Impressions of China

Guilin

Gene Kelley might have liked singing in the rain but we are a little sick of it. We landed in Guilin after seven pm and did not arrive at the hotel until 8:30, because the airport was south of the city and the hotel was 25 or so miles north of the city. The flight plans were changed by the travel agent just before we took off to China, so a two day stay-over has now turned into a very early rising on the second day to get the only plane we could take in order to meet the Yangzte river cruise boat, our next port of call.

The hotel we are in is called the Hotel of Modern Art and it is truly unique. I feel like I am staying in the museum garden on the Mall in Washington, D.C. Our guide told us it was built by a very wealthy businessman from Taiwan. The problem is the hotel is waaay out of town and on the wrong side to get to the airport. We squeezed in walking the grounds this morning to take advantage of the site and the sculpture. But not having the free time tomorrow to do a more leisurely walkthrough makes it frustrating. The buildings are ultra-modern and the sculpture is quite extraordinary and everywhere.

The reason we came to Guilin was to take the river cruise on the Li River.

The limestone (karst) mountains are famous in China and are recognizable around the world in the paintings. (CC calls them "the pointy mountains in the mist.") An engraving of one section of these mountains is on their 20 yuan (US $2.50) note.

We no sooner stepped on the boat than it began to rain, then rain hard, and it rained the whole journey until the very end. I am thinking that we will call this trip "impressions of China" rather than "views of China" since we sure had a hard time seeing some of it. On the other hand, the rain and fog and mist gave the mountains an ethereal look. The world famous paintings of this area, come to think of it, are always shown with mist and fog. Never on a clear day. So, that must mean we saw the real thing.

On the way back to the hotel we stopped to watch a farmer tying to get a water buffalo from the rice paddy up to the roadway. "Buff" was not having anything to do with the plan. I took it to be a poetic summary of our day.