Yangshuo Market Carnival

(Lindsay Li)

West Street in Yangshuo is a cross between a carnival and a market. Most likely it is a market on days other than the New Year celebration, but we were there during the festivities, and we were swept into the undertow of pedestrian traffic as soon as we entered from the main drag. The only way to visit a shop was to plan well in advance and begin to edge through the constant current of humans towards the bank, hoping for an eddy right in front of the target boutique or cart. Thousands of pen and ink prints, silk scarves, toys, fried tofu, steamed cakes, carved knickknacks, tea, candy, knockoffs galore, ocarinas, minority handicrafts, sandalwood combs, combs made of horn, combs made of bone and more toys. Noises from all directions: people singing along with boomboxes, toy jets with blinking LED lights screaming high into the air overhead and swooping back to almost slam into second-story windows only to shoot straight up into the air once again and soar away, the pounding of men with large wooden mallets making something like peanut butter, children laughing and squealing and the people in the shops calling out after us lower and lower prices trying to hit on the one that would bring us back to buy. Arlen and I did buy every now and then, but Abby, Ola and Nick? They single-handedly balanced the Chinese budget.

The next day, yesterday, we settled into a more civilized vein and went to cooking school out in the countryside. Pam, the Australian woman who helps to run the school, came to get us, and on the way to the school she filled us in on the rapid development in the region since she arrived 14 years ago. "It's like the industrial revolution on speed" she said. "When I first arrived they [the local farmers] were all living in mudbrick houses with no plumbing. Now, selling off to these hotel groups, they're all going on holiday in Bali."

The school is in a lovely setting and the gas-fired cooking stations are set up in a charming shed open to the country air. Nick, Abby and Ola (hereafter "AbbyNikOla") had worked up an appetite by hiking to the top of the peak, Xilang Hill, out in front of the hotel, first thing in the morning, and the menu they were to prepare did not disappoint. Five courses, beginning with sliced chicken marinated with Chinese mushrooms and rice wine with dates and goji berries, followed by Yangshuo-style eggplant with oyster sauce and black bean paste, then pork, mint and chili dumplings followed by stir-fried pork with vegetables and stir-fried lettuce with other vegetables and oyster sauce. There was so much steam and smoke and fire, flames bursting up right and left, I half expected Cerberus to come snarling out from under the counter; he never did, and lunch was mighty fine.

After lunch we toured the countryside and visited an ancient village. It's always thought-provoking to climb steps worn down by thousands upon thousands of feet over millennia, as if one stands on a fulcrum and all of history pivots past. For a little more history and culture, after a delectable dinner at a restaurant recommended by Jackie, the other woman who runs the cooking school, we returned to the Li River to take a boat out to see men fishing with cormorants. Our pilot knew one fishermen in particular and he brought his boat up alongside the fisherman's raft so that we could watch the cormorants diving and surfacing, again and again, occasionally emerging with a fish too large to swallow. When this happened the bird would dutifully swim over to the raft where the fisherman would scoop it out of the water and help it to disgorge the fish into a large basket. Now, of course, it is all done for tourists, but it is close enough to the way it was, and an excellent example of symbiosis.

Before wrapping up I should mention that AbbyNikOla are, they have discovered, a walking photo op. Everywhere we go people flock to them, seeking to have their pictures taken with them. Last night was no exception. Any passerby might have thought some group of celebrities had descended upon the pier, there were so many camera flashes, such a flurry of excitement. It happens everywhere we go, even on the way home after the fishing. People were dancing in the park that is on the way back from the dock to the hotel. They spied AbbyNikOla, and, well, why not end such a perfect day as celebrities dancing in the park?