I travel to China several times a year mainly for fun but also to check out hotels and new tourist attractions for my book.
The following information is not in my 2002 book. 

The following items are dated with the month the information was obtained. Everything is subject to change but this should give you a good idea of what to expect. Please also look at our collection of photos from some of these places.

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The last time this page was updated was 12/31/08

Xian
If you think China is not Chinese enough, do consider following the footsteps of Hope Justman as she hikes along one of China's old roads, the one that goes between Xian and Chengdu. Her book "Guide to Hiking China's Old Road to Shu" is full of practical advice and directions, pictures of train tickets and what they mean, and where to find the best doufu restaurants (from the Three Kingdoms period no less). She suggests that you pay a guide Y40 a day, and warns about losing your camera down the toilet of a train. This is a delightful book that is also full of historical references about this interesting off-the-beaten tourist track road. ISBN-13: 978-0-595-42551-8 (pbk). Order through iUniverse, 2021 Pine Lake Road, Suite 100, Lincoln, NE 68512. www.iuniverse.com  or telephone 1-800-288-4677. Published 2007.
DATE: RLM, August, 2008.

Where to Stay:
We stayed at the New World Grand Hotel here, my first choice for a four star in Xi'an, and it was fine as usual. We ate dinners in its inexpensive Food Street - and while four out of five of us enjoyed it - our fifth member didn't like its cold dishes and preferred to eat in its coffee shop. The service and standards were good. The location inside the city wall is very convenient. The English was better than other four stars here.

Its shopping, main lobby entertainment arcade and health club are franchised and not under the hotel's management. Prices and address are the same as listed on page 504. Its e-mail is still: gnwhxian@sein.sxgb.com.cn   but direct e-mail to its sales department is: nwsales@public.xa.sn.cn  . It is managed by New World Hotels, a Marriott brand. Its website is: www.gnwhxian.com   (English).

(See also page 504). It is within walking distance of a park and the Moslem section of the city with its interesting restaurants and shops. Immediately behind it is a new temple you can also visit. A manager said he could give us an introduction to the nuns there.

Practical Information: I try to give you several recommended travel agents so you can write to more than one and choose the one that sounds best to you. Agents here should answer e-mails within 24 hours on week days. Payment could be in cash after you arrive, or by bank transfer before. Few travel agencies in China accept payment by credit card. Booking directly with agents in China is considerably cheaper than booking through agents abroad because of the commissions. Local travel agents can give better hotel discounts than the hotels themselves because they book a lot of rooms. Some might charge a service fee for booking. But not all agents are used to dealing with English-speaking foreigners.
Our arrangements were handled by Wang Jun, now Tour Manager of X'ian China Travel Service. If you need any help you should consider him as our flight bookings, guides, tours, and airport transfers went fine. I have used him before when he was working with another agency, and he gave us a lot of information that helped us make plans and save time and money. He arranged for my friends to spend one day at Huashan and one day at the Terracotta Warriors with a guide. The address is 2/F, No. 103 Chang'an Bei Road, 710061. Tel. 5397116, 5261802 or fax 5393137. E-mail: jwang9998@sina.com
Later, I met a group of Germans who were driving their own vehicles on the Silk Road to Beijing. Their tour through China was also organized by Xi'an China Travel Service, and they were very happy with the arrangements.
Few travel agencies in China know first hand how to get permits to drive your own car here nor do they really know about self-driving tours, especially on the Silk Road. Tian Xiaopeng, Assistant Manager of Sales Marketing and Reception Center of Xi'an CTS was accompanying this tour. His telephone is 5259537, 5397115 or 13909280885. Fax 5253433, 5225244. E-mail: xactstxp@263.net .

You might also want to consider a small privately-owned, share-holding travel agency. While I haven't tried it myself, I found its manager Dorothy Wang very enthusiastic, charming, and eager to be of service. Her English is excellent. This agency should be able to organize travel arrangements, but also arrange tickets for the Song and Dance Grand Theatre Shaanxi which it manages. The show is good. Contact: Wang Qian at Xian Sun International Travel Service, 7/F Hong Yang Building No. B-18, East Tao Yuan South, Second Ring Road (west), Tel. 4257597 (24 hours) or 4236089. Fax: 4249146 or 4257981. E-mail: SSITWQ@public.xa.sn.cn  . Do let me know your experience with this agency if you use it.
If you're looking for a good guide, there's Song Rui, Xian China International Travel Service, 32 North Chang'an Road, Tel. 5262066, or fax 5261453. His mobile is: 13609246317. I've known Song for many years and his dedication and expertise are to be commended.

Shirley, an American friend, later told me also about Clarence Guo, Taxi and Tour Service, Tel. 7894118, 7791323 or 13909215451. E-mail: clarenceguo@china.com   or clarenceguo@yahoo.com  . His web-site, www.taxitour.com  in English gives prices. He took her to one of the cave dwellings as well as the Terracotta Warriors and he was so good, she insisted I give him a mention. Unfortunately, he did not answer my e-mails within four days. You might do better if you telephone him.

More information on Xi'an will be in the 2002 edition of China Guide, due out in Spring, 2002.
Date: RLM, April, 2001.
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New Museum, etc.: We visited the new Han Yang Museum mentioned by Jean Ash below and I can only join the chorus of enthusiasts. YOU MUST SEE IT! This exhibition is not on the vast scale of the Terracotta Warriors, but it's wonderful because the faces are so real, so eerily like those of people in Xi'an today, and most are smiling. To see the museum costs Y30. In a nearby building, you can look down into an actual archaeological site and if you're lucky, watch archaeologists at work. If you want to see more, and we didn't because it cost more money and our guide assured us there wasn't much to see, we could have gone to another section. Titles are in English and Chinese and no photos are allowed indoors. The site is between the Wei River and the airport, and is convenient if you are near the airport anyway, as it's only a few hundred meters from the main road.

This is the tomb of Emperor Jingdi of the Han, the dynasty that succeeded the Qin dynasty that built the Terracotta Warriors. Jingdi was the 4th emperor of the Western Han who reigned from 157-141 B.C. and was the father of the more famous Emperor Wu Di. The museum is full of pottery figures, chariots and houses, weapons, tools and household utensils, warriors, eunuchs and animals. It has dancing women in long graceful gowns. The ceramic figures originally wore silk and had wooden arms but these have since disintegrated. The bodies are without clothes. The National Geographic says there are 24 pits with a minimum of 700 figures, and that about 10,000 prisoners probably died building this tomb. The figures stand about two feet tall.

This tomb was featured in the National Geographic, August, 1992. A Chinese Emperor's Army for Eternity. It was discovered in March, 1990 when the road to the airport was being constructed.

I don't remember any other visitors at this site when we were there. I suspect you can just drive in, pay the fee, or make arrangements with a travel agency. If it's not listed on your tour, do ask if you can make a stop there. It's worth paying an additional Y30.

Our guide in Xi'an was Mr. He who wanted to be called "River," a direct translation of his name. He met our IST/Concepts East group at the railway station and we ran into very heavy traffic as it was rush hour. The driver backed our mini-bus about 100 meters to avoid one hopeless jam, a masterful feat. Luckily no one was behind us.

We had dinner at the Wan Nian Hotel (page 505) which was good but it was the same sort of food we had been having all along and this was day ten.. From here, our group started complaining about the sameness of the menu: corn soup, stir-fried vegetables, sweet and sour pork, fried potatoes, egg and tomatoes. When I complained at one point, one of the local guides said restaurants served these dishes because it was what foreigners liked. Guides usually decide the menu.

My room was a single, nice and large, on the Horizon Floor of the Shangri-la Golden Flower. The facilities looked good; in-room safe; clothes rack, lots of lights, cupboards and drawers, umbrella, robes, scales. The gym is very good here but has no heart monitors. The published rate is now $150-$240 for rooms; $260 to $2000 for suites, plus 15% surcharge. It should give discounts. The new e-mail: slx@shangri-la.com   . Web: www.shangri-la.com

We went to the Banpo Museum and in addition to the exhibition, we found a wide variety of peasant paintings for sale. Then we had lunch that included shrimp chips, noodles, caramelized sweet potatoes, and dumplings which we all liked.

The entry fee at the Terracotta Warriors is now Y65 including the movie (in English). The building I thought was to be a new restaurant is actually a new gallery for the bronze chariots (in the basement). Signs all around say "no photos" but everyone including guards ignore this. One of the five men who discovered the warriors is still there signing autographs in copies of the souvenir book. Peddlers, especially children, are back to pestering tourists again.

At my suggestion, we got a hot pot dinner at the Wan Nian Hotel that evening at no extra cost. It was fun, messy and delicious with a good peanut sauce. (Why didn't they give it to us without our having to ask?)

Then River informed us that our plane was late by an hour, and showed us his copy of the itinerary indicating two days in Chongqing instead of a few hours. The group wanted to stay longer in Xi'an -- but flight tickets were impossible to change at this point, it being the height of the tourist season.

Our bus driver said he went once by bus from Xi'an to Beijing, leaving 6:30am and arriving the same day at 11pm. Our guide said it's 1200 km by the shortest road. Flying is 1 1/2 hours. Xi'an is still sinking as the water table goes down.
--RLM, Date: October, 2000.

