Yangshuo, China

This sign was our welcome into China. Notice how in Chinese it is only 2 characters long.










The town of Yangshuo where we spent 3 nights at the Magnolia Hotel. It is a small town frequented by backpackers, and so full of restaurants, cheap beer and lots of English.











The scenery is amazing, with mountain peaks jutting up out of no where!







































The town is quite small. You can walk anywhere you want to go.









Our first full day we signed up for a Chinese Cooking Lesson. It was a highlight of the trip!

Our instructor for the day Amy picked us up at our hotel. We met up with another couple taking the class and took a tour thru the local market.

Inside we all sorts of fruits and veggies, like this stall selling chilies.








Also for sale were animals, both alive and dead. Chicken, ducks and geese can be purchased alive and taken home so you can cook them as fresh as possible. Pigs and cows were available in various pieces. Dogs (similar to Dingo's) were also available. We saw cages so full of starving dogs they could not move, skinned dogs gutted and hung on hooks and a cage with live dogs inside while laying atop were dead dogs. Even worse was how they are killed. The Chinese believe that adrenaline makes dog meat taste better so the dogs are tortured before they are killed. The bunnies had it best, nibbling on veggie scraps and spending their last few minutes doing what they do best...reproducing!


The facilities weren't 5 star but for a $12 lesson, what do you expect? We each had a hotplate, wok, cleaver and our ingredients.








We started by preparing our ingredients. Amy took one look at Suds chopping up the chicken and said, "You don't cook." and took over the chopping from him. The funny thing is, its his job to chop the chicken when we cook together :)


















For lunch we ate what we cooked!
On the menu:
Braised eggplant
Chicken with Cashew Nuts
Steamed Chinese Greens
Beer Cooked Fish (local specialty)
Steamed Tofu and Mushrooms stuffed with Pork
The eggplant and chicken were the best. The Beer Fish was our least favorite, but might be saved with a milder fish if made again.


Chinese taxis lined up ready to go.


























China has a serious water problem, I think. These people are "fishing" wading around in the quickly disappearing water scooping up some sort of mud fish to eat.









We walked to a park in town and climbed the peak for the view.