Photos

from Xinping village near Yangshou (a short trip by bus), there are lots of side trips along the Li River, including a boat trip to the so called Fishing Village. Let me tell you, from what I have seen of the artitecture around Yangshou county, these spikes are the only old (pre-Liberation) buildings remaining. And made into a tourist site :(

all other, even Chinese style buildings, are newly built. China that I have seen is not dissimilar to the USSR where i was born: no historic building was kept unless it had a "tourist" value; places of worships and old houses (especially the once which would be able to give you an idea how life was before communism) were systematically destroyed. the famous song went: "We'll destroy old world to its routes and we'll build our new, our very own one".

anyways, i also wanted to take these spikes together with the famous Guilin hills in the distance, there is a certain similarity don't you find? taken at around 2 pm so contrast is a bit too high.

I went on this trip with two Chinese tourists from Shanghai, they huggled ruthlessly with locals about some old pre-Liberation coins. The guy was SO excited when he found these coins! i thought he valued them as a historic artifact. Instead, he said "just think how much I can sell them for in Shanghai!!"

just my impressions of China... see now why i was not eager to return to my photos from that trip...