Others Write:
One place I visited last fall in Xian was the newly-opened Han Yang tomb, the construction/archaeological site your Xian section mentioned just a few miles from the airport. It is a MUST-SEE! Pacific Delight has included it in many of its tours this year. There are two sections, one on each side of the highway. On one side is the main exhibition hall, a large, modern, semi-subterranean complex with very nicely presented displays of finds from the tomb. Well-labeled in English. On the other side of the highway is a working archaeological site where you can peer down into huge digs to see archaeologists unearthing more relics. I must confess I don't know much about the emperor whose tomb this is since I was "working" at the time and they didn't have any brochures or books for sale yet...-- Jean Ash, Date: Feb. 2000.
We have started our complete "soft"- refurbishment with totally new rooms except for the walls and floors, so no noise. New furniture, wallpaper and carpets and upgrade of our Executive and Starwood Preferred Guest floors, including extra amenities, business suites, hot breakfast and butler service on the Executive floor. The word "No", does not exist anymore. All rooms have in-room safety deposit boxes now, new televisions and upgraded coffee and tea making. In spring 2000, we will introduce a golf/sightseeing package.

Adjacent to our hotel, a big department store "MinSheng" and several new stores and restaurants have now opened. Second Ring Road, has officially opened, so we are now even closer to the airport (time-wise). We now have direct flights to Korea, three times a week and trial flights from Singapore directly (starting January). Http://www.sheraton.com/xian  will automatically bring you to our web page. -- Roland Grinberg, Sheraton Xian, Date: December, 1999.
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Previous trip: My flight from Shanghai to Xi'an on China Northwest Airlines did not have assigned seats. It was a relatively new plane with a simple lunch of burnt noodles and fruit. We had a series of short ,varied features on the video: fashion show, sports, movie clips, and messages in English, Japanese and Chinese. But we had no earphones so could not hear these nor the announcements very well. But otherwise the flight was comfortable and fine (though not as good as Yunnan Airlines.) At the airport, I only had to wait five minutes for the CAAC bus to Xi'an which cost Y20.

Xi'an has less air pollution now than before. All residents inside the walled city are supposed to have switched to gas for cooking. Flights now also arrive from Osaka, Nagoya, and Tokyo. Taxi drivers are back to their old tricks going the long way, rather the shortest way, to your destination.

My friend Caroline Walker and I stayed in the Shangri-La Golden Flower Hotel which has now changed its e-mail to: six@shangri-la.com  . http://www.shangri-la.com . Shangri-La should be finished renovating rooms in its north section by September, 1999 and rooms in its other part by the end of March. We loved the place mats in its coffee shop, so bright, cheerful and typical of Xi'an's peasant painters. Unfortunately we couldn't find any for sale. They make very practical gifts.

I enjoyed this hotel as usual. I've stayed there so many times over the years that it's just like home.

We also stayed at the Sheraton Xi'an. I have never liked the location much because there didn't seem to be anything to walk to. I discovered that the Sheraton now has a relatively cheap restaurant in front, a very welcome addition for people like me who want only noodles or something light for lunch and even dinner. I also found in the neighborhood a whole street of interesting restaurants and look forward to trying them. The Abudu Lamb Restaurant with a lamb logo on its sign was just east of the Beijing Duck Restaurant on Tuanjie Zhong Road. It was recommended by a friend at the Sheraton. It's open 11am-9:30pm.

A nearby bowling alley is open 24 hours for those who want to exercise jetlag away. Around the corner is a night market and one minute away by car is the Second Ring Road. A little too far to walk, but close by nevertheless, is an interesting computer mall with pirated software among its wares. Our trips downtown in the walled city, were not as far as I had thought.

The Sheraton is continuously improving: electronic locks to be installed the end of August. In November, renovations to rooms starting from the top floors will begin and high speed internet connections and in-room safes added in some rooms. Three computers will be put in the Cyber cafe to open the end of 1999. You should soon see a games room, library and flower shop. It has an outdoor barbecue from April to October with Australian and American meat and you can rent mountain bikes.

We spent one night at the 292-room Xi'an Garden Hotel. It now has an e-mail address: tanghua@pub.xaonline.com  . We went there after our overnight bus ride from Guyuan and it was especially wonderful. They gave us our room at 5am and fruit arrived at 6:30am. From our window we could see the Big Wild Goose Pagoda beyond the weeping willow trees and gold Tang roofs. The published rates are now: US$100-$140 for rooms and $300 for suites. The breakfast buffet is US$13, the lunch US$25 and dinner US$30-$40. Prices are subject to a 15% service charge. Its Tang Dynasty Museum (Y5) is open 10am-6pm but there's not much to see. If you do go, look for the charming brothers, the elder bathing the younger.

The Garden has a good buffet breakfast that includes baked salmon. Its dinner theater including a French dinner at 6:30pm is $35. Just the show at 8pm costs US$15. The show is enjoyable, especially for men, but the performance at the Tang Dynasty Theater Restaurant (page 506) is better with more variety. It has a tailor who says he can make a brocade dress in 12 or 24 hours.

Staying here gave me a chance to try the public buses: air-conditioned #610 went from the front door past the Big Wild Goose Pagoda, Provincial Museum, and then to the Bell Tower for Y2. It was cheap and convenient. The Garden charges Y350 for a car for a half-day and Y600 for a car for a whole eight-hour day. A guide costs Y200 for four hours, and Y300 for eight hours.

I discovered that my guide book has dropped one digit from the address of the YMCA Hotel (page 505). It should be 339 Dongda Street, and it's close to the May First Hotel at 351. The telephone number is now 7262288. Room prices haven't changed. It has a two-day tour to Yanan for Y2000-Y3000; and a tour to the Terracotta Warriors for Y35 plus Y9 plus Y80 (for the entry ticket).

The New World Hotel no longer has a Tang Dynasty show, which is too bad, because it was very good. Rooms at the May First Hotel are now Y280 but try to haggle.

A new trend in restaurants has blossomed in Xi'an. Basically it's fast food. At De Fachang (page 506), the first floor serves a limited but cheap menu of dumplings (Y8 a bowl). You can also choose cold dishes from a trolley. On the upper floors, there's more choice, but higher prices. Tel. 726-9010 or 721-8260. No credit card. Open 11am-2pm and 5pm-9pm.

I don't think my readers would like the grubby Muslim restaurant at 137 Huajue Road but Caroline liked it. The telephone is 725-1715 and its near the Drum Tower on a street with lots of shaslik meat barbecue being cooked outdoors at night..

But the Lao Sun restaurant outside the wall to the southeast is fine. It is close to a sign that says "West China National Food Centre." It serves Muslim food on mother-of-pearl inlaid tables. The downstairs has a limited menu, mainly greasy beef or mutton soup poured over bread crumbs which you break up yourself for Y13. You can choose from a trolley of cold dishes costing another Y8 or so each. The staff speaks a bit of English. Look for the travel agent in the west of the building and the bright red lanterns outside 78 Dong Guan Nan Street, Tel. 2483388. Upper floors are fancier and more expensive with a wider selection of food that you can point to.

Roland Grinberg says that Mama Wang's Noodles near the Sheraton is the best in town. And the Cantonese Ding-a-ling is good. Its tables have little bells to ring for service.

We tried shopping in the street market near the Grand Mosque and prices towards closing time kept falling from Y180 to Y60 for antique hand scales. Asking price for a brass reproduction of a dragon was Y180, but I turned it down because I had paid Y50 for the same in Suzhou.

The tour to the Terracotta Warriors booked at the Bell Tower Hotel is now Y350 which includes the entrance fee, guide and food. We took a tiny taxi there for about Y70 one way after much negotiation by a Chinese friend and then on the way back waited for a bus from the stop near Qinshihuang's tumulus that took us back to Xi'an for about Y10. The 306/307 bus goes past the hot springs to the railway station.

We also hired a small taxi for the day for Y360 to take us to the tombs of Princess Yantai, Empress Wu and Emperor Gaozong, and Famen Temple. On the way shortly out of Xi'an we came across the very imposing 1993 Roman Catholic church in East Dongpu and met Franciscan Father Li Jiang Ping. He was very welcoming, so if you see this church just off the main road, do stop in for a look.

You can now hire a horse at Qianling (page 513) for about Y10 rather than climb the 500 plus stairs. At the base of the hill is a village with cave homes you can visit, and at least one hostess will attempt to sell you charming wall hangings for Y5. The stone envoys are now fenced off.

The 16 meter-deep tomb of Princess Yong-tai is only three km away and has titles in English. It looks like there's been some water damage since my last visit but the murals are still good. Yong- tai, the granddaughter of Gaozong, was 17 at her death, and some believed she was murdered because she found out that Empress Wu was having an affair. The cause of death was officially a liver ailment.

Famen's museum (page 514) is still wonderful and worth the 130 km trip from Xi'an. The entrance fee is Y18, and it's open 9am-6pm daily. We didn't hear loud rock music this time and the temple is more separated from the secular town and tourist stalls.

A lot of archaeological work was going on in Xi'an. Just off the superhighway from the airport, we could see the tents of the scientists at one site. More preliminary bore holes have been made at the 150 meter-high tumulus of Qinshihuang. And China should be announcing another exciting find soon, which you should be able to visit along with the Terracotta Warriors once it's open.

On another day, we took a day tour to wonderful Huashan for Y245 including cable car. The Shaanxi Guonei Luxingshe Travel Agency on the second floor, Guang Hua Hotel on Dongwu Road caters primarily to domestic tourists but Wang Jun there does speak English and his telephone number is 7436790, or 7419398.

I recommend this cheaper trip only if you speak Chinese and don't mind a rickety mini-bus. We were promised a guide who spoke English, air-conditioning, and no smoking on the bus. None of these transpired. Our bus looked the oldest of all the buses parked at Huashan.

Hotel travel agencies have a more expensive tour with a guide who speaks English. CITS charges Y340 plus Y100 each for the cable car for a minimum of six people.

The air pollution, bad in Xi'an, continued for much of the way. We passed within touching distance of a coal-fired electric power plant.

Our Chinese-speaking guide helped us foreigners to register with the police for an additional Y5.Caroline didn't have her passport on her, so made up a set of numbers. We did a lot of waiting at a restaurant at the base of the mountain, and then our bus took us to the cable car terminal. The Chinese tourists on the bus were friendly and a couple spoke a few words of English.

