A Journey along Li River

What to say about Li River, it is just fantastic.  Li River is also called LiJiang in Chinese, as “jiang” is the Chinese word for “river”, so it is wrong to say Lijiang river as used on many articles in English.  However people ignore it as it is so famous, everybody knows. 

Touring  by boat for 4 hours along the river surrounded by mountains and mountains, is an endless journey in tranquillity. We can look around during the tour and we can see a 360 degree of scenic landscape.  

The Li River tour flows through Guilin and Yangshuo with a total length of 116 km. Tourist cruises in different boats,  varying from small rafts to larger, air-conditioned boats. It is the major attraction for tourists who come to Guilin. Millions of people each year come to its jade waters, cruising between peaks and islands in search of the landscape beauty.  During peak holidays there are so many boats required to carry the tourists, such that the boats are lined-up sailing behind each other like a train on water. 

The whole length of the Li River is guarded by green hills and the scenic karst mountains. It has been visited by a huge number of artists, writers and poets to admire the river. It is also the most written about river in China. The Li River gives an authentic picture of countryside China.  Written and painted by poets and artists, Li River gives a picture book of karst peaks, ancient villages and bamboo. 

In the Song Dynasty, Guilin had begun to be famous for its natural beauty and said to be the best  "Among all the mountains and waters”. Guilin is well-known for its unique mountains and beautiful rivers. There are about 157 rock hills (now under first-class or second-class state protection),  21 major karst caves and several hundred smaller ones.  

Among the hills and protruding rocks of Guilin, flows the tranquil Li River (Lijiang), which gives a very scenic sight. The Li River flows through Guilin and Yangshuo with a total length of 116 km. Tourist cruises the river in different boats,  varying from small bamboo rafts to larger, air-conditioned boats . Millions of people each year come to its jade waters, cruising between peaks and islands to see the landscape beauty. It is the major attraction for tourists who come to Guilin. 

The whole length of the Li River journey is guarded by green hills and scenic karst mountains. It has been visited by a huge number of artists, writers and poets to admire the river. It is also the most written about river in China. The Li River gives an authentic picture of countryside China.  Written and painted by poets and artists, Li River gives a picture book of karst peaks, ancient villages and bamboo. 

Just round the big turn that the river takes at Xingping is the most iconic stretch of the river known as The Yellow Cloth landscape, which features on the back of the Chinese 20 yuan money. The money shows a fisherman on the river with Yellow Cloth landscape behind it. 

The place's name comes from a yellow flagstone, long and wide, whose reflection spreads itself on the river like a yellow cloth. The seven hills on the bank of Yellow Cloth landscape have been likened to seven fairy maidens who came from heaven to play at the bank and were so amazed by the scenery that they would not leave. 

More than the river itself, the landscape is awesome: alluvial plains rippling with 300-million-year-old limestone formations. The geological term for these  mountain is karst sometimes with odd shapes that look like something in nature, like the Yellow Cloth landscape. The people used their imagination to name the odd shapes according to the shapes such as : Watching An Apple, Calligraphy Brush, Eight Immortals, Elephant Trunk Hill, Folded Brocade Mountain, etc. Many of these fanciful names are tied to a local legend.  This habit of naming of a scenery and tying it to a legend is quite common in China, we encounter it in other places in China as well. Actually, the Chinese people in that way is very imaginative and creative. 

Among all of the odd shapes, Nine Horse Hill is an important scene not to miss during the Li River tour. Nine Horse Hill is located 4km from Xinping. The cliff face has images of what appeared to be a group of horses. In variation of yellow and white, dark and light, the horses assume a variety of poses: some seem to be running, some just lying there and others playing. These images have been present on the mountain side for centuries. 

In the Xingping area there is a hill named as Camel Hill. This hill is named Camel Hill as its shape looks like a Camel.  In Guilin, Yangshuo and other places in China, there are other hills named as Camel Hill because of its shape. So it is misleading to think that Camel Hill is the one located along the Li River tour, because there are other Camel Hills in China. 

The wonderful 4 hours boat journey then ended in Yangshuo, leaving us with memorable images of the landscape along the Li River, attached by the given fancy names of the landscape. May be that is the purpose of naming them like that. 

