Meet the legend of the Li River

Locating the "coordinates" of fishermen

It was also a painstaking process to locate the fishermen before setting off. We searched the internet for information and only found out that they were in Yangshuo. We didn’t get any more information. With only that little bit of general information, we set off.

The first day we flew to Guilin, it was a gloomy rainy day. The temperature in mid-November had dropped to 5-6 degrees Celsius at night with gusts of wind. We stayed at a riverside motel, waiting for the next morning to catch the bus to Yangshuo. Communicating in China without knowing Chinese is also a big problem and requires skills. We prepared in advance.“Google Translate App”(translation app) offline version on phone. Whatever you want, just write it there, the app will automatically translate into Chinese. So finding the way is less difficult.

The places in China are very far from each other, starting in the morning and arriving at the destination around 3pm. It took another day of travel. Arriving at Yangshuo, I saw the Li River from afar. Walking along the riverbank full of pebbles with long rows of wild bamboo, the river was as beautiful as in a watercolor painting. We were excited, thinking to ourselves: "We're about to meet some old men fishing!". But we walked and walked all afternoon and still didn't see them. All we saw were old men renting cormorants to take souvenir photos.

I hurried back to the hotel and asked the young owner. He immediately said: “There is none here. You have to go to Yangdi or Xingping.” So the next morning we had to get up early to catch the bus to Yangdi first because on the map, Yangdi was located between Yangshuo and Xingping. The group decided to hire a tourist boat that afternoon to take them along the riverbank, hoping to see the men fishing somewhere.

The boat sailed on and on without meeting anyone. Finally, we decided to get off the boat at a pier where there were a lot of Chinese tourists taking pictures. I took out my phone and showed the old man’s picture to a photographer, with the intuition that the photographers would know the old man’s information. Indeed, he said he could contact the old man, but he had to pay. We agreed right away even though the fee was a bit high, but there was no other way.

Fateful encounter with Uncle Huang

An hour later, from afar I heard the rumbling sound of a motorboat, an old man with a white beard gradually appeared. He landed and stepped down, I saw that it was exactly the old man I had seen in the newspaper. I was so happy because after three days of seemingly useless travel, at the last minute I got to meet the old man I had always dreamed of. He brought with him an album that he had collected of all the pictures that photographers had taken of him in magazines for me to see. What a famous old man!

Mr. Huang is 69 years old this year. He fishes on the river every day. He lives with his aunt in a small fishing village, just the two of them. The children are grown and live on their own. He is small, wearing a red cloth shirt embroidered with dragons and phoenixes. Over it he wears a straw raincoat. On his head is a wide-brimmed hat woven from thin bamboo fibers. His figure standing on the boat in the purple sunset is no different from the heroic heroes traveling the world in Jin Yong's swordplay novels.

He started working so I could take his picture. The two cormorants looked a little bigger than his Muscovy ducks, their faces fierce and strong. He tied a small string around their necks and let them down into the water. The hungry cormorants dove into the cold water to catch fish, but the string around their necks made it impossible for them to swallow, so they had to hold the fish and bring it back to the old man. They worked like two skilled workers. After their shift, they were given a few small fish to eat.

Dinner at Uncle Huang's house

We said goodbye to Uncle Huang after the shoot and made an appointment to visit his house the next day. He gave me a business card with his photo, phone number and address in Chinese. He said a lot, I didn't understand anything, just nodded and made an appointment to go there tomorrow morning, with the business card in hand.

The uncle's house was easy to find, just take a small boat, ask a few people and you'll arrive. It was a fishing village in Xingping, in early winter the river water was dry. The uncle's house was in a small alley, with three rooms. The aunt invited us to a simple meal of pork cooked with beans and a cup of heart-warming noni wine. After eating, we went to the bamboo grove in the backyard to sleep until the afternoon, then said goodbye to Uncle Huang's family, said goodbye to the Li River to continue our journey of exploring China.

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More information

+Trip:There are many ways to get to Guilin.

-By air: If you fly with Xiamen Airlines from Ho Chi Minh City, you will transit at Xiamen Airport, then fly to Guilin Airport. If you fly with China Southern Airlines from Ho Chi Minh City, you will transit twice in Bangkok (Thailand) and Nanning (China). Then fly to Guilin Airport.

-Road: FromGia L stationsound (Hanoi), you go tahfire basen Nanning. Giuhseahey lah9:30 p.m.ahng ngahy, price vé750,000 VND/personi.Especially, ifuyou followohm 6 nglaugh or tìI am a personi buy togetherohm thìprice véwarehouse530,000 VND/personi.From Nanning, take Xiamen Airlines or China Southern Airlines to Guilin.

-To meet the old fishermen, after arriving in Guilin, you must take a bus to Yangshuo, then continue by bus to Xingping. The journey takes about 1.5 days.

+ Visa:You can apply yourself at the Embassy (in Hanoi) or the Chinese Consulate (in Ho Chi Minh City). Or if you don't want to waste time, you can use visa application services, which are very simple.

+ Language:You should learn basic communication words and numbers in advance to make it easier to buy and sell and trade with Chinese people. For higher communication, you can use translation applications directly on your smartphone such as Google Translate (can be used offline, no 3G required).

+ Currency:You should exchange Chinese Yuan in Vietnam to get a good exchange rate. Exchanging in China is a bit difficult and time-consuming, and the exchange rate is not better than in Vietnam.

+ Cuisine:Chinese food is a bit greasy, you should bring dry food in case you don't like local food.

+Service:Guilin in particular and China in general do tourism very well. Services are often centralized by the state under a tight, clear and transparent management. Domestic tourists in China are always crowded regardless of the time of year. This is a huge source of development for their tourism industry, not to mention the source of foreign visitors.

+ Book project: The journey of "The Legend of the Li River" is in the travel book“Dust of Youth”by author Tam Bui, scheduled to be released nationwide on September 17, 2017. The book is published by Kim Dong Publishing House. The travelogue is a combination of imaginative words and extremely vivid, realistic images of Tam Bui's journey through the steep mountain passes under the Himalayas, crossing the most beautiful river in China (Li River), exploring major cities in China such as Beijing, Shanghai, Xi'an... or finding the sacred land of Tibet. The book is released at bookstores nationwide or can be purchased online via the website:www.tiki.vn

Article and photos: Tam Bui

The Thanh