YANSHUO - Wednesday, Oct. 19 - It was 6 a.m. and Li Jenfeng, 39, mother of two and our unofficial travel agent since we've been in Yangshuo, was waiting outside our hotel on her motorbike ready to walk us three blocks to where we would catch a mini-bus to Xingping, an old, wooden town and ferry port 40 minutes away, for the start of a one-and-a-half hour cruise along the Li River in a bootleg boat.
A boat trip along the river as it winds through 1000-foot karst mountain peaks is the highlight of a trip to this area. Most people take a six-hour, $60 one-way trip aboard a licensed tour boat from Guilin. The best scenery, however, is along a 12-mile stretch, starting in Xingping and ending in a town called Yangdi,and for those who like the idea of a shorter, less expensive, less crowded trip, any of the travelers' cafes, guides or hotels can make the arrangements.
The boats aren't luxury cruisers. Ours was a flat-bottomed wooden vessel outfitted with wooden children's school desk chairs for seats. Nor are they legal. At $5 a ticket, they're considered bad for business, and if the authorities show up, they sometimes return to a different dock a mile or so upriver from where they started.
Nine of us made the trip this morning. Meeting the mini-bus was a woman with a cell phone and purse full of money slung around her shoulder. "Hello, hello,'' she called out, pointing everyone in the direction of the dock.
We boarded around 7 a.m. with the morning light behind us for perfect picture-taking. We couldn't snap fast enough. We shot pictures of women squatting on the river bank washing clothes, water buffalo out for a morning swim and fishermen untangling their nets, all against a backdrop of the sheer-sided cliffs of coffee-table book fame.
We took turns taking each others' pictures on a little stool set up on the bow. The boatman kept in touch by cell phone with the woman stationed back at the dock.
Apparently the authorities did show up because he shortened the return trip by about 15 minutes and pulled into a different dock. The woman with the purse and cell phone was there waiting to lead her charges back to town and onto the next bus to Yangshuo.
Floating along the Li
How do middle-class Chinese like to spend their free time on a Sunday?
Cruising along the water on a bamboo raft outfitted with umbrellas and lounge chairs. It makes for a relaxing afternoon.
We became instant celebrities when we joined a group on holiday from Guangzhou as they floated down the Dragon River in Yangshou over the weekend. Several asked their boatmen to paddle their rafts close to ours so they could take pictures.
The Chinese are becoming avid travelers. For those who have never before been outside their own province, seeing Westerners is still a novelty, and a photo is an excellent souvenir.
Big groups might pack a picnic lunch and rent a double-wide raft with a singer on board. The price includes the services of a barefoot boatman who paddles with a single bamboo oar. The raft itself is made from 10 eight-inch wide bamboo poles lashed together with wire.
Everyone screams when the boatmen edge it into position to head over one of several small damns, but no one falls out, and even if someone did, the river is shallow and everyone has a life jacket.
Another favorite souvenir: A digital picture of your scared self as your boat heads over the damn and slaps the water. Amateur photographers capture the moment from aboard a floating photo studio equipped with scanners and printers.
The quality's not bad, about what you'd get on a cruise ship or amusement park and I can tell you first-hand, the looks of panic are real.
