After finding Yansghuo to be pretty much devoid of good food (catering entirely to tourists who only stay for 1 or 2 days, no need to be good) I researched desperately for somewhere good to eat, we tried a couple of recommendations in town but they were lacking. Eventually I came across an article about a remote restaurant called Liugong which sounded perfect, a remote 800 year old village, riverfront restaurant in an ancient black tower with fantastic views, nouvelle cuisine, cheap (think 50 kuai per person for a three course meal), we decided to make a day of it, hire a boat to go downstream to the village, have lunch and poke around the village for a few hours before making our way back.

Unfortunately not all went to plan, we made enquiries about the restaurant at China Cafe, the owners of the Liugong Pavilion (who would organise the boat etc), only to be told that during last year’s floods the restaurant was flooded and the owners decided to give up the business. We were sufficiently intrigued by Liugong though and still decided to go ahead.

H, who settles for nothing less than 40% discount, negotiated (10 minutes of shouting and jabbing fingers at each other) with the tour agents we’d befriended near to our hotel and negotiated a boat at heavily dicounted prices. We made our way into Yangshuo to meet the tour agents contacts, straight away something was a bit odd, “if the police are on the river, we may have to stay out of sight, this is a non-standard route” they told us (we would later figure out that they probably avoiding paying commission to the river bureau and the trip was unlisted). Anyway, we got onto the boat, basically similar to a canal narrow boat, and left for Liugong.

Going was good, we were heading downstream and enjoying the view, the driver was nervous though, he was constantly scanning the river ahead and standing to inspect anything that appeared round the corner, also he regularly stuck his head out of the window to see who was behind us. After ten minutes or so he decided that someone was following us and ran to the back of the boat, folded our chairs and instructed us to lie on the floor until he told us otherwise. He put down the throttle and turned wildly, possibly through 360°, it was impossible to tell, presumably to show the followers that his boat was “empty” and put them off checking us out more closely. Ten minutes later the driver eased considerably, lit a cigarette and motioned for us to get up, H took the opportunity to stretch her legs and sat up-front for a while.

The journey took the best part of an hour and as we arrived at Liugong there was a lunch boat parked in front of the watchtower (the previous Liugong Pavilion). The driver jumped out first to chat with the owner (to discuss his commission) and we settled down for a reasonable lunch.

Lunch Boat

The Liugong Pavilion, the floods came halfway up the first floor

It looked as if the pavilion had been flooded yesterday, windows at the flood level were smashed and we could still see chairs and tables inside. The reports had been right though, this was a fantastic location on a quiet section of the river with amazing views of the river and karst hills. Our lunch host agreed to guide us around the village for a nominal fee (10rmb) and then squealed as she noticed the level of the river had risen (there had been thunderstorms overnight) and was already threatening to wash away her drying fishing nets which she quickly moved to higher ground. We set off to see Liugong’s other famous sight, the three colour ponds!

The going was pretty treacherous and the lady lent H some wellington boots for the walk (she had nothing my size funnily enough), after passing the temple and the dragon cave the path was narrow, lined with brambles and very muddy, but we fought our way through (with considerable swearing from me) to the three ponds.

Finally we arrived at the first of the ponds, this is emerald colour our guide told us, I squinted at the muddy green pond trying to figure out how “emerald” could describe such a murky pool. We moved onto the next, “this one is orangey” she told us, again I squinted at a muddy green pond trying to figure out whether we’d come full circle and were looking at the same pond. We moved onto the final pond, “this one is light blue”* she told us, this time I was sure we were looking at a different pond but the water was the same old muddy green colour. I pointed out the similarity of the three pools, “yes, this is most odd” the woman admitted, “yesterday the colours of these ponds was so vivid and so different from each other but today they all look quite similar”, hmmm, right….

The famous three colour ponds, if you can figure out which is which you’re a better man than me!

Actually, reading on the internet about these ponds everyone seems to claim different colours for the three ponds, is the whole thing a myth?

Anyway, we continued on to the village, past fields of orange trees fenced in with bramble branches (to keep the buffalo out). The village itself was very small and with a mixture of ancient and more recent buildings, some of which were built of mud. As in Longtang the village walls were daubed with slogans in red paint from another era and posters  of Mao still hung proudly on display. The difference between the two was that Liugong still seemed to be a busy village, we came across a number of people going about their daily routines, probably the reason that I preferred Liugong to Longtang.

As we arrived back at the pavilion our boat driver shouted and waved to us agitatedly, the river was flooding and was already creeping up the grass bank towards the pavilion, the concrete walkway from which we’d stepped onto from the boat had long since disappeared. We made our way down and onto the boat and he set off on the return journey. It was to be a long trip though, with the flooding the river speed increased, our boat set off at a snails pace upstream back to Yangshuo, crossing the river every now and again to take advantage of slower currents on the opposite side, sometimes we’d reach the centre of the river and our boat wasn’t moving at all. All along the river the owners of the hundreds of small, floating fish farms were checking their ropes and adding extra ones where necessary and locals gathered on the banks to watch and speculate on how high the waters would go.

The journey back took a long time, I don’t remember how long exactly but it was already dusk by the time we made it back and the driver dumped us at a riverbank on the opposite side of the river from the now-invisible concrete jetty where we’d boarded the boat. We crossed the bridge and made our way back into town taking one last look at the beautiful but unpredictable Li river, I’m guessing the water had risen by a metre or so and was still rising, not a serious flood as they go, last year it must have risen by five metres or so.