Day 8: Welcome to Guilin!

We slept in until noon then took a two hour flight to Guilin. Guilin is surrounded by mountains and the surrounding area is home to just 5 million people.  About a third of the population in this area are part of a minority group called the Zhung people. The main population of China are the Han people. There are over 55 minority groups in the country and they get minority perks like extra points on exams and if two minorities marry they are allowed to have two children instead of the one.

Our local guide, Jesse told us a little about his life growing up. He came from a small village of only 500 people and had to walk to a neighboring village for school every day. Every village in the area spoke a different dialect so most people there can speak several dialects along with the standard mandarin.

Also, our bus had heat which was a godsend after the frozen seats in Shanghai! There was a sign in the front of the hotel saying "Welcome Wendy Wu!" We felt all special. It was the off season, we thought we might be the only big group visiting at the time so they put it up to make us feel welcome. Later we found out they leave that sign up all year around. Still nice, but not quite as special anymore. 

We ate dinner and then went to the river to watch an old tradition of cormorant fishing. Cormorants are these big black birds that dive into the water to catch fish. The fishermen train them to come back to the boat after every time they catch a fish. They tie loose strings around the bird’s neck so they can’t swallow the fish so when the bird comes back the fisherman gets the fish. It looked very uncomfortable for the poor birds, but sometimes they get smart. The fishermen have to give them a treat once in a while or else the bird will stop fishing. It’s a dying profession. It’s a slow process and it doesn’t yield much result so it’s mostly just a tourist attraction now.

Cormorant Fishing, Guilin

Our hotel room had two notable things. The first was the shower door with a hole in it. It was a corner shower and when you opened the door it came right up to the corner of the sink. Someone had mismeasured either the shower or the sink but instead of getting a new shower or sink they simply carved out a little hole in the door so you could open it without it hitting. It was sort of the poster for Chinese development. They tend to cut corners sometimes instead of taking the time to re-measure. Let’s just say their standards would never pass inspection in a western country. The other interesting thing was the extra little room attached to ours which contained a poker table! It was a tiny little room and all it had was that table and chairs, the table was clearly designed for a specific type of game but I have no idea what game it was supposed to be.