Bruno and Ye (Billy’s son and wife) were invited to Sheraton Hotel Guilin on 4 Dec, enjoyed a party with dozens of children and parants.
As a tradition, The most famous Christmas tree in Guilin is the one in the lobby of Sheraton Hotel. The hotel management brought this tradition from 1980’s, and the Christmas tree lighting ceremony has been a big event since then.
This year’s tree lighting ceremony was a little different. Sheraton Hotel Guilin hosted a dinner party to raise money for the Guilin Primary School for Handicaped Children. The party was held in the top-class Atrium Coffee Shop with its superb reputation for great French food and stunning decor and ambience.
Throughout the evening we were invited to help raise money for charity by buying all kinds of useful books as Christmas present for those handicaped children, many of them joined in the party tonight, and we talked with some, the first time we know something of sign language, and with help of their teachers and school master.
It was the first time for 8-year old Bruno dress and behavior like a gentlemen on dinner table, he used the shinning silver knife and folk to eat his favourite cakes and dissert, his hands and mouth were unbeliveable clean, and he did not try to mix every soft drink together in one glass…
The big Christmas tree is lighting! It illuminates the season. The GM of Sheraton Hotel Guilin described the Christmas is the time for family union and sharing love and caring…
It was a fantastic evening.
Yangshuo Regency Holiday Hotel is at a good central location. At the beginning of West street (the main, happening street in Yangshuo), the hotel is just ok. Rooms are motel-like and need to be updated, so are the public areas. We stayed there 4 days and wished we booked the Paradise resort hotel which looked much nicer, at least from the outside.
For the rate at USD 25 I can’t complain about anything. It is very central, the staff were helpful, the breakfast good, It was noisy at night but what does one expect when on a main thoroughfare? The beds were hard. I always love Chinese beds. They are very very comfortable and good for your back.
My boyfriend and I had a short trip to Yangshuo on Oct. Yangshuo offers breathtakingly beautiful scenery, particularly along the hill-lined Li River. Streets in Yangshuo are kept in their original style, preserving the layout of the ancient city. Local specialties like beer fish and shatian shaddocks are served on West Street, one of the town’s liveliest thoroughfares.
We took the Li River Cruise to Yangshuo from Guilin in the early morning. Also the Li River Scenerey was very amazing. After we arrivaled in Yangshuo, we were so exciting and walk around in the street. The famous west street has many traditional things. I bought a lot of tranditional clothes. And my boyfriend told me that I just like a tranditional Chinese Girl when I wore these clothes. Good trip to Yangshuo.
The old Guilin/Kwelin airfields used by the Flying Tigers of the U.S. 14th Air Force have become a booming industrial corridor along a new expressway here. A yearly group of visitors, old Tigers, their families and military buffs have been visiting the area since 2002, and by 2005 some realized that Gen. Chennault’s command cave at Yang Tong might be lost to developers. The group formed a non-profit organization, made contact with the mayor of Guilin, the Chinese National Aeronautical Society and the county - to see what could be preserved for future visitors. The group is named the Flying Tigers Heritage Park Organization, and is currently headquartered north of San Francisco.
At first, I had to use Google Earth to get the co-ordinates so we could find the cave. We searched the dense brush for the trail; a machete would have been nice! We had an additional walk around the area, finding old stone rollers which had been pulled by 500-peasant workers to build and maintain the runways from 1941 to late 1944 when the Japanese captured the area. It was obvious from the huge ruts and the bulldozer then covering old taxi-strips that industrial development could close off the area forever.
We then discovered that the elderly father of a Guilin friend had flown missions to bomb Japanese ship in Hong Kong from there in 1944. Her mother had been working in the mess-hall, and delivered food from the ‘cooking caves’ above. It came as a surprise that there were other caves associated with the area. No one had ever mentioned them; they were never on a visitor’s schedule with either CITS or CTS.
On our second trip, we found the highway now open to local traffic, seemingly dozens of new concrete streets with poured curbs. From here it was a quick scoot across the six-lane divided highway to a service-road and 100-meters to the entrance. Along this was a huge billboard proclaiming the industrial park and its progress with the names of hundreds of businesses.
