highest level of civil examination system in ancient China. In Shawan, the Jinshi Li (Jinshi Lane) is consisted of 8 relic houses, one of which is the former residence of He Zihai. He was of the 8th generation of the He clan in Shawan, and earned the imperial scholar title in the 4th year of the Hong Wu reign of the Ming dynasty (1371).
The Song dynasty He ancestor He Qilong had also earned the Jinshi title. The former residence of He Qilong is also on Jinshi Lane.
A structure of the 60th year of the Kangxi reign (1721), Wen Feng Tower is a fengshui architecture that was attached to Liugeng Tang. It also served as the fengshui tower for the whole village. The three stories tower gives home to Wenchang, Guandi and Kuixing god statues, each god taking up one floor. During the winter term, school children of the village come to this tower to pay tribute to these gods for good academic results.
The tower is made of blue bricks and timber in a hexagonal layout.
In terms of architecture, Shawan’s antique buildings feature the “wok handle top” gabled roof prominently. It is a common feature in Lingnan vernacular architecture. That was the main reason why I chose to visit this ancient town.
Lying on the eastern edge of Shawan Ancient Town is the very famous Dairy Queen of Shawan. In Chinese, the dessert shop is called Shawan Nainiu Huanghou, literally “the Shawan Queen of Milk Cows.” The specialty of the Dairy Queen in Shawan is its ginger milk pudding. It is certainly a Cantonese favorite and it originated from Shawan.
The special milk of the Dairy Queen of Shawan is actually buffalo milk. The owner, Wang Xiutian, began her business 30 years ago by rearing two buffalos and making products out of their milk. Despite its appearance, the dessert shop is not located in an antique building, but an imitated one.
Descriptions on site at the Shawan Ancient Town.
The Wikipedia on Panyu, Guangzhou.
The Wikipedia on the He Grand Ancestral Hall (Shawan) (Chin).
www.newton.com.tw on Liu Geng Tang (Chin).
It’s springtime and the major events of the year are underway. I visited the Art Basel 2025 last night at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre in Wan Chai. Here’s a quick snapshot of my experience. The Art Basel brings together an enormous number …
I had just about a little more than a half day in Osaka and so I decided to visit Shinsekai. Time stopped at Shinsekai after the reconstruction period post WWII. Meaning “New World,” Shinsekai was once a beacon of hope for Osaka. The area developed …
Visitors of Nara must not miss the Nakatanidou mochi as it is certainly a precious intangible heritage of Nara. In my Japanese food entry, the Nakatanidou mochi is the only food that I thought was an absolute must-try in this Japan trip.
I passed by Nakatanidou a few times in my sojourn in Nara. The most crowded time was in the afternoon, with long queues of eager customers wanting a taste of this wonderful Nara specialty. Bloggers say that the shop displays the pounding technique during the day, but I did not have a chance to appreciate it.
When I was heading out for dinner in the evening, I passed by Nakatanidou again, when the store was packing up the last few mochi’s that were left over from the day. I snatched what was there, and ate it before having my dinner. After dinner, I passed by the store on the way back to the guesthouse. At that hour, the chef was cleaning the tools, utensils and the kitchen. There was just one box of mochi’s left. I snatched that box as well.
The chewy texture of the mochi comes from the repeated motion of rapidly pounding the glutinous rice dough, which serves as the wrapping for this wonderful morsel. At Nakatanidou, the mochi pounding is a world record. Nakatanidou holds the Guiness record for the speed of pounding the steamed glutinous rice.
TheIntroverTraveler has a perfect description of the amazing theatrics involved in the pounding of the steamed glutinous rice cake. The workers work in perfect synchrony with the pounding of a wooden mallet upon the dough to turn up a pillowy but stretchy mochi. The process of making mochi is called mochitsuki.
Needless to say, the fact that I went back a second time to snatch the last box of the day shows just how good these mochi’s are. The sensation of eating the Nakatanidou mochi is one of unlikely opposites. When I put the mochi into my mouth, the first expectation was that the glutinous rice cake would melt away. Its softness indicates so. Yet not so soon. I tasted the red bean paste inside and the whole piece became fluffy and chewy at the same time. It could have been heaven in your mouth, yes, as in having clouds squished between your tongue and the roof of your palate.
Before serving these mochi’s, a layer of yomogi is sprinkled. Yomogi is Japanese mugwort, which gives “the treat a subtle earthy and herbal taste.” (TheIntroverTraveler).
My only evening in Nara ended on a sweet note as I had this last mochi of the day with hot tea over a small coffee table on the tatami.
As I wrapped the super fluffy blanket around me that evening, I felt an incredible sense of satiation. I have seen the deer of Nara Park and savored the heavenly morsel of Nakatanidou mochi. There was wonderful chocolate cake and coffee at the Myriam Café in between. The cold was very soothing in Nara, and I did not have to fight with other tourists over so many things like I did in Kyoto.
In the following day, I would take a one last (or rather, the only) look at Osaka as the conclusion of my first trip to Japan.
TheIntroverTraveler on Nakatanidou, the Famous Mochi Shop in Nara (Japan).
The Toadai-ji Temple is a significant temple within the grounds of the Nara Park. I simply took a look of its outside, and did not bother to queue a long line to see the big Buddha statue inside. Suffice to say, the imposing Nandaimon Gate …