The Larson Family Shanghai Page

Thursday started with a van ride up to the village of Xingping, on the Li River a few miles north of Yangshuo.  Xingping is best known as the “20 RMB note picture town.”

Although the picture on the money has a few embellishments, it’s pretty much the same view as from the Xingping riverside.  Views like this gave inspiration to more than just Chinese money, however; George Lucas sent a team of photographers to this region to take background photo plates for Star Wars III:

We took another boat ride up the river for a while and then back.

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Meagan was especially pleased that she got to sit in the front of the raft some of the time.

After the boat ride, we drove down to Mu Shan (wood mountain), a tiny village where our guide Lily lives.  First stop was the family owned “farmer food restaurant,” where the menu was completely in Chinese so it took us a few minutes to figure out what we wanted to order. 

This is looking over the side of the railing in the seating area of the riverside restaurant.  The cages in the water hold fish.

During lunch we got to meet Lily’s 3 year old son.  He was pretty shy at first.

Eventually someone brought down a bag of rocks and all of the American and Chinese children had fun throwing rocks over the railing into the river below.

After lunch, we went to Lily’s family orange orchard.  Her husband and other relatives had been working all morning picking the oranges, but we managed to find a few to pick ourselves.  They were delicious.

Then we went to Lily’s house.  Here is her kitchen, a separate room with its own entry from the outside.  Makes you less concerned about that scratch on your formica countertop, doesn’t it?

Here is Lily’s garden, back yard, and rear side of her house.  They are building a new house next to this one but they ran out of money so it is kind of an open brick shell right now.  It was very good for the children (and the parents) to see a happy, functioning family living in such humble circumstances compared to us.

After the house tour, Lily asked if we would help her translate the restaurant’s menu into English.  We started at the restaurant but then our driver had to leave, so we took Lily with us back to our hotel and finished it there.  For our troubles we got a great big bag of fresh oranges, which we brought back with us to Shanghai.

Here’s another panorama photo taken from the orange grove.  The views in Yangshuo are spectacular in every direction, no matter where you go.

Tomorrow– the final day: climbing a hill and a fun park in Guilin.