Again we went to what’s called ‘Chennault’s Cave’ and took a detour around an old walled house and up a hilly, somewhat worn path… By the time I reached some concrete steps above, my companions had already engaged a toothless smiling old woman in conversation… As near as I could make out she was hesitant to allow our group to proceed… but when I caught up, I said to tell her I was going to put her on TV, and I held up the video-Cam. Almost immediately, a curtain was pulled revealing a cave entrance, and the most archaic interior lighting, consisting of wide-spaced clear light-bulbs dangling from wires attached by ancient insulators to the cave. Thousands of mushroom bundles were on interior floor. The cave was possibly 100-meters in depth…At the far end, there was a wooden structure and a door led out onto a cemented area that looked strangely reminiscent of a gun emplacement. There were piles of old wooden OD boxes, ancient ice-boxes, old stoves and pots out there… and as we were to see with the door now open, the cave contained old stoves and ovens, glass bottles, jars and pots galore! We found a second cave with walled cold-storage areas inside; a third was filled with huge glass bottles and the ever-present piles and piles of growing mushrooms neatly laid on the floor.
We completed this last adventure before noon, so we stopped at a really nice restaurant which specialized in Beijing duck for lunch. I’ve got to say, that never in any five-star hotel, or other establishment in China, have I ever seen such superbly decorated ultra-modern WC facilities… and the meal was served at our table by the chef.
Since then, Lin-Gui county has offered 214-acres and the Mayor of Guilin has had architectural drawings rendered for a museum, memorial gardens, paved entry and parking areas, and complete restoration of Chennault’s cave interior to the 1943 era when it was the hub for the radio and telephone early warning system…
Read more articles of Philip Van Zandt at www.china-travel-guide.com
Our friends told us the story of the “offical Li River Cruise”…from the Zhujiang Wharf to Yangshuo. You need to hire a taxi for RMB 80, drive 40 minute in the early morning, wait for other passengers to get on board.
The cruise ticket Zhujiang/Yangshuo is RMB 245 per person, the ship leaves the wharf one by one, the peaceful atmosphere on the river has been destroyed by the noise of engines, the ship staffs start to serve lunch at 11h30! The food is not so good, recommend you to stay on the upper decker to enjoy the view…
We took the local fishermen’s raft, more fun and cheaper! In the morning, bus yangshuo/yangdi, negociate a raft for RMB 100, and 4 of us were on the river! No big ships!
Put our legs in the cool water! It was really quite an experience. The boat stoped near Xingping, we took some kind of golf car ride through the rice paddies…
RMB 7.5 for bus Xingping/Yangshuo…40 minutes ride…I like Yangshuo, it was the best summer vacation i ever had.
More articles of trips on Li River…
At 09h09, on September 9, 2009…The magic moment for a good wish of long, happy marriage, made thousands of young people to gether under the ancient Banyan Tree in Gaotian county, Yangshuo.
It is the dating time in Yangshuo! We played lots of games, playing on bamboo rafts, chatting on grassland, riding bikes…In the beautiful surrounding of nature, people are more easily to be friends.
Who cares those serious topic of the city life! Forget about all the pressures we have to face in daily life! All I wanna do is to have some fun…
At night, after bottles of beer, more easier for a shy Chinese to open her mind, to talk about a boy’s dream in his childhood, sharing the experience of gaps and misunderstanding with our parents, the pressure of having a child before 30…Endless topics until we were the only left on the empty West Street…
I forgot to mention:
It rains here a lot, but it is warm rain and it rains only softly, like the Irish say. Then it stops again, so you really do not get wet.
It is warm, in the (high?) 80ies.
I picked the rainy time of the year. Beginning April, the farmers start to plant the rice fields and in July the second plant starts.
This morning I strolled around in Guilin. Two worlds confront each other. The elegant one with well dressed young people, the shopping malls, main street Zhongshan Rd. and wonderful parks along the lakes and the Li River. Just next to the mall is the market for the farmers with life chicken, dugs (one for 15 Yuan I found out) and fish. Vegetables, spices, meat and food prepared and raw. I took some nice pictures and videos. I will try to add some next time, but it takes awfully long time to load them up. I need help from my computer specialists. Outside the market there are all kind of shops, looking dirty and old. Places we know from our last tour to China in 2001.
