Guilin Diaries

If you dream of traveling somewhere with jaw-dropping mountain views, beautiful cascading rice terraces, and a lazy river meandering through towering karst peaks Guilin-Yangshou is one of best options. Which we did with a group of 10 people on 29 Jun – 02 July 2018 from Hong Kong. My first experience of High-Speed Train also made it more exciting!!

Almost all instructions were in Chinese inside train and the station. Even the displays on the train were in Chinese with very few in English. However, we managed to communicate with Train Attendants properly with hand gestures. With a lot of excitement, I never missed an opportunity to peek through the window for mesmerizing countryside view. Almost all lands were green. I thought to myself, “Chinese farmers must be very hard working”.

After 3 hours we reached Guilin Station. Meet our Guide with A4 size “Welcome MIG ALPHA”. Lalit Angbuhang (Chairman of MIG ALPHA) and his family were with us during the trip. We made a joke about the banner size, as he told us there will be big banner welcoming our group. After afternoon refreshment we headed towards Red Flute Cave. Our guide Bruce was telling that it is one of the must-see attractions in Guilin and around 7 km away from the City Centre.

Immediately after entering the cave it presented itself in full beauty, heightened by the fact that every formation is lit up in multi-colored artificial light. We started to blast photographing the wonderful stone limestone formations. Like many caves throughout the world, popular formations at Reed Flute Cave were given titles- and the Chinese to English translations were quite humorous in their descriptiveness (such as “Lion Seeing Off His Guests”). Some had audio playing from a nearby speaker to produce an amazingly beautiful and serene environment. One hour inside we took hell lot of photos.

Our next Stop was Elephant Trunk Hill. It took around 20 minutes from Red Flute Cave. I thought there should be Elephant remains or fossils. I did some research on the internet but did not found such information but was very excited. It was long before I saw real Elephant at Royal Chitwan National Park during my younger days. When we reach there our guide helped us for the tickets and entered the park. Elephant? What elephant, where? – I thought at first; then I saw the resemblance: the trunk to the left, body to the right to the hill. We did make some jokes in the group about it too. We ended our first day with Local Chinese Dinner and overnight at Hampton by Hilton in Guilin.

I did not notice any wasted land (not farmed), almost all areas were richly cultivated with different crops. This proved my guess on first day. Traditional houses were well suited with the greenery and farming. After 2 hours we finally reached Golden Bamboo Village. It was the starting point to go to the Longji Rice Terraces. Since it was restricted for normal bus, we changed the Local Shuttle Bus and ascend. It took another 30 minutes on bus and 30 minutes of walking to reach to the viewpoint.

Since most of the member of our group were from Nepal, we had seen such rice terraces in Nepal too. But nothing compared with the beauty of the Longji Rice Terraces. These 600+ year-old terraces were still very much in use and feed the local Yao and Zhuang communities; we’re just lucky we get to enjoy their beauty. It looked authentic. The entire village was built out of stilted wood houses, and the people still dress traditionally and farm the land by hand. We had short conflicts on this. Lalit Ji was saying that they farm by modern technology but Laoti Ji was saying otherwise. I asked the guide and confirmed that no any technology is used for farming.

There was Moon shape structure in the middle of Rice Terraces and surrounded by Seven Star Shaped Structures which they called it as Seven Stars & the Moon. It is quite famous in Chinese Tourism and Literature. Aside from its amazing scenery, Longji is also the area to visit to experience China’s ethnic minorities’ culture. The Zhuang and the Yao nationalities live here, though mainly it is the Zhuang people. Women dresses were unique and colorful.

Villagers seemed to be simple, humble and grateful to the visitors. They were promoting their own locally made items. We notices some were weaving, making teas & handicrafts. I felt like tourism has been good for the people in these villages. It has given the local people the opportunity to have other income streams on top of rice farming. Guest houses and restaurants were also locally operated. Some of our group members bought some local pickles, chinese medicines and souvenirs.

We returned with lot of memories and inspiration whether we can apply these kinds of tourism ideas in Nepal.

Back to Guilin, we split from the group. Some people went to City Centre. We (Krishna Laoti, ML Shrestha, Bhim Rai & me) went for fish foot massage.