This is a very small, old-style rice farmers' town where we saw homes built with handmade bricks, a very new and nice medical clinic ($4 per year for a year's care), buildings in various states of disrepair, and some of the people of the village (mostly speeding by on mopeds in tiny alleys if young or hobbling slowly if old). Many of the working townspeople were busy harvesting the surrounding rice fields with water buffalo.
After learned about various Chinese traditions and features of village life, we were bused to the start of our bamboo raft river ride. We were peacefully pushed down the shallow meandering river by a very tanned man with a huge long bamboo pole.
On the river, we enjoyed amazing scenery, got to feed water buffalo, watched a demonstration of cormorant fishing (using trained birds to catch and release fish to the fisherman), tried out the boat pushing ourselves, and were serenaded by a girl of the Drum People minority group. The singer asked one tourist
on her boat if he would sing a song back to her and he said he had a bad throat today. She asked his wife whether she was really going to keep him since he couldn't sing. She sang to our boat and we replied with a nice Beattle's song. We were rewarded at the end of the cruise with an engagement ball for the boys. Ours is factory made but the traditional ones are sewn for a man when a woman has chosen him as her beloved. But first he has to sing satisfactory answers to her questions in song.
Now we are on the bus back to Guilin. We are hoping to find something for dinner and then to walk to the night market to buy some regional goodies like Osmanthus wine and landscape paintings. Or just to see the way the river area is lit up at night.
Two days until we meet our Lulu. I can hardly believe we are this close.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone
No comments:
Post a Comment