The mountain is really dramatic, with smooth rock faces, and the cable way ascent is almost vertical. Stairs are available for those who want to use them. At the top are challenging climbs on steps cut out of the rock, some of them also almost vertical. Chains help keep you from falling. There are also interesting caves now used by one or two stores and temples, and steep narrow
paths where you have to dodge coolies carrying up long bamboo poles or other construction materials. We didn't dare to climb up to the top.

The newer public toilets on the mountain were clean and odorless with the same plastic, automatically-changing, toilet seat covers as at the Expo in Kunming. These cost Y1 to use.

The cable car runs from 7am-7pm, has enclosed cabins with signs saying "150 kg. limit" per car. Usually four people sat in them, considerably more than 150 kg. At the top was a decent looking modest guest house, the Bei Fang Fandian, which cost Y280 for a room with four beds, or Y70 a bed. This also had rooms with two beds for Y240. Rooms looked clean and had hot water in a
thermos but no water in the toilet. The magnificent view made up for its lack of amenities but it did have a dining room with simple food and questionable hygiene. Tel. 913/4300062.

Aside from these, there was little for climbers; no benches, no binoculars, and few drink stands. It was hard to stay out of the morning sun and several of us took turns sitting in a cave on newspapers. There were also no signs in English. The town at the bottom had more facilities, shops and restaurants.

Keeping all this in mind, I still think it is a great place for the energetic to visit.

We also toured the Peasant Painting Exhibition Hall in Huxian County, Tel. 4812871. It is 40 km from downtown and open daily 8am-12 noon and 2:30pm-6:30pm. The entry fee is Y20. While it was great to see the development and great variety of these paintings, the highlight of our trip was visiting one of the artists Ms. Pan Xiao Ling at her home nearby in Dong Han village, Guang Ming Xang. It was exciting to see the affluent house her art has bought her and to talk with her about her life. You might also be able to meet her, and buy her autographed paintings if you telephone 29/481-3544.

A good restaurant is now in nearby Huxian County town. The Wang Long Food Restaurant is at 383 Dong Da Jie, tel. 728-6755. This is another of those point-and-order places, and we had red beans, peanuts on black rice; seafood with glass noodles, and beef and lamb shishkebobs.

Back in town, I saw a sign for another internet cafe a couple buildings north of the Xi'an Hotel at about 110 Chang An Bei Road but didn't have time to check it out. At the airport, the left luggage room is open 6am-6pm.

In Xi'an we were the guests of the Shangri-La Golden Flower, the Sheraton and the Garden Hotels who helped us also gather information. Our thanks go to Mr. Gao Jia Fu of the Shaanxi Provincial Tourism Administration too. RLM,Date: August, 1999.
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March in Xian had been quite cold but spring was beginning when we arrived. We were blessed with warming weather, budding leaves, and many blossoms on the parasol trees.

Our Global Volunteers group stayed at the Orient Hotel, 26 Xiaozhai Road West, a very comfortable modern hotel about a 10-minute cab ride from the center of the old city. It was mostly occupied by Chinese businessmen (and, yes, most of the businessmen were men), but was also used by Elderhostel for its tours. (The regular price for a room was $60 per night including a full breakfast, but Global Volunteers paid only 2/3 of that).

We ate most of our meals at the Orient Hotel which was good, although I don't think it would be unusual enough to recommend particularly. It does have the only revolving restaurant in Xian (20th floor). The food was very good, and the view would have been if we had a view. Visibility was limited in Xian thanks to pretty severe air pollution.

We enjoyed our contact with Wang Jun whose e-mail address (page 519) you gave us, and made arrangements with him for a tour to the Terracotta Warriors and Banpo Neolithic Site for our son and daughter-in-law. His arrangements were better and less expensive than that arranged for our Global Volunteers group.

The Moslem market (page 517) contained some of the better bargains in our travels as long as we haggled to about a third of the initial asking price. The great Mosque (page 511) was a wonderful quiet spot, great to visit after making your way through the lively market street leading to it.

We much enjoyed walking on the north city wall by ourselves near the railroad station; our son and daughter-in-law loved the south wall after dark, an experience they found magical. (page 512-513).

There also are lovely gardens in some places along the outside of the wall.

The Shaanxi History Museum (page 511) is a fine, relatively new museum well worth a visit. One surprise is that in the several museum gift shops there, the clerks were eager to wait on you and immediately dropped prices from those printed to half or less. (See page 163). Having had to search often for anyone to even speak to me in US museum shops, I was a bit overwhelmed by this eagerness and also by the competition between museum shops to give the best bargains. We were told that because we were with Global Volunteers we could have a 50% discount on anything, but I strongly suspect that would be true for anyone. Our friends told us they sometimes paid 25-33%.

--George and Ann Levinger, April/May, 1999

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Xiahe (Lanzhou)
(Note: prices and information are subject to change.)
I was delighted to have an excuse to go back to Xiahe (urban population 25,000). I collect traditional footwear for a museum and it is the only place found still making boots entirely by hand. The boots turned out to be plain and uninteresting, with very hard, inflexible soles, which monks prefer. Xiahe was as wonderful as ever though a little more commercial than before. The main street was wider and the road newly repaved. I found that the little restaurants near the monastery that used to be for visiting foreign backpackers have gone downhill (or maybe my standards have gone up.) Xiahe is still worth a trip because of its beautiful and important monastery and Xiahe’s Tibetan flavour and easier altitude, which is lower than that in Lhasa.

The giant Labuleng Monastery had more gold and more pilgrims than during my visit in 1999. Of course I did a “kora,” a worshipful walk around it, following local people who do it once or twice a day in the morning and evening. This monastery is a series of beautiful, exotic buildings and a good view is from the platform made for showing its giant thangka (in February).

This time I arrived by a taxi that took three hours over the mountains from Tongren. The road to the border from that Tibetan town in Qinghai was paved, but once in Gansu, it was not – as if Gansu province didn’t want visitors from that neighbouring province. But the road was do-able in a car and the sight of hundreds of yaks and blue and white Tibetan tents near the pass was worth the dusty trip.

My taxi stopped at the edge of Xiahe so the driver and guide could buy herbs from a famous herbalist. It was worth a visit because the man was very photogenic in his monk’s robes as he gathered a selection from a couple dozen bags of different coloured grasses and dried flowers.

This time I stayed at the new two-star 120-bed Labuleng Xiling Hotel, which was quite good and clean and recommended except for its complete lack of English and if you care, the lack of any western food. It was much better than the hotels used on a previous visit. It did have CCTV in English. It did make a good attempt at coffee and eggs but don’t expect much. Staff tried very hard generally to be helpful. Rooms had a thermos of hot water, good light-blocking curtains, but no room safe and no refrigerator. A room costs Y180 a night for foreigners including breakfast. Tel. 13893900589 or 7123896. E-mail: lbltour@lbitour.com  . I ate all my meals there for two days; especially good were the crystallized sweet potatoes, noodles, and suckling pig with bread. It is on Renmin Street, the main street near the bus station, about one kilometre from the monastery and near a cheap but functioning internet bar called the Le Le Wan Bar. Grocery stores are in the neighbourhood with very cheap internet international long distance telephone service, like Y2.50 a minute to Canada

Closer to the monastery also on the main street is the Overseas Tibetan Hotel (Hua Qiao Fandian) which I didn’t see. It was recommended later by the director of CITS in Lanzhou because it is run by an English-speaking director named Tshering Losang. It is at 77 Renmin Street, 727100 and the manager’s mobile is 13909419888. Fixed phone is 941-7122642. E-mail is: othotel@public.lz.gs.cn. 

I visited the Labuleng Hotel (Binguan) which hasn’t changed much. See below. The other hotels I saw were less than one star – for people with little money and low standards. The manager Sun Yun Shen’s cell is 13909419616. Tel. 7121849.

I was able to buy decent Kodak film at a photo store in front of the middle school on Renmin Xi Jie, Tel. 13909419149.

My guide was Jin Ba (John), Tel. 13893956777 and 3338010. His English was good and his experience of several years as a monk was very helpful in his explanations of Buddhism, Tibetan monasteries and art. He said monasteries were like universities. He can take you around town on the back of his motorcycle, or you can hire a motorized cart from one end of town to the other for Y5 if you haggle. You can reach John through the China-Xiahe Labrang Travel Service, 74 Renminxijie. Tel. Manager Danxhen, at 13893916156 or 7125168.

Tourists can visit the “Happy Family” Tibetan home – but it was closed on the day we went. Do be aware that Xiahe has no ATM. The closest ATM is in Lanzhou. See also Lanzhou, the provincial capital, still a Y800 taxi ride away. -- DATE: RLM, November, 2005.

Previous 1999 visit: Xiahe is about six hours to the southwest of Lanzhou (page 476) via road and lunch in Linxia. We paid Y800 for a taxi. On the way we passed an amazing Moslem market (it was Saturday) full of cattle, goats and horses, and all kinds of produce. Women were wearing black Moslem veils; men in robes and white caps.

Linxia Guest House (Binguan) in Linxia was a cheap place for good Moslem or Chinese food with a decent toilet. Tel. 621132. This modest charming guest house is in a town full of beautiful new mosques. After Linxia, our car started climbing up into the mountains past terraced patchwork fields and towers of drying straw until finally, we found ourselves looking at stupas instead of minarets. We had arrived in a Tibetan Buddhist area.

We liked Xiahe (page 479) so much we stayed four days instead of the planned three, and we could have stayed at least one more. It is now among my favorite places in China, beautiful, exotic, peaceful, and great for hiking. And it has great tasting water.

