Day 2 in Guilin. After the Li River cruise Ma met us at Yangshuo Pedestrian Street to take us on the next leg of our trip.

Yangshuo Pedestrian Street

Twice in my life I’ve felt harassed into making a purchase. The first time was in Victoria Falls in 2006 and the second time was here in this pedestrian street. I looked at a panda t-shirt thinking it might be suitable for one of my grandchildren. “What’s the price?”, I asked. The vendor showed me the price on her calculator, 160 yuan or about R340. My thoughts were something like this “are you crazy?” and I walked away. She followed me persistently, reducing the price each time I shook my head, hurrying away from her. Eventually she reduced it to just less than 2/3 of the original price, to 50 yuan. Probably still more than what it was worth, but I bought it, but only afterwards did I come to my senses and realize that it’s far too big for my grandchildren and far too small for me. Oh well…. all part of my learning curve.

After this we met up with Ma and two of the Guilin University students who would spend the next two days with us. I mentioned this in “My trip to Guilin” but here are some photos from lunch. Hawk was part of the meal as well as delicious vegetables.

After lunch Ma had planned to take us to a hotel he had reserved for the afternoon so we could feel fresh for the Impression Liu Show in Yangshuo that evening. What a thoughtful man.

However, we never got to the hotel because of the traffic jams. The traffic was horrific and we realized that we would never get back to Yangshuo in time for the show. We did an about turn….

On the way back we stopped at the Butterfly cave. A walk across a suspension bridge led to a beautiful view as well as an ethnic theatre of the hong yao people where we watched a show of traditional dancing. Hong yao means ‘red minority group’. By the way there are 56 minority groups in China but I’ll write more about that later.

Well maybe not so much dancing but you can feel the atmosphere. Traffic on the way to the Liu San Jie Impression Show

Liu San Jie Impression Light Show in Yangshuo

In the evening we went to see the Liu San Jie Impression Show, which is really impressive. There are two shows every evening and each show seats 4,000 people.

This is a description of the show that I found online. “The stunning scenery of the Li River south from Yangshuo forms what is said to be the largest natural theatre in the world for the now famous Liu San Jie Impression Light Show in Yangshuo. The waters of the Li-river set the stage and a dozen beautifully lit karst formations form a natural backdrop. Read more…    I have included Google images of the show in this link which are better than mine.

https://youtu.be/PQi5BNGBZFU