15-18 September 2016 –
It seems that flying on a holiday can be fun. We flew to Guilin (from Tianjin) on Mid Autumn Festival day on Air China. The plane was decorated and the crew had several games for all the passengers to play. I won this small stuffed toy from one of these games. After the games they went around taking photos on an instant camera. Fun!
We're staying at Yangshuo Village Inn. Check out the huge moon cake the inn had specially made. By the way, Annika LOVES moon cakes.
View from the roof top restaurant at the hotel.
We walked around the area for a little bit waiting for dinner:
Such a lovely location for an Italian (yes, that's right- Italian) restaurant and the food was excellent too!
Watching the sunset from the rooftop restaurant:Riding bikes to Yangshuo town:
Shopping on the streets of Yangshuo. This woman (who, it turns out, is actually from Tianjin!) is painting the girls Chinese names on the inside of their purchased bottles.
This minion wanted to join us for lunch!
While riding back to our hotel we decided to go for a leisurely and relaxing bamboo ride on the LiJiang River.
Annika took a turn trying to move the boat (Ava also took a turn):
Now this is a treat we remember from our previous visit to the area….fried rice cooked in bamboo over fire. They split open the bamboo stalk and the tasty treat is ready for eating. Yummy!
We spent the morning of our second day at Fuli- which is well known for hand painted fans.
We watched the lady prepare paper fans (layers of paper and glue plus strips of some kind of tape supposedly to reinforce the fan):
Our guide had us start our own painting – he taught us how to paint bamboo with leaves using black ink.
And then we moved on to painting paper in fan shapes:
Here's my fan (the guide/instructor wrote some Chinese on my fan – like the date, my Chinese name, the name of the town and I think his name):
Annika finishing up her fan:
Annika's finished fan:
Here's my finished fan:
After we finished our fans our guide took us on a short walking tour of some very old buildings in Fuli:
Our guide brought us these interesting treats – they're sweet and gelatinous.
On the second half of the day we opted to take a cooking class. We returned to Yangshuo town to have lunch and meet up with our cooking instructor.
The Yangshuo Cooking School is located a short car ride from Yangshuo town.
Not a bad view for cooking class, right?
The appetizer were little egg omelets:
Steamed chicken with mushrooms and red dates in a bamboo steamer:
Now to the best part…enjoying the food we made!
Our dishes: egg wrapped dumplings (actually more like miniature omelets), steamed chicken with mushrooms, stir fried pork with vegetables and oyster sauce, eggplant Yangshuo style, and green vegetables with garlic.
Watching the sun go down after we finished our cooking and enjoying our dinner:
On our last half-day we walked up to Moon Hill after breakfast.
Good advice: "Love and protect the environment."
People carve their names into bamboo:
One last look at the entry of the hotel:
I love the warm colors, dark wood tones, eclectic paintings, tea set, stone floor and fire place. I think that might be the first fireplace I've seen in China…and it's located in southern China.