Xiahe's urban population is 30,000, the county nearly 80,000. Of these about 40% are Tibetan and 40% are Han. 1800 monks live in the town and you can see their flowing maroon robes everywhere.

The only real hotel choice in Xiahe is between the new Jinlong Hotel downtown, and the two-star Labuleng Hotel on the outskirts. The rest like the White Conch looked unappetizing. Tiny taxi shuttles took us between the hotels and the monastery for less than Y5.

Since the Labuleng Hotel was surrounded by barley fields and Tibetan villages and we could stay in villas that looked like blue and white Tibetan tents, we chose the latter, and ate in the former when we were in town. The concrete "tents" surrounded a garden full of cosmos, marigolds, and poppies. And from its front gate, we could see a gold stupa and the paved hillside where the monastery hangs out a giant tangka twice a year for a couple of hours.

However, the 220 bed Labuleng Guest House was not perfect. Rooms were grubby. We never got our own key and had to look for the room girl every time we wanted in, not easy after dark. The bathroom floor was continuously wet and hot water only arrived in a thermos, or in the taps two hours in the morning and three hours in the evening. We had to order and pay for meals in advance, even breakfast which cost Y17. (Our 14-course Chinese dinner was okay for Y31.) And we could not exchange travelers' checks, only U.S. cash, nor pay by credit card.

But Labuleng's helpful Deputy General Manager Mr. Chen speaks English and the hotel has a safe deposit box in its lobby. Rooms only cost Y180-Y200 for a twin in high season, and Y100-Y150 or less in low season, all prices negotiable. It has beds in three-bed dormitories with private bath for Y20 each. High season is mid-May to the end of October. The telephone is 941/7121849, the fax 941/7121328.

While the Labuleng Hotel needs a lot of work, its location is paradise for hikers. Within 10 minutes walk each are three friendly hillside villages full of tamped earth cottages, topped with stupa-shaped burners for smoky juniper branches. The smoke takes food and incense "to the ancestors in the sky." Not everyone will allow you to take photos but at least they smile. Children asked for "you bi" ballpoint pens and the only thing preventing you from walking along the many pathways are the huge yaks and the watch dogs.

Closer to the monastery are little restaurants obviously aimed at tourists with names in English like Snowland (among the cleanest), Everest Restaurant, and Tibet Restaurant (Tel. 7122553). These are simple cheap cafes that don't take credit cards and have terrible toilets.

Most of these cafes have simple menus in English. The Snowland Restaurant has Tibetan bread, chicken sandwiches (Y5), pancakes, and yak yogurt and honey (Y3). The pancakes are more like crepes, and the pizza has no cheese but they were edible. The breakfast of eggs and bread cost Y8. The Snowland is open from 7am to midnight, Tel. 7122856, and is one km east of the monastery. Nearby is a good bake shop.

Two km away from the Labuleng Hotel is the huge Labuleng lamasery (see page 479). This belongs to the Yellow sect and is one of the six largest such monasteries in China. Here you could spend from two hours to two days. You can watch the three-hour noon-time catechismal debates and lunch. The evening chanting is best heard from the mountain above the temple around 7pm.

If you want to, it takes 1 ½ hours just to walk around the monastery once, spinning giant prayer wheels as you go. You can only take photos out of doors except for the butter sculpture exhibition but there was plenty happening outside in late August. In seasons other than summer, there won't be.

Monk guides speaking English give tours and buildings are open to visitors 9am-12noon and 2:30-5:30pm for a fee. The monastery is full of wonderful murals, brocade prayer ladders, and tankas.

We visited an interesting nunnery on the eastern edge of town that was building its own fancy temple due in 2000. The nuns are not used to visitors and are quite shy. There's also a lamasery of the Red sect in town but it was closed when we went there. Monks in this other older order can marry.

You can sleep in a real Tibetan tent, and rent horses for rides in the grasslands within bicycling distance of the Labuleng Hotel (about nine km). There are toilets but no place to bathe. Can you believe we found edelweiss growing among the carpets of wild alpine flowers? And we were lucky to be out in the grasslands during the once-a-year Tibetan horse races. The hotel is talking about organizing a camping trip on the grasslands next year for it. So ask your travel agent about
these and other festivals.

Those races (Sanko Tajuk, July 7-13 on the lunar calendar) are now at the top of my list of China highlights.

You should be aware that to buy a bus ticket in and to this no-train, no-plane town, local people have to pay Y20 and foreigners Y30 for travel insurance. I've encountered this nowhere else in China. We had no such problems hiring a taxi.

CITS at the Labuleng Hotel was rarely helpful. We booked two seats in a land-rover organized by one of the hotel managers one day, and the vehicle broke down three times. We wished we had hired the freelance guide Jin Ba rather than the one we got who didn't seem to know what was going on and had a terrible personality. Jin Ba was highly recommended by American guests, his English was better and he seemed to know a lot more. He can be reached through the Labuleng Hotel.

Day tours could be better organized through restaurants catering to foreign backpackers. Foreigners who had taken the "adventure tour" to Gancha Grasslands as advertised on the wall of the Snowland Restaurant, said it was good but bring your own sleeping bags. The horses are not in good shape, but the guides are reliable and our friends would recommend it for two days. The price is Y60 a day including horse, blankets, basic food and guide. Tel. 837/7231064. It also has
trail rides.

The best time to visit is July-August when the highs are 28C. The heaviest rains are in July and the yearly rainfall is over 500 mm. In January and February it has lows of minus 26C. We encountered snow in the highlands above Xiahe the last week in August. Hotels are open all year.

The shopping for Tibetan items is wonderful and ranges from proletarian to a few good quality antiques. Because of the Tibetan inhabitants, most items for sale are geared to the local market. You can buy tankas for Y32 framed by gaudy silk brocade scrolls and silver-looking relic cases for Y11. You can even buy those marvelous yellow hats worn by monks (and ancient Greek soldiers) and the leather crowns worn by abbots. You can also find for sale genuine human skulls
and brass water pots. The latter four are of course much more expensive. Stores are closed at 6:30 or 7pm, except for the internet. Evenings are chilly even in August, but I bought a sweater from a street stall for Y15. The streets are dark and you need a flashlight.

The internet store is Shang Cheng Yintewang Julebu, Tel. 941/7121744. It is open 9:30am-9pm
and costs Y32 an hour or Y16 a half hour.

From Labuleng, you can continue going southwest to the Lamasery Langmusi at the Sichuan- Gansu border and onward to Chengdu. You can go northwest to Xining in Qinghai in 8« hours by taxi (about Y500-Y1100 depending on the vehicle) but taxis are reluctant to do so because the road is bad, with possibilities of landslides. Our Y800 taxi trip back to Lanzhou was all downhill and took 4 « hours.


See also Lanzhou. RLM, August, 1999.

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Xining

I liked Qinghai so much, I went back for a second trip in 2005. 
An account of that trip is on:  http://www.china-travel-guide.com/exotictibet.htm  .
 
My friend  Mr. Yang Cheng Cai now works for Qinghai Comfort International Travel Service. He says the Shaman festival in 2008  in Tongren is from 20th-27th of July and the Giant Thangka display at the Taer Monastery is on the 8th or 9th of July.
  
Comfort has an eight-day tour to Yushu southwest of Xining in the mountains towards Tibet.  It includes the Tibetan Horse Racing Festival July 25 to July 29.  It costs US$1960 per person (based on three people) from Beijing with a single supplement of US$360. The price  includes a four-wheel drive vehicle and driving service, all the expenses of the vehicle, food and accommodation of driver, English speaking guide, entrance fees and full board and accommodation. It does not include personal expenses, tips, international transportation, and Beijing expenses like food, accommodations and land transportation.  
 
This is not an easy trip.    Yushu is in the mountains and you have to  cross  a  pass  at 4872 meters.   Yang says the roads are  okay and there are now two four-star hotels.  You do have to take precautions against altitude sickness and  should spend a couple days in Xining to start  getting acclimatized.  But I hear that the scenery is spectacular and I know that the Tibetan people, their horses and costumes are amazing.       
 
These dates are so close to the Olympics in Beijing that you might consider going through Shanghai or Guangzhou instead of Beijing.  Because of the Olympics, if you  are interested, do plan this immediately. Yang 's cell phone is 13997132136. You can also reach him at 971-8248666 or 8243777. 
His e-mail address is:  wildyak@21cn.com  .  -- RLM, DATE January, 2008. 

(See pages 533 - 537, 2002 edition.) 
This year, I went to Qinghai mainly because I had never gone there before. It was always out of the way, not many people were going there, and hotels, restaurants and roads were not very good. A friend and I tried to get there two summers before, but the altitude bothered her. 

Qinghai is adjacent to and northeast of Tibet. It was once a part of Tibet until the 14th century when it became part of China. It is considered a section of the Silk Road. On the flight in, I met a couple of American families who were living and teaching English there. "We love it," they said. "The air pollution? Naw, the sky is always blue." This was in spite of the air pollution chart in China Daily that showed Xining almost as bad as Beijing. But I didn't notice it. 

The provincial population is a sparse five million, many of whom live in tamped earthen houses. The central government has sent political prisoners here since the Ming dynasty. . 

My trip was planned by the helpful Yang Cheng Cai of the China Qinghai Tourism Corporation who supplied much of the information in my book. His many friends in the lamaseries and his knowledge of his province made him invaluable. 

What to See
During my three days there, we visited Kumbum Monastery - which is only 30 km from Xining (Zilang in Tibetan). This is the birthplace of Tsong Khapa, the famous Tibetan scholar and founder of the yellow sect of Tibetan Buddhism of which the current Dalai Lama is the head. You will see Tsong Khapa's portrait on many tangkas and monastery murals here and in Tibet. Kumbum is one of the "six great lamaseries" of the Gelugpa "yellow sect" tradition and it's worth a visit for the rituals, the fine butter sculptures, and the attractive buildings with their finely carved trim. 

