桂林：三千米的石头

On my first day in Guilin, I saw the hills right away.

Guilin has a lot of hills.

These hills aren't like other hills.

One hill, one hill, all separate.

I asked my friend: who made these hills?

She said: nobody made them.

She said: the water made them.

The water took some things away.

What it didn't take away is these hills.

I said: when was this?

She said: three hundred million years ago, this was the sea.

I said: this was the sea?

She said: yes.

There were a lot of very small things in the sea.

Many years later, they became stone down below.

This stone is called limestone.

The limestone under Guilin is three thousand metres thick in places.

I said: three thousand metres?

She said: yes.

Later the sea was gone, and the stone came out.

Then it rained.

Rainwater can dissolve this stone bit by bit.

For seventy million years, the rain kept dissolving it.

Where it dissolved, you get flat ground.

Where it didn't dissolve is the hills you see today.

I said: so the hills I'm looking at are what the water didn't take.

She said: yes.

Guilin has two kinds of hills.

One kind stands separately, one by one — those are called fenglin, peak forest.

One kind is joined at the base and separate on top — those are called fengcong, peak cluster.

My friend said: there's a line a lot of Chinese people know.

She said: Guilin's landscape is the finest under heaven.

I said: is that a new line?

She said: it's over eight hundred years old.

It was written in 1201, by a man surnamed Wang.

He didn't write it for tourists.

That year, eleven people in Guilin passed the exam.

He wrote that line for those eleven people.

The next day, I took a boat to Yangshuo.

From Guilin to Yangshuo is eighty-three kilometres.

The boat takes four hours.

There was fog in the morning.

A man on the boat said: it looks best when there's fog.

I asked why.

He said: without fog, what you see is rock.

With fog, what you see is distance.

The near hills are dark, the far ones pale, the furthest the same colour as the sky.

Partway along, he told us to look at one hill.

The bottom of that hill reaches into the water, like an elephant drinking.

He said: this is Elephant Trunk Hill, the face of Guilin.

Further on there's another hill, called Nine Horses Fresco Hill.

He said: there are nine horses in the markings on the cliff.

A lot of people look for ages and can't find nine.

I only found three.

He said: never mind, this isn't an exam.

As the boat neared Yangshuo, he had us take out a twenty-yuan note.

The back of the twenty-yuan note is this stretch of hills and water.

This spot is called Yellow Cloth Reflection.

A lot of people hold the money up against the real hills to take a picture.

I took one too.

In the afternoon I saw an old man.

He was standing on a very small bamboo raft with two black birds on it.

The birds are called cormorants.

The bird goes into the water, and when it comes up there's a fish in its beak.

The old man takes the fish and gives the bird a small one.

I asked: why doesn't the bird eat it itself?

He said: there's a ring around the bird's neck.

Small fish can get through; big fish can't.

I said: is this method new?

He said: it's over a thousand years old.

People were fishing like this back in the Song dynasty.

I said: does anyone still make a living from it now?

He said: almost nobody.

There are fewer fish in the river, and you aren't allowed to fish freely any more.

Young people all go to Guangdong to work.

Me being here today is for tourists to photograph.

I didn't know what to say.

He said: don't feel bad about it.

He said: I can do this; my son can't.

But my son can pilot a boat, and that's fine too.

In the evening I thought again about the morning fog.

Stone three hundred million years old, a bird a thousand years old, and one old man today.

All on these eighty-three kilometres of water.

When you go somewhere famous, do you want to see it looking most like the photo, or to know how it got there?