Day Four for Real This Time

Day four for real this time. 

A wonderful queen sized bed waited for us upstairs at the Yangshuo Village Inn. The bathroom almost occupied as much space as our entire room in Hong Kong, and a private balcony overlooked the karsp from which this outer village of Yangshuo took its name: Moon Hill, with a half moon semicircle eroded out of its peak like the eye of a giant needle.  

With the heavy curtains drawn we slept well into the afternoon then arose to explore the village. The empty gray concrete streets and buildings burst with color as both housed countless shops selling what we'd discover to be the local wares: combs carved from yak horns, rocks from nearby caves resembling slabs of bacon, pomelo fruit, and bunches of oranges the size of chestnut meat (smaller than mandarins) that Jeanne couldn't say no to since the hawker was a single-eyed and single-toothed hunchback of an old woman. The one 
shop we both agreed upon sold us tapioca pearl milkshakes before we headed toward the highway to catch a minibus into town. 

Here again eager natives offered assistance and with a combined effort and saw to it we boarded the right bus. Yangshuo proper had changed just as much as the village after our slumber. The Chinese KFC sign under which the overnight bus spit us now shined with countless other neon lights, and upon dust filled roads now sped mopeds and buses seating four to forty. Shops even more densely packed lured us into the famous West Street where we dined on an incredible supper at Cloud 9.  

An empty restaurant when we arrived but by the time we ordered large families filled half its tables. Yangshuo serves as a tourist mecca for Chinese nationals who mostly come earlier in the year to catch a glimpse of the rice terraces before harvest. By missing out on that we avoided crowds we couldn't imagine being greater than what we found here in the off season. By the time I ordered my crispy duck with plum sauce, Jeanne her Sichuan style shrimp, and a thousand year old egg (a fermented shelled egg whose white stays clear while its yolk turns black) for the both of us among other necessities like rice, cabbage and tea, the place overflowed with multigenerational families usually with at least one set of parents and one infant.  We finished this feast and found ourselves shocked by the $15 bill we amassed. Yangshuo despite its tourism based economy promised a much cheaper experience than Hong Kong. 

After shopping a bit more we found our way back to Larry's hostel to find him deep in heated negotiations with a less drousy set of westerners. His much more laid back brother aided us in acquiring the promised ground transportation to the lightshow. Eventually a larger sized minibus arrived and we squeezed into the back already filled with Chinese tourists. 

We later found our suspicions correct that every single bus, minibus, and taxi disappear after 7pm each night to shuttle the thousands who attend the two showings of the lightshow. Finally a part of one of the many Chinese tour groups we saw being herded across the city we bravely followed the bus driver's yellow pendant having received no instructions nor tickets from Larry before being thrust into an unlabeled bus. 

After running behind the driver through a sea of other similar groups we arrived at a corner where he gave a long speech. Thankfully one stranger in our group spoke enough English to translate the important parts, mainly to meet him back at this same point after the show. He then separated Jeanne and me and two other women from our group. We soon realized his reason as he procured assigned seats for our cheapest ticketing tier.  The two other women checked our tickets and realizing the adjacency of our assigned seats took on their self imposed duty to make sure we found our seats and afterwards lead us back to the bus despite neither of them speaking any English.  To our amazement with even the cheapest tickets having assigned seats the crowd of thousands pushed madly to enter the arena.   

Billed as a smaller production of the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympic Games and directed by same individual (who we learned also did "Raise the Red Lantern" and "Hero") we still didn't know what to expect beyond the cheesy multicolor lit karsps behind a lake on the tourist brochures.

Much like the Olympics four local ethnic minorities greeted everyone. After the lights went out on this small stage a large projector screen arose out of the water dwarfed by the size of this outdoor arena. The film showed local fishermen passing on their bamboo rafts and soon silouettes of live fishermen on real boats passed before the screen on this manmade lake stage carved out of the natural river behind it.             


The screen disappeared into the water and a faint spotlight revealed more than a hundred fishermen each on their own bamboo raft traversing back and forth across the lake. The lights dimmed again while hundreds of elaborately dressed villagers singing and carrying torches lined up on both sides of the lake while still more took the center stage. From a production stand point all of this served as a distraction while the fishermen secretly secured about a dozen six feet tall red ribbons across the lake, and as the scene changed the spotlights revealed the fishermen evenly spaced across the lake pulling the entire ribbons in and out of the water in a random sequence both to hide and show themselves and to create wave like optical effects. 

The show only became more incredible as a dancer ran back and forth across an illuminated cresent moon while boats and barges surrounded her, and by the end an army wearing suits of white lights marched across a pier through the center of the lake. Many of the costumes and props likely came directly from the Beijing openning ceremonies. 

Leaving the venue turned out to be much easier than entering it, and our two friends made sure we found the bus with them. On the way back into the city our English speaking friend tried to explain what she could of a very complicated and deep story by simplifying it into the tale of love that we made out on our own, but we believed her that much more happened that night since people seemed to start clapping at times for reasons we didn't understand. 

We met Larry at his hostel and he reminded us how he'd met us in a few hours the next morning for our ride up the Li River.