Also worth while is a stay in the Silk Road Tsongkha Hotel which is across the road from the Kumbum Monastery. This is one of the most delightfully exotic hotels in China. While standards are not even three stars, its d‚cor is Tibetan-inspired, and more beautiful than Lhasa's Yak Hotel. After dark, red silk lanterns in its Tibetan suites cast a red romantic glow over everything. They were bad for reading, but wonderful for meditating. The Cantonese food was quite good. I think I was the only guest there, even though the province had not had any cases of SARS.

Qinghai had 2000 lamaseries before the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s, and now only about 620. Some of these are huge with well over 1500 monks. The Tibetan language here is different from that in Lhasa, and is known as the Amdo dialect. 

The Aqiong Nanzong nunnery is near the Lijiaxia Dam on the Yellow River, about 131 km. south of Xining. The 10 kilometer-or-so road from the main highway to the nunnery was so bad and deserted, that we had to give up driving our car and instead waited for a four-wheel-drive taxi to come along for the remaining four kilometers or so. The nunnery is at 2300 meters and surrounded by beautiful craggy mountains. Once there, we had to climb up a 100-meter high hill on foot. On the way back, we waited on the side of the road 1 1/2 hours for another four-wheel-drive taxi to appear. Getting there and back is not easy except in mini-buses or jeeps which travel agents can provide. But meeting and talking with the friendly nuns was worth the trouble. 

Bad roads along with recent rains also affected our visit to the birthplaces of the current Dalai Lama and Panchen Lama and we'll try to get there on our next trip. Yes, we're planning another trip already. But other roads were good and the government is building expressways between Xining and Golmud, and Xining and Xiahe in neighboring Gansu. The scenery is lovely with undulating fields of canola and barley like patchwork quilts. The nunnery sits among the dramatic peaks of the Kanbula National Park, and the week of our visit, received its first electricity service. 

Many Tibetans live within 180 km of Xining and the main attractions are the monasteries and the religious artists at Regong/ Rebkong/ Tongren . We visited one family of artists during our three day visit. At Tongren, about 200 families have for many generations specialized in painting tangkas or making them of silk appliqu‚s. They also paint huge murals for the walls of lamaseries, objects of worship. The pictures are done exactly the same as they were in the 14th century. 

We visited the Long Wu Monastery near the artists' villages. It is the largest in town, home to 500 monks, and is of the red sect, Nima school. We also went to Wu Tong Xia Zhuang monastery. 

I was very impressed by the ardor of one of the young monks whose job it was to dance wearing a demon mask. He refused to put on his costume for a photo because he only did so once a year during festivals. Donning the costume made him a priest who could control the evil spirits, not something to be taken lightly. 

On the way to the airport from Xining, we went to Xiao Zhang village in Huzhu County where women of the Tu nationality dress up in their minority costumes, sing and dance for tourists. They greet guests with wine and a ceremonial white hada around our necks. Visitors should be prepared with questions (page 479, 2002 edition). 

Where to Stay
Of our three different hotels, I liked best the Silk Road Tsongkha Hotel. In Xining proper, I stayed in the East Lake Century Hotel (Donghu Guoji Dajiudian), Tongren Bridge. It is on the edge of a small lake - with a lot of green space around it. It is a new hotel with strong water pressure in its shower, but I had to ask for towels. It only had a Chinese breakfast with fried rice, dumpling, many hot and cold dishes of stir-fried vegetables, boiled eggs, lily root, giblets and cucumber, dates and pineapple. It was good and healthy for Y15. I found no one who spoke English. While it did have coffee and tea, I couldn't find milk and sugar. Single rooms were Y368, standard Y388 and suites Y1888. It has 260 rooms but only 60 were open 

Our third hotel was in Longren south of Xining and very simple but adequate. Xining has the better hotels but I didn't get a chance to see any of the others.

Tourism Development 
Mr. Fang Ming of the Tourism Bureau of Qinghai said that his bureau would be developing star-rated hotels by the end of this year and that a five-star hotel would be opened in 2005. Xining currently has three and four-star hotels now for foreigners. Golmud, has one four-star and four three-star hotels now and will be getting more in the future. Tongren has two two-star hotels and might have a three-star in 2006. 

The province is building expressways to scenic spots, and a faster railway from Xining to Golmud that will cover the 900 km. trip in 17 or 18 hours instead of the current 22. He said the new railway from Golmud to Lhasa should be finished in 2008. 

The province has 400 scenic spots, but has now developed only 30. Plans are in the works to protect the environment around Qinghai Lake with its migrating birds. However, a three-star sightseeing boat will carry tourists on it. Already being built are resorts around the lake and more resorts wills tart within two years. The government does not allow the building of resorts within 50 meters of the birds.

Qinghai had no cases of SARS. At that time, it forbade tourists from visiting, closing all travel services. "Qinghai is a plateau ," he said. "The altitude is high. The government paid much attention to hygiene. We took temperatures, and put people in quarantine if they had fevers."

Regarding travel to Tibet from Xining, travel agencies here can get permits for FITs in two days. Tibet Tourism has an office here. Flights go from Xining to Lhasa on Mondays, Wednesdays, Thursdays and Sundays. 

Back to Qinghai 
At the end of my three days, I wanted to get back to photograph masked Tibetan festivals where shamen go into trances and predict the future. These are not done for tourists. They are genuine religious rituals. (See below.) 

Practical Information: 
You can reach Yang Cheng Cai, whom I highly recommend for his English and expertise, 
at Qinghai CITS, e-mail: wildyak@21cn.com  . Web site: www.cits.com . Fax: 971-6115269; Tel. 971 3992299 or 24 hours 971- 6141120. 

A new travel agency not listed in my book that I want to try out next year is Wild Horse Adventure Tours, Xihai Chu Ru Jing Fu Wu Zhong Xin, 19 # Nan Da Jie Xining, 810000. Web-site: www.windhorseadventuretours.com or e-mail windhorse@email.com .Mobile phone (86) 1319-579-7628 (Phuntsok) or (86) 1313-907-3121 (Betsy). Betsy is from Syracuse, New York so English is not a problem. Phuntsok is Tibetan. I asked them to design an eight-day tour for next July to include a couple of festivals. Their eight-day Amdo Monastery Tour follows. You can e-mail them for details of the history, culture, and sightseeing. 

Day 01. July 31 Fly from Beijing to Lanzhou. Transfer to JJ Sun Hotel.

Day 02. Aug 01 Drive 285 km (Eight hours) to Labrang (2,920 m) via Linxia. Lunch at Linxia. Stay at Overseas Tibetan Hotel. 

Day 03. Aug 02 Visit Tashi Kyil Monastery, one of six great Gelukpa monasteries in Tibet. It was 
founded in 1709. Stay at the Tibetan Overseas Hotel. 

Day 04. Aug 03 Drive 100 km (3 hours) to Rebkong (2,920 m). Visit Gartse Gonpa Monastery on the way. In the afternoon, visit Riwong Gonchen Monastery founded in 1301. Stay at Rebkong Hotel

Note: For the next two days we will attend the Shaman's Festival of the Bon Religion with different rituals and activities that vary widely from town to town. All activities are presided over by one or more Lhawa (Shaman) in trance. Many different dances are performed, all with their own meanings and intent. You might see drum beatings, the ritual piercing of the cheeks and backs, and dances for peace, good harvest, and thriving water. Dances could also commemorate past battles and the resolution of the war between the Tang Dynasty and the Tibetan Regime. Village shaman give a show of power. It is important to note that the schedules for these festivals change every year and could be decided at the last minute. Your guide will learn the schedule upon arrival. 

Day 05. Aug 04 Drive to Sakkyi town. See the most famous Shaman performances and trances of the festival. The Shaman here in Sakkyi have all practiced their art and religion for more than 15 years. In the afternoon, visit Gomer Monastery and stupa. Stay at same hotel.

Day 06. Aug 05 Drive to Lhanggya town and see the festival there. This festival lasts all day, and there is some ritual piercing of the cheeks. You might also see the shaman climb the dragon pole and ritually cut his head with a knife. At some point the shaman from the next village might come down the road with a procession of dancers and perform a shaman's duel dance with the shaman and dancers from Lhanggya. Later, the festivities move through the fields to another village and everyone follows. In the afternoon, visit the famous Tibetan Thangka painting schools. We can also visit Lower Wutun town and see the festival there. Stay in same hotel.

Day 07 Aug 06 Drive 175 km (5 hours ) to Xining along the Yellow River. Along the way, visit Shachong 
Monastery, one of the biggest yellow sect monasteries in Amdo which was founded in the 12th century. 1200 monks currently live and study in the monastery, following the footsteaps of Tsong Khapa who became a monk here. Stay at Qinghai Hotel in Xining.

Day 08 Aug 07 In morning, drive 25 km (Half an hour) to Kumbum Monastery (2,700 m). Return to Xining for afternoon flight out.

Estimated cost for this 8-day tour. 

Price for one of 2 pax (1 car). 9720 RMB (US$1200). For single supplement add: 1200 RMB (US$148).

Price for one of 3-6 pax (2 cars). 8668 RMB (US$1070). For single supplement add: 1200 RMB (US$148).

Price for one of 7-10 pax (3 cars). 7695 RMB (US$950). For single supplement add: 1200 RMB (US$146).

These prices do not include domestic airfare which would be as follows: One Way Beijing to Lanzhou: 1250 RMB US$152. One Way Xining to Beijing: 1290 RMB (US$157)

This is just one example of the many adventures available through Wind Horse Adventure Tours which has itineraries custom designed for people interested in monasteries and spiritual quests, cultural exploration, and trekking adventures. It has Four-Wheel Drive expeditions, horseback riding adventures, hiking / backpacking treks, and bicycle journeys. For more information, please see our web site. 
-- RLM, August, 2003. 

