Day 9: The Li River

We got to take a cruise along the Li River! The Li River is famous for the stunning views and canal. We didn’t pass the canal but it was built back in 200 BC by the same Emperor who commissioned the Great Wall and the Terra Cotta Warriors. He did a lot of big projects. The canal connects the Li River to the Yellow River and still stands and works after two thousand years.

This river was absolutely stunning. The mountains that line the river are these chunks of Earth that just pop out of the ground. There are so many of them and they’re so oddly shaped that every two minutes the boat moved you would have a whole new view! And the front view would be different than the back view and it was amazing. I took a bajillion pictures and if the weather had been nicer I probably would have taken more. It was another blistering cold day so I could only spend about ten minutes on the top of the boat before my fingers started to go numb. Then I would run back inside for fifteen minutes, warm up, then run back out to take more pictures! A view from the Li river is actually pictured on the back of the 20yuan note.

Li River, Guilin China

It was really foggy out and rained towards the end of the tour. Our tour guide tried to make us feel better by calling it "romantic mist" and telling us this is how the artists all like the mountains. I still would have preferred sun shining off the bushes and water but nature happens. They told us those odd shaped mountains are actually the remains of ancient coral reefs. Several thousand years ago China was all under water and those mountains were carved by the ocean and fish and afterwards by rain and natural erosion. It makes for the most unbelievably beautiful views now.

It started raining as soon as we got off the boat and walked to our hotel. The cruise had taken most of the afternoon and had brought us to a small town called Yangshou. It was beautiful little town with the mountains randomly sticking up around. Our hotel was right next to one. Our room window was literally only about ten feet away from the side of the mountain. There were shops along the street on perfectly flat ground and rising up instantly behind the building would be these towering cliffs. It was unlike anything I had ever seen before.