The Singing Dong Tribe

The villages of the Dong people are located among the hills on the Hunan-Guichou-Guangxi borders, China.

The Dong people live in villages of 20-30 households located near the rivers. There are also large villages of 700 households.

The Dong people grow rice, wheat, maize and sweet potatoes for consumption and cultivate cotton, tobacco, soybeans and rapeseed as cash crops. They also sell timber and other forest products.

Their houses, built of fir wood, are usually two or three stories high. Generally, people live on the upper floors, and the ground floor is reserved for domestic animals and firewood. In the old days, the houses of landlords and rich peasants were big and had engraved beams and painted columns.

Pathways inside a village are paved with gravel, and there are fishponds in most villages. Dong people are mainly farmers. They are good at growing rice, raising fish in their rice fields. For domestic animals they raise mainly hens and pigs. They live in huge forest, the forests have special spiritual importance for the Dong people but also provides with a source of income. The Dong people grow enormous numbers of timber trees which are logged and sent to markets. Tong-oil and lacquer and oil-tea camellia trees are also grown for their edible oil and varnish.

They are also famous for their unique carpentry skills which are displayed in beautiful wooden covered bridges. These bridges are called "Wind and Rain Bridges" because there are pavilions built on the bridge that provide shelter to people from the wind and rain. On a raining day, the pavilions on the bridge provide locals an excellent place to meet, relax, socialize, exchange ideas, and even amuse.

Wood, stone arches, stone slabs and bamboo are all used in erecting bridges. Roofed with tiles engraved with flowers, it has on its sides five large pagoda-like, multi-tier pavilions beautifully decorated with carvings. It is a covered walkway with railings and benches for people to sit on and enjoy the scenes around.

A specialty of these bridges is that no nails were ever used in their construction. Rather, the Dong carpenters used groove joints in structural members of the bridge to hold them together and transmit the load to the pier.

Other specific feature of Dong villages are the drum towers. Meetings and celebrations are held in front of these towers, and the Dong people gather there to dance and make merry on festivals. The multi-storey drum tower, the symbol of a Dong village, is usually built in the flat or high grounds of the village center. A square is built in front of the drum tower, and provides a venue for the entire village to come together for meetings, festival celebrations, and other public activities.

 Songs and dances are important aspects of Dong community life. All the Dong people can sing their folk songs. The  songs called the "Grand Songs" are most popular among the Dong folk songs, especially in the southern part of the Dong villages. The male voice is forceful and vigorous as against the sweet melody of the female voice. Each troupe is composed of members ranging from three to a dozen.

The Grand Songs has become famous throughout China for polyphonic folk songs. While some of these folk songs are accompanied by a string instrument called pipa ( a four strings China music  instrument) , most are sung without any musical accompaniment. The Dong ethnic minority have no written language, so they use folk songs to narrate their daily life, express their feelings, and keep a record of their history. All of Dong culture is preserved in these magnificent folk songs.

In 2009, the UNESCO World Heritage Commission formally recognized the Grand Song of the Dong Ethnic Minority as a World Intangible Cultural Heritage.

Longji Rice Terraces

The Longsheng Rice Terraces, is located in Longsheng County, about 100 kilometres from Guilin, China.

Also known as Dragon Backbone Rice Terraces (Longji Rice Terraces) it is the most amazing rice terraces in China. Construction of the terraces began in the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368), and completed in the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911). The Dragon Backbone Rice Terraces is constructed by the hard labor of the Zhuang people, which is now a minority ethnic group in this region.

It is hard to imagine that 800 years ago how the Zhuang and Yao people faced to the mountains and forests, and how they rely on ancient agriculture method to open the forest and to prepare the ground for the first field. 

The Dragon's Backbone Rice Terraces is a beautiful landscape. The rice fields is beautiful all year round, and the view of the rice terraces vary from season to season. In spring, the irrigation water reflects the sunshine on the terraces, and when the paddies are full of water it seems like the scales on the back of a dragon, thus it is named as Longji (Dragon Backed Mountain).

