Guilin and the River Li

The highlight of our honeymoon in 1999 was a visit to Guilin and a cruise through the Li River valley. My wife is a native of China and lived most of her life just south of Guilin in Nanning, where she was a head teacher in a middle school. We spent 3 days in Guilin. The must see/do things are the city parks/gardens, such as Elephant Rock and Seven Cloud Peak. They are all beautiful with gorgeous landscaping and views. Take a raft ride from the people with the bamboo rafts. We were poled gondola-style for a good hour for 2 yuan (you must, of course, dicker the price). Visit the university, especially the arts and crafts store -- it is home to many great deals. The university also has frequent shows. We saw a Nationalities Celebration of dance, music and stories from several of China's 58 nationalities. We also met several students and professors who spoke good English. One of them offered to guide us around the area in exchange for a chance to work on and improve his English -- a great deal!! Guilin is an artist haven because of the world renowned beauty of the hill surrounding the river. Many shopping areas offer great opportunities to buy beautiful carvings, paintings and other wonderful souvenirs -- (dicker hard). Of course, the highlight of the visit is the boat ride through the hills. It is a wind, rain and river water carved valley of awe inspiring beauty. This is the trip China took US President Clinton on for the natural scenic part of his visi t in 1998 -- a pretty hefty recommendation. It frequently appears on lists of the 10 Most Beautiful Places on Earth. You can find thousand of pictures of these hills on the Internetat places like webshots.com, but one view in person in worth a million of them. The only way to describe it is to say that if Dr. Seuss was given a chance to design the landscape of a place, this is probably close to what he would have done. On the return bus ride, they usually stop at some caves, which are loade d with beautiful structures.

Steve & Rhian Uptegraft, US. bluzman@voyager.net