debandfredseeingtheworld: Yangzhou & Guilin

Guilin is a small village, only 800,000 people. This area is a farming area and along our way to Yangzhou we saw a lot of farms and the limestone karst landscape. They farm vegetables, rice, sugar cane, mandarin oranges and tea. There were only a few water buffalo, no cattle to speak of, some chickens and ducks beside some of the homes in the villages we pasted through, and we were told that some of the farmers use oxen to pull their carts. A lot of the work was being done by hand however some farmers live in the city and have their crops custom harvested now.

Rice crop

Rice and sugar cane

The Li River Cruise was a 90 minute loop on the very picturesque river. This very beautiful scenery of the karst landscape in a mist, can be seen on the back of the Y20 banknote. The water in the river is quite clear and they say you would be able to see the reflection of the mountains on a sunny day.

Impressions Liu Sanjie, a show of lights, at the world's largest natural theatre which is in Yangzhou. There is usually about 3000 people in attendance every evening during the winter months and in the summer there are 3 performances each evening with 3000 people per performance. The show is directed by Zhang Yimou, the same man who directed the opening ceremony at the Beijing Olympics. The performance is entered on Liu San Jie as the most important character and continues for a full 70 minutes Six hundred performers take to the Li River each evening with 12 illuminated karst peaks serving as the backdrop. These 600 performers are all local men, women and children. The performance takes the form of 7 distinct segments: red, silver, blue, gold, etc, and each of the colors is applicable to both the players costumes and accompanying lighting. A spectacular performance.

The Tea Institute is where we learned how and when to pick the tea and how it is processed.