Balance, Yangshuo China

I am reposting this thread because I made a bit of a muddle of it before. I apologise to the generous people who commented on the original post. Your comments might be gone but they are not forgotten!

Yangshuo is a small town near Guilin, Guangxi Province, south central China. These photos were taken in August, 2004. I had flown there from Sichuan Province, a night flight in a small commercial jet which skirted a gigantic lightning storm. After we landed in Guilin at about 11.30pm the storm caught up with us and the car trip to Yangshuo was like a voyage under a black sea which churned violently against the windscreen and shattered the light from our headlights. The hot days dripped with humidity and exploded once or more in lightning, thunder and downpours - umbrella, shoes, nerves destroying storms. Tourist buses processed incessantly bumper to bumper up and down the main thoroughfare, horns blaring, full of Chinese tourists from all over the country. This is the land of the venerable Li River Valley art tradition. Apart from the natural highlights, I loved shopping for my dinner in the market where I could choose to have a steak cut from any of the slabs of meat lazing on bloody boards, or a live chicken, which I had to palpate for value before it was slaughtered without ceremony, plucked, gutted, washed, bagged and paid for so very cheaply, and have my bravery challenged by alien vegetables. The produce markets of China are a mirror of the Chinese soul. At dusk the brightly lit tourist shops embossed the narrow, undulating streets, and the air was laden with the aromas from scores and scores of crackling woks tossed full of frying food over outdoor gas fires. The river runs thickly through the drenched landscape, reflecting the astonishing peaks and hiding the large dark fish which are served in restaurants under and beside which it flows.