is there poodle in my noodle

Yangshuo is China’s premiere rock climbing destination; a region gifted with a multitude of limestone cliffs that offer climbing at all grades. The region is off the tourist route for Westerners and more a holiday destination for the Chinese and also European dirtbag crag monkeys.

As we headed down towards the tropics, the weather stabilised, with sunshine forecast everyday 🌞 On arrival, our host at the Climbers Inn, Lilly, recommended we take a walk down to the river with a beer to admire the jaw-dropping views. It took minutes before we were mobbed by students, rapt as Jem explained the rules of backgammon.

The Lijiang River is exceptionally warm, and pleasure boats regularly chug past, flanked by bamboo outcrops and peculiar dramatic peaks.

There is also a population of courmarants that reside in the region. Since the 9th century, fishermen in southern China (and widely in Japan) have used trained courmarants to catch fish. To control the birds, the fishermen tie a loose snare near the base of the bird’s throat to prevent it from swallowing larger fish. When it has caught a fish, the fisherman brings the bird back to the boat to regurgitate its prey.

Though cormorant fishing was once a successful enterprise, its primary use today is to serve the tourism industry, and they still demonstrate this technique in Guilin, about 1.5 hours north from here. Apparently, this traditional fishing technique was even used in France and England for a short period.

Today, the courmarants are the background stars of the local trade; photo shoots of young girls in traditional dress who flock to the river with an army of professional photographers. At first, we couldn’t quite believe how compliant the birds were. Until we discovered they were all tethered to the boats for aesthetic reasons.

China is really quite barbaric in terms of animal welfare. We have seen many poor turtles, hamsters, chicks, and terrapins amongst others shoved in small boxes mostly upside down, with the poor sods doing everything in their power to escape. It was some relief to see the courmarants were released at night and didn’t have to balance on their stands 24 hours a day.

Our host Lilly is one of those people who knows everyone and can get hold of anything. We got ourselves some dirt cheap electric scooters, £3 each a day, and it was climb time.

Having not worn a harness for fun for quite some time, we started out on some very low grades. Despite this, it took some kind of herculean effort and much grunting to get to the top of route one, and we wondered if spending three years running had withered our puny pistons into oblivion. We had our pathetic asses handed to us on a plate.

We later found out that Yangshuo is sandbag heaven and not to be too ashamed. Having checked thecrag.com, we discovered a hilarious list of routes deemed vastly undergraded, and we happened to have chosen them all. Hurrah! Day two provided more success…. onwards and upwards.

Yangshuo is really superb. We have met so many people and have spent the day today climbing with new friends. The town is crazy (even more so than the Muslim Quarter in Xi’An), and there are even proper clubs where people go dancing! So we cancelled all of our plans until November 4th and decided to extend our stay here until we fly to the Philippines via Shanghai. More climbing adventures coming up soon.