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XINGLONG
The best resort on the east coast of Hainan Island is still the 42-acre Kangle Garden Resort (page 630). Its web-site is: www.kangleresort.com . (English), and its e-mail is at: kangle@public.hk.hi.cn . The new section of the current hotel was finished in 1998.

It is 140km and about a two-hour drive from the airport at Sanya on the Eastern Expressway, plus about eight kilometers after turning off at Exit 14 Shimei. Taxis from Sanya and from Haikou cost about Y200 each. The East Bus Station in Haikou has public bus service (Y40) to Xinglong's Pearl Resort, less than one km away.

The Kangle Resort should get its five-star rating this year. Prices for rooms haven't changed since my book was published, but it's now Y1288-Y20000 for suites. It has been giving 40% discounts and takes credit cards. You can get around by electric cart if you need to.

I spent a night there recently in its new Palm Court which overlooks one of the pools. The resort was very beautiful with good international standards, and the air was clean and wonderful. It now has 354 rooms and suites, most in low-rise buildings. The rooms in the new section are very tastefully decorated with louvered shutters (no curtains), wooden desks trimmed with metal socks, and six lamps each. It has wicker chairs and blue-and-white porcelain planters with live plants. Rooms not only have kettles, but tea pots. It has in-room safes, lightweight dressing gowns, and matching umbrellas. Other nice touches include the ceramic baskets for shampoo and tooth brushes, and a 1999 China Telephone Directory. Its room air-conditioner is controlled by a remote, hand-held clicker. The air-conditioner is near its high ceiling.

The largest of its two swimming pools is 120 meters long. As these are natural hot springs, the temperature has been cooled to a more comfortable 23C. It has added archery, tennis courts, bowling, Ping-Pong and billiards.. The food is still very good, most of it fresh from the Overseas Chinese farm of which this is a part. The old Chinese restaurant is now a night club and it now has Cantonese, Southeast Asian and western restaurants. Its western breakfast for Y68 was a buffet that included cooked-to-order toast, eggs, wonton, orange juice that tasted like Tang, sausages, croissants, salted duck eggs, congee, and salads. The staff made a good attempt at speaking English.

It now has a show with Indonesian dances. Many of the people at the farm arrived from that country in the 1970s. You can shoot off fireworks. You can rent bicycles for Y30 an hour. The nearby Riyue Beach has added showers and umbrellas, and the Kangle Garden Resort can take groups there for free.

Visits to relatively nearby ethnic villages in the area can be sad as villagers are poor and haven't been well organized for tourists--but this may be changing. Kangle Resort now has its own 18-hole golf course, its entrance five km away. The resort provides free transportation for golfers.

I kept thinking what a great conference site this would be.

The only thing I found strange, was the placement of the smoke alarm between the ceiling fan and the ceiling in the rooms. And I thought the rooms in the old section needed refurbishing. The gym was small (only four old machines) and in places the grass lawns needed better tending.

See also HAIKOU and SANYA. - RLM, Date: April, 2000.

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Yangshuo
 

Yangshuo has something for everyone. For a first time visitor to China, is a soft landing into an ancient Chinese setting with many of the comforts of home. For the veteran Asia traveler or resident, Yangshuo, with its proximity to Hong Kong (a mere one-hour flight) and other large urban Asian centers, is a spectacular place just to hang out and unwind for a few days.

This popular backpackers’ destination since the ‘80’s has more recently been discovered by tourists both domestic and foreign, yet the crowds still fail to detract from the town’s architectural charms and its serene location amongst green rice fields, gently flowing rivers and mystical karst peaks.

The old part of town is blissfully free of vehicles of any kind, a rarity in China. That gives the pedestrian  unfettered access to the scores of commercial concerns that line the streets from one end of town to the other. A surprising number of locals serving in the businesses speak passable English; it’s no wonder the place is called “a global village.” Perfect for those who can’t leave their shopping cravings at home! 

Shoppers can find souvenirs of minority crafts and antiques (some real, some not); exquisite  embroidered tablecloths; popular Western (often fake but good quality) branded clothes or very chic Chinese apparel and accessories; hand painted T-shirts or fans; art and calligraphy… and much more, all  for still reasonable prices compared to other tourist centers in China. But you have to bargain. Pretty, although phony, “pashmina” shawls in a rainbow of colors were initially offered to me for RMB60 a piece; I walked away with ten shawls for RMB150 (under US$20). Haggle for the fresh fruit sold by the
local farmers on the streets, too.

Pleasingly striking, and in such contrast to the ancient (yet restored) white and black exteriors, are the upscale modern designs of so many of the store interiors; more what I would expect to find in fashionable urban centers than in a far-flung hick town like this.

Even the non-shopper can take pleasure in just a relaxing stroll along the marble stoned streets past the 400-year-old buildings and stop to enjoy a great cup of coffee (really!) or a cold pijiu (beer) and a pizza in one of the many Western-style bars, coffee shops and restaurants, many managed by foreigners.

After checking out a dozen or so different tempting menus, four of us ate a decent Western meal of Mexican spicy chicken, french fries, spaghetti bolognese and more, at Red Star Express for about RMB  200 (US$25), including a cheap bottle of Great Wall wine (decent foreign wines are available too for the
pickier and better heeled traveler). To find the restaurant, look for the Red Star flags at turnoffs from both Xi Jie (commonly known as West Street) and Xianqian Jie.

To cater to the masses of local tourists and the more adventurous foreigners, there is a wide variety of Chinese eateries with dishes from every region of this vast country. One evening we considered eating at the outdoor night marketplace near the bus station, but it was packed full, so we opted for a popular
restaurant with Chinese vacationers, Big Sister Xie (Xie Dajie) on Diecui Road. Unfortunately for us the local specialty beer fish was sold out for the night already, yet we were not disappointed with our meal.

While I enjoy Chinese cuisine enormously, I have never quite adapted to the Chinese breakfast. It was a blessing for me then to be offered a choice of a standard continental or American breakfast with fresh squeezed orange juice and freshly brewed coffee in many of the old town restaurants for about RMB20.

Global Café & Bar and Café China, both on the corner of West Street and Xianqian Jie and just a few  paces from our guesthouse, had full breakfast menus, including the standard egg and meat options, muesli, yoghurt, pancakes, along with friendly service and even free Internet access for their customers.

Prefer cappuccino or latte? Sure, yours for the asking.

Our Hong Kong travel companions, however, were happier to breakfast on congee, salted eggs and soya  milk, which is just as readily available, but at other restaurants along West Street for about RMB10.

Being a town that principally caters to tourism, a very broad array of accommodations is available, from beds in hostels to rooms in guesthouses to four-star hotels, with reasonable daily rates ranging from under US$10 to $60 (a premium is charged during holidays and high season). If you want to experience
the peace of the countryside, away from the nightlife of Yangshuo, with a little more digging you can find even cheaper, yet clean, rooms not far out of town.

Four of us (two friends, my husband and I) stayed in a family suite of two bedrooms – one with a double bed, the other with two twins – and a frugally furnished front room with an old model TV at the Venice Hotel at 20 West Street for RMB330 a night (which comes to about US$10 a night per person). Phone:
+86-773-8815889, fax: +86-773-8815899. Although the rooms were fine, the service was not as friendly here as we received in other guesthouses we later checked out, and I would recommend choosing one of many similar standard guesthouses on Binjiang Road overlooking the Li River. You could try Imperial City Hotel at 9 Binjiang Road (phone: +86-773-8815188) or Riverview Hotel at 11-15 Binjiang Road (phone: +86-773-8822688, website: www.riverview.com.cn  ); both looked fine, just be sure to ask for a room with a balcony. Off-season you can arrive without a booking and easily explore the many lodging options within the 600-or-so-meter stretch of West Street and Binjiang Road (you can get a room for less than half the published rate); but I would not risk this during the summer peak season.

Beyond the good food and shopping is the focal attraction to Yangshuo: its extraordinary location, what generations of poets and painters have called “the finest scenery under heaven.” During his visit to the area in 1979, Henry Kissinger, former U.S. Secretary of State commented:

Before l came here l thought the Chinese landscape paintings were but the romantic creation of painters, but now having seen the landscape…l realize they are realistic genuine portrayals.

I can’t rave enough about the bliss of softly floating down the Yulong (Meeting the Dragon) River on a bamboo raft… “merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream.” Surrounded by magnificent limestone pinnacles veiled in a gentle mist and flawlessly mirrored in the clear water, lively ducks and their keepers, and water buffalo in verdant rice paddies, we went with the flow through a stunning slice of timeless rural life. And to top it all off, by being a lazy bunch and late to our morning appointment with our boat guide (arranged through our guesthouse), we had the immense good fortune of missing the earlier crowds and hence having the entire river to ourselves! How rare is that! We drifted under the 600-year-old stone-arch of Dragon Bridge past Baishan Village, where we glimpsed chickens being defeathered and washed in the river in preparation for lunch. Our peace and quiet was only disturbed when our boatman answered his cell phone in a bellowing voice that seemed to echo through the valley!

We cut the usual two-hour trip downstream short by about twenty minutes in order to have lunch at a farmer’s house. That was an excellent choice! From the river we walked through rice paddies for a comfortable fifteen minutes to another charming ancient village where one of the farmers had set up an eatery. If you tend to be squeamish, you may not want to watch the neck-wringing of your live chicken, but I can guarantee the meal will be fresh and tasty! Our meal of four main dishes – tarot root with green vegetable, scrambled egg with tomato, stuffed snails, and the chicken– with tomato and tofu (beancurd) soup and a big bowl of steamed rice came to less than RMB160 (US$20). A taxi was called to come pick us up for the 10-minute drive back to Yangshuo, and that was relatively costly at RMB40.

