14: "Inhabiting" a Chinese Scroll Painting...

The hills in the distance, which rise almost vertically up from the earth, are called Fenglin (peak forest) Karst.

It was quite late when we finally said goodnight to Ron and made it back to our cabin to pack and get a few hours sleep in preparation for our four-day excursion to Guilin, China.

Gary was to be the faculty liaison for the trip, responsible for corralling our group of 28 students, faculty, staff and life long learners (read: herding cats…) through airports and scenic spots, and bringing everyone back to the ship safe and sound. Once we met our Chinese guide in Guilin, he would have some help, but still, we were apprehensive.

But it was a fantastic trip.

While the majority of our shipmates had opted to pack in the sights of Beijing and Xian, or even Lhasa, we chose to head south to Guilin, best known for its karst topography (named for the karst region of the former Yugoslavia) which you will often see depicted, seemingly shrouded in mist, dreamlike and ethereal, in Chinese scroll paintings.

The starting point of our river cruise in Guilin.

Smaller boats, as well as low bamboo rafts, navigate the river alongside larger vessels.

A gentleman in a bamboo raft stocked with local fruit paddles up to our boat to tempt us to spend a few Yuan.

This unlikely landscape – quite a suitable backdrop for the adventures of the Cat-in-the-Hat – is a direct result of the region’s geological evolution. 250 million years ago, this area of China was submerged in ocean and thousands of feet of calcium carbonate from the shells of microscopic plankton layered the ocean floor.

Over several centuries, sediment compaction, continental collision, and uplift transformed the sediments to limestone and formed mountains. Within these mountains were cracks and fractures (caused by the stress of uplift), in which slightly acidic groundwater penetrated and flowed. Over time, this water dissolved the limestone (as opposed to eroding it, which was the case with the volcanic tuff of Cappadocia’s hoodoos, which I wrote of in October 2012.) creating valleys and caves. These valleys deepened, streams started flowing, and then the hills loomed taller, evolving into the unique round top, sheer sided pinnacles we see today.

These hills with gentler slopes are called Fengeong (peak cluster) Karst. Over the years, the Chinese have given their shapes fanciful descriptive names like Dragon Head Hill, and on the sheer faces they see snails or horses, as is Nine Horse Fresco Hill.

Limestone dissolving and fracturing at the base of the hills overtime, to form caves that beg to be explored.

This seemingly perfect massive cube was loosened along perpendicular joint lines from the karst hill above.

The karst landscape was visible as soon as our plane descended in preparation to land in Guilin. It surrounds the city, a visible backdrop to every activity, from any vantage point. But the best way to enjoy it – or “inhabit it” – is on a leisurely (five-hour) cruise down the Lijiang River from Guilin to Yangshuo (preferably when the temperature is at least ten to twenty degrees warmer…it was 37 degrees on our trip!).

This wide angle view gives a sense of how tourists like ourselves interacted with the stunning landscape. It is always interesting to me to observe the ways in which, often subconsciously, we modify our behavior or sense a shift in mood as we move into new environments.

However, we were delighted to discover a second, and equally wonderful way to inhabit this beautiful landscape: on a bicycle! Instead of the flowing water of the Lijiang River acting as the foreground to the remarkable hills, we saw mustard fields and garden plots. The added benefit of being on a bike is that you may have some interaction with the people you pass by (greeting them with a loud “Ne Hoa!”), plus you don’t have to share the path with a hundred other tourists….only your own group.

Our invigorating bike ride was too short – just an hour – but it stayed with us as headed to the airport. All of us were wishing we could have “inhabited” the magical Chinese scroll painting for just another hour (or two) more…

Our group is assembled and ready to bike our way through the fields with karst towers all around.

Fields of mustard form a lovely foreground, accentuating the limestone pinnacles in the distance.

Resources: Gary Griggs (of course...) contributed heavily to my description of the natural processes that led for the formation of this unique karst topography.  Whatever clarity there you find here is all his (and any errors are all mine!).