Yangshou has a small town area that has been developed for tourism. It even has a street called West street named for the westerners that come there. Even though it is touristy, it has a charm to it. There are many restaurants to choose from as well as guest house accommodations and hotels. Our hotel is still on a main road but a bit away from the West street scene. I think the hotels there would be too noisy.

We were warned that as foreigners we would spark curiosity while traveling in China. It has been a bit more than we care for at times, and down right annoying. We often become an attraction while we are eating our dinner at one of the open air restaurants. We have had anything from people standing right in front of us watching us eat, to having a person blatantly take a picture of us.

Then there are the photographers who think they are being sneaky. They stand across the street pretending to be taking a picture of the restaurant we are sitting at. Or they place their friend just a bit in front of us and off to the side and take the picture so we are in the background. It is so obvious! We will try to cover our face with a napkin or turn our head. They either try to wait us out and snap the picture as soon as we expose ourselves again or they get frustrated and try a different angle.

We had to start laughing one time when two ladies thought they would try it. They sat one lady at the table just in front of us to get her picture. There was nothing nice to photograph about this scene so we knew it was for us. We kept obscuring our faces, we could see that the lady trying to take the picture was getting really frustrated. We finally broke out laughing and then waved at them. They quickly left!

Another time we were walking down the street and a guy was trying to take a picture of me. I caught him before he did it. I pointed my zoom lens back at him and then he chuckled, but as we kept walking we caught him poking his lens around the corner to try and get me again. They are very persistent!

There was one restaurant we ate at frequently. It is called Drifters. They had really good food and friendly staff. They had apple crumble for dessert, it was so delicious and one of the first things we have had like that in ages. Another place we went to had a pot of cold rose tea, just slightly sweetened with honey. It had such a nice flavor and was very refreshing. We tried some of the local specialty called Beer Fish. It is a fish from the river cooked in a beer sauce. It was not that good. We found it pretty easy to get vegetarian food here. We had lots of vegetable fried rice and one place made delicious sweet and sour tofu. Jack could not get enough of this stuff.

We spent our second day in Yangshou wandering around the streets. It was another day of drizzling rain. We checked out some of the shops. There were some typical Chinese items for sale. Small mud men, painted fans, fancy chopsticks, and painted scrolls. We purchased some big rainproof ponchos with hoods for $5 each. It made walking around a lot more pleasant. We didn't have to carry umbrellas everywhere we went.

We ate dinner at a restaurant that had tons of old Chinese artifacts displayed along the walls. It had many large pictures of Chairman Mao. We had some excitement at the table next to us. The peoples hotpot dinner suddenly burst up in flames. At first they just kept eating keeping a watchful eye on it. The staff didn't seem to think too much of it either. Then it started to get out of control. There were now over half a dozen staff standing around looking at it trying to figure out what to do with it. The customer got up out of his chair to get away from it. They ended up getting it extinguished after a few minutes.

We have seen all kinds of interesting food items on menus here as well as strange things to eat in the night market. This restaurant had beef penis on the menu as well as snake prepared in many different ways. Dried rat is one the the local specialties as well as fried squirrel.

We went to the Bank of China to see about getting some more Chinese currency. Yuan means dollars.(RMB) Renminbi is the official name. It is very close to the Hong Kong dollar in value. About 100 RM equals 15 Canadian dollars. We couldn't get an answer of whether or not the ATM machine will take foreign credit or debit cards. I guess we will have to try it soon or we will run out of money. We have yet to find that China takes bank cards, only credit cards can be used to get money out of the ATM machines. Here and Laos have been the only places so far where we haven't been able to use our bank card.

There is a funny device is at the front counters of the banks, one in front of each teller. It is a small box that has the tellers picture and bank ID on it. You can press one of three buttons on it. Satisfactory service, fair or unsatisfactory service. You do it right while you are standing in front of them. Maybe we should have stuff like this at home!

We rented bikes one day and rode out to a village called Fuli. It's recommended to go to the outlying villages on market days. Trying to figure out when the market days are for each place can be challenging. There are several villages that have markets, the market is held for one day in each place on a rotating schedule. It comes to each place usually every 3 days, but sometimes every 4 days, There are also some days when there is no market. So it gets very confusing. Obviously puzzles some locals too, as we were told the wrong day by someone for one of the villages.

The ride out to Fuli village was very scenic. Lots of farm land with the usual tall pointy mountains in the background. We have discovered drivers love to honk their horns here. They honk for every reason and no reason at all sometimes. It can be very annoying. The market was not anything special. It was mostly produce, clothing and odds and ends for sale. We got stared at by a lot of people while we wandered around. One guy looked at me, then at Jack who was following behind and gave him the thumbs up and said okay. I guess he liked me. We only saw one other tourist couple at the market. We got stuck down a skinny passage way with a bunch of caged chickens. We made sure not to breath and walked through as quickly as possible. Don't want to catch the bird flu! On the ride back we stopped to take in the scenery for a moment, we both had a reality check that we were riding bikes through the countryside of China. It still seems surreal!

We ended up staying in Yanshou longer than we anticipated. We asked our hotel if we could have a discount for staying longer. They said yes we could have 20 Yuan a night cheaper if we moved from our room with a double bed to another room with two twin beds. This was fine with us. We ended up being thankful for changing rooms. Our new room was not damp at all like the last one. Something must have been wrong with that end of the building.