After a rest in the afternoon I met Foring, my tour consultant in the lobby of my hotel to go out for dinner.
More details of this article: Tour De Franz, the second day
March 31st, 2009 in
Touring around | tags:
Guilin |
No Comments
The Easter bunny gets around, check out some special packages in Yangshuo…with Easter brunches, Bunny appearances, Egg Hunts, Egg Rolls, and other “egg”-cellent fun : Doing Bunny Tuck-Ins, for instance, at the Meiyou Restaurant on West Street, as part of its Holiday Egg-Stravaganza. Or hiding Easter Eggs at the Eggstravaganza at the Minosa Cafe…
And of course there are dozens of Easter events in towns big and small, have Chinese characters, family events for Easter have multiplied like bunnies, you’ll find the largest egg hunt in Yangshuo, an egg roll race (- spoon a wooden egg across the lawn), and family fun such as Build Your Own Basket, bunnies at the petting zoo, puppet show, face painting, and performances at the Impression Sanjie Liu.
The Impression Sanjie Liu is a show directed by chinese mega director, Zhang Yimou (famous movies - Farewell to My Concubine, Raise the Red Lantern and The Hero). Tho location of the show is at Shutong Mountain and the surrounding 12 famous peaks and river are the natural backdrop of this spectacular show. It boasts hi-tech sound and pyrotechnics.
More blog articles of Impression Sanjie Liu…
Bobbie, my 3 year-old boy has been tired of Chinese food after 2 weeks in China, the western breakfast, what they named in most of the hotels are so-so, bread is hard, milk not fresh, orange juice is tin-made. We know that we have been spoiled at home, but what we need is a pound of fresh bread and fresh milk in the morning.
The staff in the front desk told us that Chanjuan Bakery is the most famous bekery in Guilin, and there was a one near our hotel (Grand 0773 Guilin). We walked across the traffic (it was terrible) and found it. They have a quiet corner at the back of the shop, and we had a good breakfast there.
We asked for their telephone and asked for room service lately in the evening. They delivered a beautiful cake, plastic knife and folk, candles. A candle night party in hotel room! Bobbie loved this idea very much. The telephone we dialed was: 2812598. Highly recommend this bakery in Guilin.
I have to write about my experiences in Omeida, so here you go. I will see you soon to sign that you have received this email.
My time in Omeida is really a tale of two stories.
When anyone arrives at a new place it is a little nerve wracking but that was soon overcome. I was happy to fit straight into teaching and just pleased to get on with the job.
Once the hectic summer had calmed down it was nice to spend time with some like-minded colleagues and this also made my time here more enjoyable,The students are always friendly, whether it’s at school or socialising outside. I also hope to see some students again in the future, most noticeably Henry, Alex, Wei and Devin.
I like that Omeida organises trips for students. I also attended a few, it was nice to spend the day with students and see them in a different light.
Social nights are sometimes good. I must say I think you should lose the tables and have everyone moving around and use the downstairs instead. Also in the summer it’s better to do it outside.
This is my first job where I have been happy to come to everyday. Of course everyone has small issues now and again but on the whole it has been great. Whether I was teaching 12 students in a class to the rare occasion of 1, students are always keen to learn and are respectful. It has been a joy for me to see students who I taught in lower levels to move up so quickly and leave here with such an improvement. I also have enjoyed seeing how some students really ‘grow up’ here, For some it’s there first time away from home and they really get a sense of being independent and mature.
Joe/Wind, a little embarrassed to say that I am not 100% sure about all the tasks that you guys do! Partly I can be blamed for this, but maybe at the beginning when a new teacher arrives they should spend sometime with you to learn and understand your role, also this will help build friendships at an earlier stage.
The ‘english only’ rule at the school is good, and it’s good to see that the staff follow this rule too.
Omeida continues to set the standard in Yangshuo, and this was again evident at the recent Christmas Party. I have no qualms in recommending anyone to teach or study at this school. I have thorougly enjoyed my time here, it has gone by so quickly, and I will not rule out returning one day if you will have me back.
