Yangshuo: Trek from Xingping to Yangdi

Beautiful scenery along the way!

Our next day in Yangshuo, Nathan and I decided to walk from Xining we were staying along the river banks 16 km up to another village called Yangdi. We were told it was a really awesome trail that passed through many small villages and was a good way to see the life around the river. We were definitely not disappointed..not only was the scenery absolutely stunning, the people we met along the way were very interesting.

The trail starts just outside of Xingping and goes along the riverside. The first stop along the way was at the scenic spot that inspired the image on the 20 yuan note.we stopped to take some photos and kept walking until we reached a pier where we had to take our first of three boat rides across the river. This one was easy as there was a ferry and a set price so we hopped on and made it across with no troubles.

The inspiration for the 20Y!

We kept walking along the river and walked through a few small villages. This area of China is considered an autonomous region, meaning that there are more minority people than Han Chinese. Because they are minority people, they are very poor. Seeing how these people lived was extremely eye opening. The houses were very basic and many of them we only half finished (we assumed the money ran out and they couldn't afford to keep building). The people farm the land around them in order to support themselves. All three generations of the family work in the field in order to get the job done. We met a few young girls who I spoke with and they were helping their parents pick fruit instead of going to school at age 8. Seeing the elderly people and the young both hard at work was quite the sight. The people appeared much older than they were, a testament to how hard of a life they had. It was honestly one of the most beautiful treks I have done. It was one thing to see the magnificent scenery from a boat on the river cruise but a completely different view point on foot retracing our trail. We not only got to see the scenery but also the life that the river sustains.

After passing through another village, we were met on the trail by an older, rough looking woman wearing a purple hat. She instantly tried to sell us things and we insisted numerous times that we didn't want anything she had to offer us, but she continued to follow us down the path. It got annoying so we decided to stop and take a rest and see what she did. We sat on the river bank and she stopped with us and sat a few paces behind us, one again trying to sell us goods. At this point we were pretty frustrated but there was only so much we could do so we continued along the trail, the crazy purple hat woman not far behind. We walked through some villages and she kept following. I told her that we didn't want her goods and that we didn't need her bamboo raft across the river but she didn't seem to listen. Now we were really annoyed and still couldn't get rid of this woman! She followed us all the way to the river side where we needed to catch a second ferry across the river. There was another woman there and I asked her where the ferry was she told me there was no ferry today. The purple hat lady was screaming at us to get on one of her friends bamboo rafts and at this point I had no patience left. I turned to her and said anything offensive I could in Chinese. I told her we didn't want the boat and that she was crazy and that I thought she should get on the boat and go away. She didn't like that very much but a few village kids that were around thought it was hilarious and started to laugh. The crazy purple hat lady started spouting off god knows what at us and thank god there was other people around because Nathan and I both swear she was crazy enough to have tried to kill us or something insane like that....this woman was batshit!

We decided to take the other woman's bamboo boat across the river and waved goodbye to the insane purple hat woman. We continued our walk along the banks of the other side of the river and it wasn't long until we had to cross the river again. This time was pretty funny as well. We knew there was supposed to be a ferry but a local farmer had followed us to the river banks offering to give us a ride for a price double what the ferry was. I told him that we would take the ferry and he said no there is no ferry today and we, believing him bargained his price down and hopped on his boat. As we were pushing off we noticed that there in fact was a ferry as it was just leaving the other side of the river. We groaned out loud and the man chuckled to himself knowing that we had noticed his white lie.

We made it to the other side and to the final village of our long walk, Yangdi! We breathed a sigh of relief knowing that we had made it and hopped on a bus to take us back to Xingping. It was a very eyeopening and comical day or I guess you could say, just another day in China.

The crazy lady in the purple toque!