There is a longer 5.5-hour with lunch rafting tour offered for between RMB160-220 by various tour agencies in town. We boarded the rafts just up-stream from the Baishan Village and traversed what we were told was the better (top) half of the Yulong River tour for RMB60 per raft seating two (US$8).

The next day we hired bicycles to explore more of the countryside. We opted for tandems so as to keep the event within the comfort zones of our less-experienced urbanite companions, and the rental for these was RMB10 (US$1.25) each for the day. If you have ever learned to ride a bike and are in average
shape, pedaling the fairly flat area around town is not overly challenging. We just took it easy and slow and savored the fresh air and the magnificent landscape, stopping for a tasty bowl of local spicy noodles as well as to take a closer look at the orange groves. You don’t need directions to find the bikes; they are for rent everywhere around the old town, but ask your lodgings for a map of the bike routes. We took the road past the 1500-year-old banyan tree to another popular destination about 8 km from town, Moon Hill, which more ambitious hikers will trek for an awesome panoramic view of the area.

If boating and bicycling are not strenuous enough for you, Yangshuo offers spectacular rock climbing opportunities for the beginner and the advanced climber. You can find out more from Karst Café: 42 Xianqian Jie, or email info@karstclimber.com. Or from XClimber: 29 Guihua Rd, call +86-773-881-4499 or email xclimber001@hotmail.com . We did not deal with either of these companies, so user beware.

How to get there: there is no airport in Yangshuo, but there are many daily flights to the nearby city of Guilin. Before arriving, we had arranged with our hotel a private taxi for the 2-hour ride from the airport to Yangshuo for RMB 200 (US$25). Alternatively, and much cheaper, you can go to Guilin by taxi or bus and from there take a bus (express or local) or take the wonderful 40-km boat ride down the Li River to Yangshuo.



Two days in Yangshuo may not be enough to explore all the activities on offer. There’s always a chance I  will go back one day soon and try a cooking course, or improve my Chinese with a language class, or test my strength and courage rock climbing, or even take an introductory session of Tai Chi or Kung Fu; who
knows? But honestly, what really will get me to return to this ancient town is the sheer magic of the distinctive and tranquil natural beauty around it. The poets and painters of old had it right; this place is at least one of the finest under heaven. -- Francisca de Zwager, DATE. April, 2007.
 

We had another wonderful trip!  It was great to see Li and Feng Ping again.  Li is working harder than ever trying to keep her two boys in school…   

We stayed in the same house, which now has air conditioning and western toilets in some of the rooms.  A giant house has sprung up directly across the street curtailing their view of the rice fields and the town has many more tourist facilities.  Other than that, it is much the same.  The brother's adobe house next door (locked up last time we were there) now has Feng Ping's parents living there with his flock of ducks which go padding out to the rice fields every morning at 6:30.   

Li is having a bigger kitchen built onto the back of the house so she can teach cooking classes. She cooked us snails for dinner, which she casually did right in front of us.  We helped prepare them and they were delicious.  We helped her make Zhongzi, leaf wrapped steamed buns as offering to the ancestor spirits for the Qing Ming festival which we saw going on all around us on our bicycle trip with firecrackers exploding at gravesites all around the fields.  

Feng Ping is just glowing.  She feels very good about succeeding at pulling her family up a huge rung economically and she is also very content with her family including the amazing Jia Jia, now seven years old and incredibly strong, wilful, outspoken, funny and she eats like a horse, downing three times as much food as anyone else.   She is definitely in charge in that family. Her father adores her.    

Feng Ping's English has improved greatly allowing much more nuanced exchange. She took us up the Li river by boat and also to the Xing Ping market, the basic farm and town villagers exchange.  Where we crossed the Yulong River in a tiny one person ferry near a water wheel on our 2001 bicycle trip now has 50 businesses with bamboo rafts to pole you down the river while people with cameras and computers try to sell you images of your descent over the wiers, as well as soft drinks etc.  Apparently around the 1st of May Chinese tourists from Guangzhou pour into the area and not a bamboo raft is empty.  In a  climax of touristic excess at the debarkation point, one can have  oneself photographed with a two humped camel sporting a red blanket.  Yangshuo like almost everywhere we went is more developed, better roads, more and better houses.  

See below for more information.  Feng Ping’s cell phone has not changed. – Ginny Stearns,   DATE: April, 2006.

Yangshou re-opened for visitors in July and most things are the same as before, but not much tourism, so business is not good. I hope it will be better next year. During SARS time, the Yangshuo government put a lot of policemen at different entrances here to stop buses, tourists and cars from coming. 

Some people lost their jobs and went to some other place to looking for work but we stayed here. Now we are more careful about hygiene, even the children. Li and her family at Country Cottage are fine.-Xu Fengping, DATE, August, 2003. 
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Xu Feng Ping's new telephone number is 13977351911-RLM, DATE September, 2001.

My friend Ginny Stearns read about the farm house hostel below and said she wanted to stay there. I warned her that Chinese villages are not like American villages. There'd be mosquitoes, muddy, unpaved roads, and manure on the ground. The accommodations would be crude, I said. I didn't know then if she were finicky or not. Fortunately, she was not.

Our three night stay at COUNTRY COTTAGE in Yangshuo was wonderful. While the rooms were small, had no closets, and no sinks - we managed fine. We put our clothes on a wire strung across the room. We emptied our tooth paste water into the squat toilet. We walked 300 meters to the highway to get a passing mini-bus 10 minutes to Yangshuo or 1 1/2 hours to Guilin. On the way, we stopped and tried to make friends with the smiling villagers. (We could take motorcycles rickshaws from town.)

A star-rated hotel it was not. It did have a few mosquitoes. But it was one of the highlights of our two week trip together. We felt close to Chinese people.

Li our hostess spoke English. Like her sister-in-law Fengping, she had taught herself. We watched her as she stuffed pumpkin flowers and cooked for us. And while she braided the hair of Ginny's eight year old daughter and her own two sons played in the living room, she told us she had always wanted a girl.

Her husband and brothers-in-law were farmers. To get the compulsory water buffalo-ploughing photo, we just had to ask. Fengping said there're be no problem getting one. That farmer over there was her brother and she told him where to go so we could get the best photo. She also showed us the new calf in the barn.

We ate Li's great cooking on the terrace outside the house, under the shadow of one of the area's lovely vertical limestone mountains. Moon Hill was within sight of the village. We were near the entrance to one of the caves. Because Ginny's mother had a problem walking on uneven ground, Li's husband put a stool on a bicycle cart and pushed her to the road. When he learned that she could not cope with squat toilets, he made a seat she could use.

We felt close to the family and learned some of the family secrets. We woke up to the sound of quacking ducks. And it's always nice watching other people work.

When Feng Ping took Ginny and her family bicycling - her husband Bob, who wanted to avoid crowds, was happy. They didn't see any other tourists - just mountains, and rice paddies, bamboo and farm houses.

Feng Ping arranged for a van to pick us up at the airport, and another to take us back. She arranged for the boat trip on the Li River. She was wonderful.

Country Cottage is at Moon Hill, Gao Tian, Tel. 773-8902389, e-mail: Lijingfeng88@yahoo.com  . Li charges Y60 to Y100 a room. She has cooked for groups of 60 people for Y10 a head. For small groups, it's Y15 per person. Her stuffed bean curd, stuffed peppers, and stuffed egg plant are great. She and her husband are planning to expand the bathrooms soon.

Xu Feng Ping can now be reached at Countryside Caf‚, West Street, Tel. 8822829, 8827488. E-mail: FengPing99@Yahoo.com   Tel;86-773-8827488, Fax:0086-773-8826101. Please call her at night after 8pm. As a bicycle guide, she charges Y50 per person per day for three people or more. For one or two people, it's Y100 per day. Add a bicycle rental fee of Y10 a day per bike, and food.

The Youth Hostel ( www.iyhf.org   or e-mail: maqilianiyh@263.net  . ) is now open and is very good. It has a great location on West Street. A couple of the rooms have balconies overlooking that tourist street. An up-market hotel is opening as part of the French Restaurant. - RLM, Date, April, 2001.
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More about Yangshuo and Guilin will be in the next edition of China Guide by Ruth Lor Malloy. It is due out in Spring, 2002.
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This pretty little town is at the south end of the Li River boat trip from Guilin. Many more people here speak English than in Guilin. Tourists usually come here by boat but you can also arrive by public mini-bus with padded but uncomfortable seats for Y5. It takes about 90 minutes.

The main tourist area is one kilometer-long West Street which is only open to pedestrians. You can hire a bicycle rickshaw to carry your luggage if necessary. You can walk to the hotels from the bus station which is almost at one end of West Street. The Li River is at the other end.

The Li River cruise prices are much cheaper in Yangshuo than those booked in Guilin, and boats go to the same best area about 45 km upstream from here. I paid Y85 at Love's (below) on West Street, a New Zealander paid Y60, and some other foreigners paid Y100 for the same boat. So shop around at the travel agents below if you want to save money. Bring your own lunch; a simple lunch costs extra.

The boats are generally not as good as those from Guilin and probably don't have air-conditioning. We were not allowed on the roof, nor were there seats outside on the wet deck. We had no English-speaking guide. But we had no problem enjoying the scenery. Our boat had 18 seats, tables, and toilet.

Many visitors put their rented bicycles on the boats and then cycle back to Yangshuo. A word of warning however. If you cycle back, do NOT take the main road that goes through a narrow unlit 500 meter-long tunnel. This is used by wide trucks which do not turn on their headlights. The New Zealander who barely survived it said it was the scariest experience of his life.

