Travels in China: Guilin

We decided to cut our Yangshou visit short a few days, and add those days to visit nearby Guilin. Guilin is a five million person city, and is used primarily as a transit point to visit Yangshou. Most tourists fly into the Guilin airport, visit for a night or two at most, and then travel on to Yangshou. We were flying out of the Guilin airport, so already had one night planned, but had run out of things we wanted to do in Yangshou, and at the right time too.

The Sunday we left Yangshou for Guilin, we were awoken by fireworks; a lot of fireworks, from nearby the hotel, and seemingly, all directions. We learned it was the week to honor ancestors, and to honor them, many locals will shoot off fireworks. As we drove away, we were greeted by fireworks for the first 45 minutes of the journey, and were told this would continue in Yangshou all week.

We felt lucky to get away from that, and onto a new city. Guilin does not have a ton of things to do for tourists, and most of it is centered around Elephant Trunk Hill Park. Lucky for us, we were staying at a hotel that borders the park, and also provides free entry. The hotel had a deck that overlooked the park, and while the view was mostly trees, we enjoyed the rooftop deck and treats they provided once we arrived.

We headed out into the park, and under cloudy skies we joined the throngs of fellow tourists taking pictures of Elephant Trunk Hill, which is a stone formation that resembles an Elephant drinking water. You can be the judge, and of course we had to get our own selfie here too.

There are also some statues in the park, and I had to take pictures with these guys.

After we left the park we walked near on the waterfront, and the trees provide a lush green canopy.

We walked past the famous Sun and Moon Pagodas, which looked cool during the day, but really shines at night (we will see them at night in the next post).

Nearby is Zhengyang Pedestrian Street, which is packed with tourists from all over the world, and so many food stalls, stores, and restaurants.

We ate street food dinner of our favorite minced pork and veggie sandwich, potato pancake, sliced duck and cucumber in rice paper, and washed it down with lime iced tea. Delicious.

Guilin is also on the Li River, same as Yangshou. We learned, upon a visit to the Zengpiyan National Archeology Relics Park, that people had been in this region, the Zengipiyan, for 12,000 years. The city of Guilin was founded much later, in 314 BC, by settlement of the Baiyue, or Yue, people. The museum on site is very nice and informative, and on the day we visited, the whole park was basically empty.

There were detailed, life size, statues scattered throughout the park that showed how the earliest people in the region lived, and we even saw a worker catch a big fish with a line and net, which was cool. We learned the Zengpiyan were cave dwellers and hunter gatherers.

There are a couple large ponds on the grounds, with many flowers and flowering trees surrounding the man-made one.

But the star of the show, or park, as it were, is the huge stone statue of the Goddess of Wisdom, a tribute to the area’s Zengpiyan ancestors.

We learned the name Guilin means “forest of sweet osmanthus,” for the many osmanthus plants that add a pleasant, floral smell to the air. Osmanthus cakes are sold by many street vendors, and we also tried Osmanthus ice cream during our visit as well.

The most interesting place we visited was the Zhusheng Temple, a Buddhist temple built in one of the caves. There were no pictures allowed inside, but it was one of the most impressive places I have been; there were so many stone Buddhas, wall carvings, and statues throughout the caves, that seemed to go on and on. The monks were even doing their prayers as we left, and we even saw our first monkeys (one of the monks gave him a banana, and we watched the monkey eat it gleefully). Here are some pictures outside.

Guilin is really pretty at night, with the bridges, pagodas and temples all lit up, and those pictures are coming in the next post, stay tuned!