Yangshuo or not -Peter N-H or anyone else

I think I've written at length here in the past on the disadvantages of some of the most popular rural destinations in China. I'm assuming that people who go to China want to see China (which isn't necessarily true, of course), and while the karst limestone peaks around Yangshuo are attractive, the redevelopment of the peaceful village I first visited more than 20 years ago, through a phase as a banana-pancake-eating backpacker hang-out, to the full-on commercialism, strategic rebuilding, naff son-et-lumière, entrance ticket at every turn, and pestering guides with absurd fees has become intolerable, and has next to nothing to do with real China.

It does, however, have pizza (after a fashion). And T-shirt shops. And all the convenient trappings of maximum tourism. If that's what you want from a holiday, then it's obviously the place to go. But if that's all you do of rural China then it's a bit like going to Jamaica and staying entirely on a resort, because although you can still find some real life in the back streets, a resort is really what Yangshuo has now become, and your chances of speaking to anyone not directly involved in earning money from you is limited.

Dali and Lijiang have become more of the same, with Lijiang in particular extensively made ersatz in order to please the visitors, and as with Yangshuo, the foreign visitors being promoted as part of the attraction to the endless Chinese tour groups. All of these places are well beyond their capacity to absorb the crowds they get, and in the case of Lijiang that's in breach of World Heritage arrangements. So they're building a new bit of old town in order to absorb some of the volume.

The point is that China is still mostly rural, and most people are still down on the farm. Yet probably 70% of China remains undiscovered, and simply jumping at random on a bus out of town almost always leads to an encounter with something of interest. There's always somewhere to stay, and there's always somewhere to eat.

But there's no pizza, no gift shop, and the highest hotel grading you may get is two stars (although you may also get four stars in the most surprising places). At this point either you say, "Great! Cheap authentic local cooking for US$1-1.50 per dish--real food at real prices!" or you run screaming back to the bus station looking for the more comfortable fake China and a good Internet connection to use to tell stories about your brush with reality.

Supposing you stumble on somewhere full of ancient housing and charm, and you go home and report on it, perhaps say something here, make a blog entry (Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, etc.) then you begin the same process as accidentally happened at Yangshuo, and is now beginning at villages around Yangshuo occasionally forecast to be the next Yangshuo. It's not a process unique to China, of course, but the final result is full-on tour groups, rebuilding to make things cuter, pizza on sale at every corner, and so on.

I don't know if I've ever done much recommending of alternatives to Yangshuo, but it's true that if karst peaks are wanted the same province has other areas of the same thing that just don't happen to have been 'discovered' (en route to Longzhou in the south, for instance).

But Yangshuo is certainly very teen-friendly.

You can also go on a bamboo raft (equally fake, of course) at Wuyi Shan in Fujian Province, another mountainous area popular with Chinese but little visited by foreigners, and with plentiful accommodation, and long walks up mountain-cut staircases to the tops assorted peaks like something from prog-rock-era album covers (I have Led Zep IV and a Strawbs album in mind). It's not at all hard to get away from the crowds and get back to a comfortable bed afterwards. But it's still all made-for-tourism.

Cycling is always possible everywhere, so you might simply consider finding a rural base, village or small town, and cycling out at random from there.

You could consider a visit to the tulou, or earth houses of the Hakka around Yongding, easily reachable by bus from Xiamen in Fujian Province (which is also worth seeing in its own right).

Smaller east coast towns like Quanzhou and Shaoxing offer easy bus rides to rural locations.

The diao lou, or watchtowers of Kaiping, Guangdong Province, although now unfortunately World Heritage listed, and therefore doomed, are scattered all around pretty countryside.

Guanxi Province offers Miao villages with 'wind and rain bridges' now known to Chinese groups and in the process of development. Looking up Kaili in a guide book as a starting point (I haven't done this myself).

I'm fond of the centipede bridges of southern Zhejiang around Taishun. It's possible to hop between villages by bus, and walk through rice fields to see these extraordinary bridges, having first reached the area from Wenzhou (which is otherwise worth avoiding).

Few people visit Ningxia's capital, Yinchuan, which is a very digestible city, and offers lots of day trips to rural areas with striking architecture from the long-forgotten Xi Xia dynasty. There's a route south down the spine of the province through a number of small interesting towns with Muslim populations and many cave dwellings.

All of these require more work than Yangshuo, and few of them have pizza. But cast around guide books for further information on these destinations and read the practical sections about access, and see how they fit your comfort levels.

Peter N-H

The area around Yangshuo and Ping'an, not Yangshuo itself was the most beautiful area we saw on our limited visit to China.

Despite our problems there, the rice fields around Ping'sn and the karsts around Yangshuo with the rivers (Li and Yulong) and the numberous water buffalos are the most memorable natural site we visited. You and your teenage children will enjoy this area very much if you tour the countryside and avoid the town.



Stay outside of Yangshuo, by all means, but don't avoid this area. By the way, I had no pizza, bought no t-shirts, while here. Your