Basti and Lyn

Cormorant Fishing in Guilin and Yangshuo

We woke up at 7am and did some last minute packing. But before we could enjoy another nice weekend trip, we had to work through 4 hours of Chinese lessons... We hurried to the airport and took a 1-hour flight to Guilin.

Guilin is surrounded by thousands of unique-shaped limestone hills and peaks and bordered on on side by the Li River.

Guilin and Yangshuo are the perfect place to take a break from the city. We stayed in a beautiful hotel in Yangshuo directly at the Yulong River.

Evelyn in action... unfortunately, the weather was not the best for photography.

One of the highlights was definitely a tour on the Yulong River. We were sitting on narrow bamboo rafts and enjoyed the beautiful Chinese mountain scenery as we were gliding through the river...

The ride takes about 2 hours and it was freezing so we covered ourselves in a warm blanket... and yes, this is Bastian (you can see the long nose!).

For the evening we booked tickets for the Impression Liu Sanjie Lightshow, set to the music from the movie of the same name and produced by the same person that did the Beijing Olympic games opening ceremony.

Getting ready for day two in Yangshuo...

When it was getting dark, we joined one of the local cormorant fishermen on his tour. The Cormorant fishing is a traditional fishing method in which fishermen use trained cormorants to fish in rivers.

There are only a few cormorant fishermen left and ours was one of the oldest and most experienced. It was fascinating to watch the man and the birds in action.

To control the birds, the fishermen tie a snare near the base of the bird's throat. This prevents the birds from swallowing larger fish, which are held in their throat, but the birds can swallow smaller fish.

When a cormorant has caught a fish in its throat, the fisherman brings the bird back to the boat and has the bird spit the fish up. This one was too small...

But here is a big one, although it was not caught by the birds, but provided by the fisherman as reward for entertaining the two of us.

Cormorant fishing once was a successful industry, its primary use today is to serve the tourism industry.