In summer the newly grown paddies cover the terraces like green carpet. In autumn the paddies turn into golden ready for harvesting, while in winter it is covered by snow. The rice fields are beautiful all year round.

Longji consists of Ping´an Zhuang Minority and Jinkeng Da Zhai Yao villages scattered in the middle of rice terraces.   People here kept their traditions, in the streets but also rice terraces, they are easily recognized by their traditional costume. 

The colors for Zhuang’s clothing are blue, black and brown. The Zhuang women are skilled at weaving and embroidering. They wear this unique and colorful costumes especially during festivals, to dance and sing in accordance with the tradition.

The Yao people also have distinctive clothing, and they are expert weavers, dyers and embroiderers. In the Han Dynasty (206 BC-AD220), they wove with fabrics made from tree bark and dyed it with grass seeds. In the Song Dynasty, they developed delicate designs dyed on white cloth with blue indigo and beeswax. The product became famous all over the country later.

The Yao women also have distinctive hair styles and they are famous for having the longest hair in the world. They never cut their hair. Instead they wrap the hair in a bun on top of their head in a turban style. Their hair color remains shining black no matter how old she is. What is the secret? The secret is for generations of Yao women have been using fermented rice water, which has resulted in their impressively beautiful hair. Women from the tribe have an average hair length of 2.3 metres.

For the Yao people, their long hair is their most prized possession, believing that long hair symbolises prosperity, longevity, wealth and good fortune.

The way a woman wears her hair depends on her status:

•A young unmarried woman will wear her hair covered by a black scarf.

•A married woman with children will wrap her hair around her head like a turban and wear it with a bun in the front.

In ancient time, so to say, the wives in the Yao families were the ones who earned living for the family, and they had to work hard in the rice fields, carrying heavy stuffs in big bamboo basket at her back. While the husbands were laid back, staying at home playing cards and drinking beer. So laid back were the husbands that even sometimes a wife had to carry her husband in the basket to walk the hundreds of steps climbing the terraces, while the husband drank beer in the basket. 

However, nowadays we can see Yao men have to work to make a living, they provide the bamboo basket service for tourists, and the tourists in a big bamboo basket at his back to climb the 800 steps to see the scenic rice terraces.

Ping´an village is a Zhuang ethnic village built on the hillside amid stunning Longji rice terraces.

The Ping’an Village has the best preserved, oldest and largest wooden buildings  of Zhuang Ethnic style, more than five wooden buildings of which has over 100 years. The oldest one enjoys a history of more than 250 years, which is ancient and full of charm. 

Along the 800 steps we can the padi fields and the unique traditional style of houses. Built largely from timber, the houses are typically rectangular and three stories high. Each ascending floor is a little larger than the lower. The shingles, windows and beams are typical of other Chinese building styles.

One of the most famous scenic spot is the "Seven stars with moon". It is composed of seven small terraces and a large round terrace. When the terraces are filled with water during spring, we can see seven small terraces are like shining stars around a moon. 

Indeed the residence here are very imaginative and like to resemble shapes in the landscape with other shapes of nature. This habit we can find in other scenic places in China, like in Guilin. But that is another story….

An Interview with Maria

Photo: Wikimedia

I met Maria at the backstage of Norma opera after the performance at Milan Opera House. She looked radiant and beautiful in her diva costume, with her broad smile shining on her face. She seemed satisfied with her performance that night, and judging from the applause and the flowers she got, the public loved her.

Interviewer:

Congratulations Maria on your beautiful performance, the public seem to love you very much. Are you satisfied with your performance tonight?

Maria:

I am happy that the public love it, it is such a great relief to hear the public reception, after the hard work to prepare for this performance. It really lifts our spirits to know that the hard work has been liked.

However, after every performance I would think what could have been done better, to make it better in the next performance and how things can be done differently. I am never satisfied with my performance and will try to improve it next time.

                              

Interviewer:

You are known as perfectionist, it seems what you just said just now confirms people’s believe.

Maria:

To me, the art of music is magnificent, and I cannot bear to see it treated in a shabby way. When it is respected and when the artists who serve it are respected, I will work hard and always give my best . . .
I do not want to be associated with inferior staging, taste, conducting or singing.

