A Week in Yangshuo, China

When we first arrived in Yangshuo I immediately felt awed, enlightened, and inspired: awed by the mysticism of the ethereal karsts, enlightened that I now knew where ‘nirvana on earth’ resided, and inspired, because, in a celestial place such as Yangshuo, you just are.

 

My whole body shuddered with excitement as we woke up the first morning. I remember peering out of the curtains, in the room I shared with Otto, and just seeing a limestone cliff, only a few feet away, speckled with luscious bamboo, engulfed by melodramatic mist, and completed with a raging waterfall that landed directly into our backyard.

 

“Where am I?” was my very first thought that morning. “Definitely not on earth.” It was like someone had knocked me out, put me in a cryogenic freezer, and shipped me off to the Hallelujah Mountains in Pandora (from James Cameron’s movie Avatar) where they wrangle up pterodactyls. Needless to say, I started that day off with an extra shot of energy, enthusiasm, and angst for exploration.

 

I knew the next month was going to be over in a blink of an eye, and I just wanted to get the most I possibly could out of Yangshuo. So in my eagerness, I researched every restaurant, attraction, and thing there was to do there. In no time, my mom and I had mapped out our goals and threw together a weekly schedule.

 

If we felt particularly motivated in the morning, which was about twenty percent of the time, the schedule called for an early morning start:

 

We would first get up for sunrise:

 

Then we would get our sweat on by doing T25 on the roof of Fun Sam’s: As much as I would like to think that I got totally in shape and fit in Yangshuo, that dream was completely dead on arrival due to the weather. We quickly discovered how slippery and dangerous a tile roof can be while doing extreme cardio workouts in the rain.

 

I would also occasionally attempt to meditate: I know what your thinking…Whoa! Wescott has gone all hippie dippie on us…does he seriously meditate in the morning? Um…I guess it would all depend on your definition of meditation. Does sitting on the roof and just staring out into Yangshuo while daydreaming count? If so, then yeah I meditated a little bit, so I guess that makes me hippie dippie.

 

Finally, I would shower, brush my teeth, floss, and eat breakfast:  I’m pretty sure that showering and brushing your teeth in Yangshuo isn’t much different than in the United States, so how about we just skip to breakfast: the most important meal of the day.

 

Due to our abnormally long stay in Yangshuo, Sam, a total bro who also puts the “Sam” (as well as the “Fun”) in the hostel’s name “Fun Sam’s”, threw in breakfast for free.  So every morning we are randomly greeted with one of the following meals:

 

 

 

The Yangshuo Breakfast Lottery jackpot was definitely the noodles made my Sam’s mom: something about a warm, comforting bowl of noodle soup on a chilly, rainy Yangshuo morning just seemed right.

 

 

After our “typical” morning routine, the schedule began to vary depending on the weather and what day of the week it was. Let’s take a closer look at that schedule.

 

 

On Mondays and Saturdays we would bike to Tai Chi right after breakfast: a tranquil ride that floods your senses with beautiful scenery.

 

Next, we would spend two hours of the day mastering the art of complex hand movements. Extremely slow, methodical, and precise, Tai Chi proved more of a mental memorization challenge than a physical one. Every now and then we would take a vacation from slow town and balance our bodies out with some adrenaline by learning Kung Fu.

 

Or…if it was a Tuesday or a Thursday, we would bike to yoga and meditation at our favorite hang out, Mood Food.  The bike ride was a slightly less relaxing and more daunting task than the casual biking to Tai Chi.

 

Following our daily death defying bike ride, I would try and baffle my genes, which, thanks to Dad, make criss-cross apple sauce more like side-by-side apple sticks, during yoga or we would all zen out during meditation.

 

However, if it wasn’t raining (which was almost never) and we didn’t have anything scheduled, I was blessed with the opportunity to go rock climbing.

 

But every day, no matter what the weather was like, we would eat at Mood Food for lunch. Wait. Back up! You ate at one restaurant every single day? Yes, yes we did, and still we long for more Mood Food!

 

After we were full and had received a new, eye-opening lesson on anatomy or healthy living, we would leave Mood Food and bike home.  Imagine the bike pic you saw earlier, but in reverse. We would also stop to buy some fruit for dinner: apples, bananas, miniature mangos, kumquats, and mangosteens…the usual stuff.

 

However, at one point or another the day did need to involve some schoolwork. So, from six to eight, I would tackle Spanish vocabulary, Romeo and Juliet, market analysis, and common sense in Everyday Etiquette. To avoid falling behind any further in my studies, my mom and I developed a new strategy to track progress in each of my classes: the agile development system. Now I don’t know if you know what agile development is already, but I was fascinated by the concept when Mom began explaining it to me. My school system now keeps me accountable and on track, well not really, but more than I would have thought.

 

Lastly, we would wrap up the day with some nice, old-fashioned dinner and movie. We decided that since Yangshuo was all about schedules and focusing to excel in our interests, movies should follow that suit. We picked a few actors/actresses and decided we would have a marathon of movies that they were in. To transition from one actor to another, we would have to watch a movie that had both of them in it. We ended up picking Tom Hanks, Amy Adams, and Leonardo DiCaprio.

 

Guess what? In a blink of an eye, Yangshuo was over, just as we had predicted. Between the esoteric karst peaks, the constant misty aura, and the foreign, fascinating culture, it seemed as though our entire stay in Yangshuo was a fantastic dream.  A dream that we will always remember, and a dream that will always make me smile for years and years to come.