I took a bus back from Xing Ping two hours north of Yangshuo. It was crowded and dirty but an interesting experience for about Y5. You can also of course take the boat back.

Where to Stay: Most of the hotels are on or within a block of West Street. Hotel prices in Yangshuo are cheaper than in Guilin, and standards are lower but adequate. While this tiny town has nothing comparable to the Bravo or the Park, it does have a few relatively good places to stay. It also has some adequate smaller hotels.

The best hotel is the Paradise, then the Li River. The inexpensive guest houses do not have television channels in English, rooms are small, and with no shower curtains, your toilet seat and bathroom floor can get pretty wet. With that in mind, there's the Hotel Explorer (Y100 a night with a good view of the river from the roof), and the West Street Hotel. Both are clean and adequate with 24-hour hot running water. You don't need a hotel restaurant. West Street, the street, not the hotel, is nearby and full of good restaurants.

Five more hotels should open in 2000 and 2001. Except for the Paradise, hotels here can only change U.S. cash, but the Bank of China can change travelers' checks at its branch near the river. The Yangshuo telephone code is the same as Guilin's, also 0773.

PARADISE HOTEL (a.k.a. Yangzhou Resort Hotel) is in a garden at 116 West Street, 541900, Tel. 8822109, fax 8822106. E-mail: glpysr@public.glptt.gx.cn . $100-$138 for rooms, and $150-$300 for suites. These prices include service charge and tax. It has been giving a 30% discount off standard and superior rooms only. It accepts credit cards and changes travelers' checks only for its in-house guests.

It has a swimming pool, CNN, IDD, 24-hour hot water and restaurants. Its banquet hall seats 200; its new meeting hall seats 100 people theatre style. It should have a total of 150 rooms by August, 2000. Standard rooms have only showers, no tubs, and the air is musty. Assistant Manager Helen Huang speaks English.

The LI RIVER HOTEL (Li Jiang Jiudian), 33 Die Chui Road, 541900. Tel. 8825348, and Tel. and Fax 8827439. It charges Y368-Y418 for rooms, and Y888 for suites including service and tax, and has been giving 30% discounts.

This 62-room hotel was adequate and is two blocks from West Street in a non-tourist, Chinese area. Its policy of having to pay a deposit before guests can even make a local telephone call was very annoying. I was on the third floor and couldn't even call Reception. It had moldy shower curtains, very bad grouting, and wooden floors. No safes were in the guest rooms. It gives a foot massage for Y90, and body massage for Y100.

The WEST STREET HOTEL (Xi Jie Binguan), 108 West Street, 541900. Tel.8828659, Fax 8828658. Rooms cost $21 to $65, with 15% surcharge. Discounts have been 30%. This hostel was opened in April, 2000 and is a few meters on a side street off of West Street bordering onto a canal. >From West Street, turn north at the Hao Sen Department Store. Ask for General Manager Linda Tao who speaks English, if you have a problem. It has 27 rooms, air-conditioning, television, and a good mountain view. There should be 24-hour hot water and a restaurant by now.

HOTEL EXPLORER, 40 Xian Qian Street, Tel. 8828116, Fax 8827816. E-mail: JimmyQin@hotmail.com . Y168-Y288 for rooms. It has been discounting about 15%. This 24-room hotel is one block from the river and has no restaurant.

The YANGSHUO YOUTH HOSTEL is across from the bus station at 85, Pantao Road, Tel. 8822347. Rates are per person, not per room. A dorm room costs Y10, a dorm room with bathroom Y15, and an air-conditioned room costs Y40 to Y60 per person. It has 24-hour hot showers. But the hostel is very worn and dirty.

Another possibility is living in the privately-run three-story COUNTRY COTTAGE, opened to foreign tourists in April or May this year. The village, Li Cun, is clean and accessible by mini-bus every 10 minutes during the day from Yangshuo, and it's at the base of Moon Mountain, nine kilometers from West Street. The population is 600. Prices here are Y60 for a double room with no air-conditioning. It does have 24-hour hot water showers and squat toilets in each room. Meals are also available. Contact: Xu Feng Ping at the Countryside Caf‚, West Street, Tel. 8822829, 8827488. E-mail: FengPing99@Yahoo.com . Recruiting office, 12 Xianqian Street, Yangshuo.

Where to Eat: many of the restaurants on West Street are open for breakfast.

The French Restaurant is in the old Jiangxi Guild Hall at 79 West Street, Tel. 8828040, fax 8828070, E-mail: levotre@hotmail.com  or Annie.cf@hotmail.com  Ask for French chef Christian Cuvelier. It is more expensive than the other restaurants here, but the western food should taste genuinely western. Sandwiches are Y15-Y25, and entr‚e and dessert cost Y40. An appetizer and entr‚e cost Y40; a salad, hot dish and dessert cost Y60 or Y80.

Also on West Street is J.J.'s, operated by a former chef of Hong Kong's top-of-the line Regent Hotel. Located at 101 West Street, telephone 8821254, it is open 7:30am-11pm or later. The owner speaks English well, so you can ask him to make some fancy dishes from that excellent hotel. His menu lists lemon chicken for Y15, steak Diana for Y20, percolated coffee for Y6, Irish coffee for Y19, and pineapple sundae for Y7. It takes no credit cards.

Just down the road is the Mei You Caf‚ offering Chinese and Western food with equally attractive prices, English and good service. The sign outside says "Mei You (don't have) warm beer, mei you lousy food, mei you rip offs... " If you are interested in martial arts, look for Brother's Caf‚. The Red Star Express is noted for its pizza. It's at 66 West Street, Tel. 8822699, e-mail: lizhaoke@hotmail.com .

There's also Caf‚ Under the Moon at 83 West Street, Tel. 8825000, fax 8825525. E-mail: unrmoon@gl.gx.cninfo.net . This is open from 7:00am to midnight, and offers an American breakfast for Y19, a high fiber breakfast with muesli for Y25, and a club sandwich for Y16. Its coffees including latte and Irish sell for Y6 to Y18, soft drinks for Y6 and Y7, and beer for Y7 to Y15. Its roast duck with pancakes cost Y25, steamed fish Y28, mapo bean curd Y13, sweet and sour pork on rice Y18, and dumplings Y8 to Y14. Its homemade ice cream costs Y5 and up, pancakes and crepes Y8 to Y10, and ginger ale Y8. It offers copies of China Daily, and the only fault found was a crack in a honey pot.

You can get a qigong massage outside of Susan's Caf‚ for Y80 to Y100 an hour, less if you haggle. Ask for Vicky, the granddaughter of the masseur.

Seeing the Sights: You can take a mini-bus or bicycle about eight km to the base of Moon Hill, and start climbing. The first 250 meters up is okay. Above that, it's slippery and muddy in wet weather. The view of the countryside is great. Some people visit the mud baths for a soak, and go to watch the cormorant fishing. And of course there are boat trips.

Practical Information :
Stores open between 9:00am and 10am and stay open in the evening. At 104 West Street, you can buy tee-shirts that say, "Go Away" or "I'm not a big nose foreigner." There's a book exchange and places to leave messages also on the street.

You can only cash travelers' checks at the Bank of China which has a branch near the boat pier.

Travel Agents and Guides: You can leave a message for Ms. Xu Feng Ping, freelance guide, at the Countryside Caf‚, 119 West Street, Tel. 882-6101 near the bus station. She is a delightful person with good English, and operates a hostel in her village at the foot of Moon Mountain. She can take you bicycling.

Ms. Rosemary Deng at CITS speaks good English and is helpful. Her address is 118, West Street, Tel. 8822975 or 8828733 (home). E-mail: rosemary@gl.gx.cninfo.com . CITS has a one-hour tour to the Buddha Water Cave for Y40, and a two-hour tour to the mud baths for Y60. She charges Y25 a person for the cormorant fishing in the evening, a fascinating experience.

Avoid CITS at 103 West Street. Mr. Chu Yan Xi, the manager there, didn't seem interested in giving any service at all.

The Paradise Hotel has guides for Y150 a day. Ask for Jennie.

You can't avoid the internet bars; there are a lot. The Wanderers' Net Bar is at 49 Xianqiao Street, and was charging Y12 an hour. It also is a travel agency. There are two other net bars across from Explorer Hotel. Love's Tour Travel Office at 70 West Street has net service and can also book the boat. You can telephone Terry Mao at his cell phone 13807735680, or Tel. 8828381.

Note: Be aware of the many local people who say they are collecting coins of different countries. It seems to be a local industry.

See also Guilin above. - RLM, April, 00.
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Recent Travelers Write:
If we were to choose "one best day," it would definitely be our day of bicycling in Yangshuo. As soon as we checked into our hotel we went across the street to a place that had bikes to rent (Y10 a day). While examining the bikes ( good ones), we met a Dutch couple who were just returning from their day of cycling. They enthusiastically recommended that we not only rent the bikes but also use the guide they had that day. This young woman, Xu Feng Ping, was delightful. At the couple's suggestion she showed us photos of the countryside we would travel through and her book of enthusiastic recommendations from other tourists. We were delighted to find her.

For Y50 yuan, she spent a full 9 am-5 pm day with us bicycling through small villages, past rice paddies, to visit a cave, and to her family's home in Moon Mountain Village. There she cooked a full and delicious noon meal over small fires in the farm house kitchen. Her English was excellent although (or perhaps because) she has never formally studied English. She said she had learned it all from tourists and she seemed eager to learn new words from us.

Her name is Xu Feng Ping, and she is based at the Countryside Cafe, #119 West Street,Yangshuo. Tel./fax 86-773-882-6101.

From there we reluctantly went to the Guilin airport... --George and Ann Levinger, April/May, 1999


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