Simple Luxury on the li River

It didn’t matter that it rained without stopping for days on end. It didn’t matter that my hotel flooded, or even that my room flooded. It only mattered that I was in China for the first time, in a little town called Yangshuo in Guangxi Province, one of the most beautiful places I had ever seen.

Yangshuo is situated on the Li River, downstream from Guilin. The town, and the region, look like an exquisite Chinese landscape painting, with rocky limestone “karst” formations towering in all directions and the Li River and the mist sneaking their way in between the rocks. Sixteen years ago, the time of my first visit, Yangshuo was a decidedly slowed-down sort of place. Every once in a while, a car or a truck would pass on the main road, which went through one end of town, but that was about it for action. The one hotel in town was called Yangshuo Hotel Number One. It was built all on the one floor, which was nice except in case of a flood.