Interviewer:

But the people working with you think of you as too difficult to work with.  

They said you are temperamental, too demanding, sometimes you refused to perform, and even cancelled performances.

Maria:

I will always be as difficult as necessary to achieve the best. I am a hard worker, willing to rehearse more than expected, even when a role or a production was not new. I am an artist and like to try to bring the best performance to the public so I like to rehearse more and more with the team within the limited time we have.

Interviewer:

But, you walked away from contracts with Metropolitan Opera for Puccini’s Madame Butterfly and Beethoven’s Fidelio.

Maria:

Have you never walk away from a job that don’t suit you? I think you have.

For me, it was impossible to sing as Madame Butterfly, a 15 years old Japanese girl, I was then too fat--210 pounds.

As for "Fidelio" Opera in English is so silly. Nobody takes it seriously.

More than that, I didn’t like the contract, it looked like a beginner’s contract.

Interviewer:

You mentioned you were then too fat. How did you become so slim and beautiful today? What is the secret to lose weight in short pace of time?

Maria:

Purely strong will, there were rumours that I ate certain kind of pasta, but it wasn’t so. It was driven purely by strong will.

Interviewer:

You indeed seem to be a person driven by a very strong will. One of your teacher, Maria Trivella said of you: “A model student. Fanatical, uncompromising, dedicated to her studies heart and soul. Her progress was phenomenal. She studied five or six hours a day. ...Within six months, she was singing the most difficult arias in the international opera repertoire with the utmost musicality.”

Interviewer:

The Norma that you just performed was also a woman with strong will, brave, and even vengeful to betrayal.

Maria, her eyes sparkled and started singing part of the famous aria Casta Diva of Norma:

Casta Diva, che inargenti               Virtuous Goddess, covering with silver

queste sacre antiche piante,         these sacred ancient plants,

a noi volgi il bel sembiante            turn towards us your fair face

senza nube e senza vel                 cloudless and unveiled

Interviewer:

Other than Norma, you also seem to like to perform Carmen, Medea, Tosca and Violeta in La traviata. However you like to portray them as strong, passionate woman whom stand-up to their tragic fate, rather than a crushed delicate woman.

The way you expressed it, the women become the tragedy heroines of the story.

Maria:

It is a matter of interpretation, indeed normally Floria Tosca is portrayed as a delicate, submissive woman that was completely dominated by the powerful male character.  But I see that she can be performed as a strong, fiery woman and assertive.  In the famous “Vissi d’Arte” aria of the opera, she was lamenting, questioning her fate as well as becoming assertive, she sings from “I lived for art, I lived for love”, then  “I never did harm to a living soul!”

Interviewer:

One of the reporter wrote about your performance as Tosca :”her conception of the role was electrical. Everything at her command was put into striking use. She was a woman in love, a tiger cat, a woman possessed by jealousy. . . . This was supreme acting, unforgettable acting."
Bravo Maria!

Maria:

Thank you for the compliment. As Floria Tosca said it: "Vissi d' arte, vissi d' amore" ("I lived on art, I lived on love").

Interviewer:

In Medea, your enormous acting skills and perhaps your Greek blood guided you in the interpretation of agony of this princess from Colchis, a performance which was historic for Greece, in the ancient theatre of Epidaurus.

Is it probably that you can relate this Greek tragedy with your personal experience, that you can perform Medea that intense?

Maria:

I am a person without identity. I was born of Greek parents, yet I have never felt absolutely Greek. I was born in America, yet I am not an American. I lived the most crucial period of my career in Italy, I married an Italian but, of course, I am not an Italian. I now live permanently in Paris, but this doesn't mean I feel French. What the hell am I, after all?" What am I? I am alone, always alone.

Interviewer:

Were you surprised about Onassis marrying Jackie?

Maria:

As the public have known, there is no doubt that Onassis and me are deeply in love. Somehow we did not get married, but we remained good friends.

Interviewer:

Does Onassis still love you?

Maria:

You have to ask him yourself,  but maybe he does not really love opera.........

This is an imaginary interview in memory of Maria Callas.