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Tuesday, 4/21/09
Li River

After breakfast, our local guide, Zhou Wang Leung, took us to board a 3-level tour boat for a cruise on the Li River, passing humped limestone karsts, fishermen astride bamboo rafts with their captive fishing cormorants, washerwomen squatting on the shore, vendors on bamboo rafts, cormorants, ducks, and water buffalo ambling down to the banks for a dip.

Lunch on board the boat.

Clearing at Dawn

The fields are chill, the sparse rain has stopped;
The colours of Spring teem on every side.
With leaping fish the blue pond is full;
With singing thrushes the green boughs droop.
The flowers of the field have dabbled their powdered cheeks;
The mountain grasses are bent level at the waist.
By the bamboo stream the last fragment of cloud
Blown by the wind slowly scatters away.

Li Po
translated by Waley

Ancient Air

I climb up high and look on the four seas,
Heaven and earth spreading out so far.
Frost blankets all the stuff of autumn,
The wind blows with the great desert's cold.
The eastward-flowing water is immense,
All the ten thousand things billow.
The white sun's passing brightness fades,
Floating clouds seem to have no end.
Swallows and sparrows nest in the wutong tree,
Yuan and luan birds perch among jujube thorns.
Now it's time to head on back again,
I flick my sword and sing Taking the Hard Road.

by Li Bai

When we disembarked, we were in a dockside bazaar that tempted us to buy all sorts of goodies. Then we took a bus paralleling the Li river that we had come down, back to Guilin. Along the way, we saw the working side of all the farms we had only glimpsed from the river. Many were rice paddies, where we saw people working. Our local guide said that it is very hard work. He had tried it when he was young, and that had motivated him to go to school and learn English so he could have a way out.

Conversation in the Mountains

You ask why I nestle in the green mountains.
I laugh but answer not - my heart is serene.
Peach blossoms and flowing waters go without a trace.
There is another Heaven and Earth beyond the world of man.

by Li Bai