We climbed up Xilang Shan Mountain to the small temple. This was the temple we could see from our hotel room. It was several hundred stairs to get to the top, but well worth it. It gave a great view of Yangshou. The town doesn't seem that big until you get up there and see how far it spreads. The mountain is in Yangsou Park. It is a nice place to stroll around. 

We also went to Mountain Water Garden which surrounds Green Lotus Peak. It again has a lot of sets of stairs to get to the top. This gave a lovely view of the Li River. We bumped into a Chinese family who wanted us to take their picture with their camera. I took it, but it was very back lit, you could not see their faces. It was a simple point and shoot so not much I could do but try to take it with the flash. No one could figure out how to make the flash go off. We said sorry and started on our way. We kept looking back and could see the family continue to struggle with the camera trying to make it work. We felt bad, thinking they must really want the picture of them with the river and mountains in the background.

The camera would not use the flash because of the bright light behind them. We went back to them. The parents could not speak English at all. The younger daughter was having a lot of difficulty understanding us, but I finally got her to understand. I was asking if she had an email. She said yes so I held up my camera and said I would take a picture and send it to them. They seemed a bit nervous, but posed while I took it. I showed them on the screen and they seemed happy they could see their faces. The Dad nodded in great appreciation. She wrote down her email for us. We emailed the picture later that day and hoped they would be able to receive it okay. It was about 2 days later and we got a thank you email from the daughter. It was very sweet. She had tried very hard to write it in English. It was hard to understand, but we got the general idea of how thankful she and her family were to get the picture.

We experienced a lot of rain while we were here. One night we thought we were going to be carried away in the water. We were seeing news footage of people and homes being swept away not too far from where we were. It just never seemed to stop. It kept up like this all night. You would think there would be no water left to release, but it rained more throughout the day as well. We kept seeing footage of massive flooding in Southern China on the news. People were having to be evacuated and rescued in many areas. We were starting to get a bit worried. Although the streets would get a bit flooded at times, it never got to that extreme.

You will never run out of bizarre things to keep you entertained in China. Like babies and toddlers with strange pants. They are completely split open throughout the crotch and backside. You can't really see the split too much if a toddler is walking around in them, but when the babies are carried sitting on the parents arm their whole bottom is exposed. We can't figure out the concept of these pants. Does the baby just poop or pee all over the parent?

We had a t.v. in our room but only got a Chinese news channel broadcast in English, the rest of the channels were in Chinese. By the end of our travels we would come to hate this English channel! We had another channel with almost non-stop tennis, which of course did not matter what language you watched it in. We got sick of tennis really fast!

We like to watch the hilarious Chinese info commercials though. Some of them are just too funny to believe. Does anyone actually buy this stuff. One of them sells an item that is like a traction board. You lie on it and strap yourself in and it pulls apart. We guess it is for straightening out your back, but it looked like it was something to make you taller. Then there was one with some kind of super magnetic underwear. Of course all of this is even funnier to us because we can't understand the language. We make up our own ideas about it and our imagination runs wild. They kept showing the magnets which are strategically placed to sit over the mans genital area. The man would stand in the underwear in a superman type pose and the magnets would be shown working in animated motions. Then they would show the wife very happy next to him in bed. It wasn't to hard to figure out what this one was about.

There was also one for some kind of cream to rub on yourself to get rid of fat. They showed people slathering on the stuff. The thin after pictures of the person would be shown. The before pictures were obviously taken of the same thin person and had been digitally stretched width wise to make them look fat. It was all quite entertaining.

We had more fun while wondering around the streets of the tourist areas or sitting in one of the sidewalk cafes. We eventually just turned the photo taking of us into a game. You would continually have street vendors coming up to you while you were eating. One lady made us laugh all the time. She had a very excited sounding voice and would approach us almost everyday. She would say the same thing all the time. She had a basket of fruit and would come up to us and say Hello banana! All together as if it were one word. Then she would start in on the other fruits, but they would all have hello placed in front of them. Hello peachy, hello apple, hello lychee, etc.

Sometimes the sweetest little old lady would come up to us with a basket of stuff we had no interest in buying. Then she would crack the most innocent smile and you were hooked instantly. How could you say no? We bought a little trinket from one lady. She was so happy she gave me a big hug, then she wanted Jack to take a picture of the two of us. She smiled and waved goodbye. Then after a minute she came running back, she must have felt bad she left Jack out, he got a big hug too! She was so sweet, she couldn't have even been 4 feet tall!

We got to know lots of the regular vendors and musicians in the street. We would see the same flute player everyday. He would nod and smile at us. The restaurants we went to recognized us when we came back and were always very welcoming. Nice to see you again they would say. This was a very pleasant town to hang around for a while. The scenery in the surrounding areas is really beautiful. We even noticed that on the Lonely Planet site someone posted a question to experienced travelers. They asked them to name the most beautiful place they had ever traveled to. Yangshou came up on many people's responses. Just make sure to get out of the touristy area and see the beautiful countryside!

We tried our first Chinese massages here. They were quite nice. You just have to be careful what you are getting into. Jack had been approached a few times on the streets being asked if he wanted a special massage! One massage place we went to had a large tank of crabs outside of the entry door. A small crab had escaped and had come in the door and was heading towards the front desk. The manager of the shop said, look he wants a massage too!

Author: Audreyandjack          Date: June 6, 2008