Last weekend, I visited Yángshuò, a small “village” near the famous Guìlín in beautiful the Guăngxī province (please memorize all those names and spellings, there will be a test). The area is (rightly) famous for the gorgeous hills that do the landscape with surprisingly density.
The venerable Lonely Planet China guidebook (9th edition, approx 5.3 pounds) highlights Yángshuò, calling it a “Sleepy yet hip village — and travellers mecca — plunked within otherwordly topography.”
Sleepy backpacker town?
The hills are definitely gorgeous, but the midwesterner in me has a hard time considering it a sleepy village (the traveler in me has a hard time seeing the “backpacker” aspect too).
I have friends who travelled to Yangshuo two to three years ago, and from their stories it sounds like the city has changed significantly since then. I’ve only been to five cities in China, but they’ve all had two things in common: ubiquitous construction — and significant pollution (its the first time I’ve had any issues with allergies here).
I hope I caught the town on a bad weekend, because it really is one of the most gorgeous places on earth.
Yángshuò is supposedly the Guìlín for the younger, backpacker crowd. The most famous part of town is Xi Jie, which literally means “West Street” but is more commonly known as “Foreigner Street” because it’s full of hotels and tourist shops originally aimed at backpacking westerners.
I said “originally” for two reasons: first, the majority of western toursits I saw were tour groups comprised of older people. Second, the street is increasingly dominated by domestic chinese taking in a slice of western culture (much like a Chinatown in the US). I copied this text from a guidebook in our hotel (written in Chinese, Japanese, and English — I didn’t fix the minor english mistakes):
Built 1400 years ago, it is also named Foreigners Street and full of human culture attractions with international atmosphere all around. Here the waiters in Bar, restaurant, Internet club and workmanship shop, ordinary residents, even the granny selling the fruits in the street can speak English fluently. Visiting the West Street is a complete experience — you can find that the pure western living way is existing in this Chinese simple countryside, the surprising internation element is contained in such unsophisticated folkway. On West Street, the local foods such as Sticky Rice Cake, Rice Noodle, and the Italian Coffee and Western-Style food, Ancient Chinese Painting, the most popular fashion, Chinese, English, French, Italian and Spanish etc are gathered together here. It looks like impossible, but it is really true. They are all mixed in this 100m long of street. The people here — whether the outer nor the inner, is exactly a group of liver. Here is an ideal leisure place for everyone. You only bring a book, or a few of CD, invite your good friends, turn off Mobile phone and portable computer, drink a cup of coffee or tea, then you will spend a nice time in beautiful scene and music, and know really what the life is.
Aside: The level of English in Yángshuò really is impressive; most everyone there speaks far better english than I speak chinese — which doesn’t say much. It compares favorably to the amount of english spoken in the parts of Thailand I visited (both places trounce Beijing, which will pose an interesting challenge for the Olympics in two years).
Checkout the rest of the photos in my Yángshuò photoset.
