Chinese Light Shows - March 3

We went down to the restaurant for a delicious American style breakfast – eggs, toast, pancakes or bacon and sausage. We talked to Faye, the hotel manager, about coordinating things to do around here and she set us up for a taxi to take us to the Silver Cave and the Moon Rock in 30 minutes. We hurried back to our room to get packed. It was about an hour drive to the Silver Cave. We had read a little about the cave, so we knew to expect lots of tourists and LED lights lighting up the cave in different colors.

The driver got us the tickets when we got there, then left us to experience the cave by ourselves. There were several tours we could’ve taken, but the speakers were only speaking Chinese, so there was no point in following a specific tour. We followed the path around the cave, going up and down stairs. The stalactites were beautiful, especially with the different colors of lights. It was almost like walking through a lightshow. The one disadvantage was the millions of people walking all around and the venders trying to sell things to you. The center of the cave was a large lake reflecting the different stalactites and light colors. The walk was about 1.5 hours – a lot longer than expected, but worth it.

On our way back, we stopped at the Moon Rock - an arch shape somewhat like a half moon. We had the choice of walking up 800 steps to the arch, or just walking to a viewpoint. We went to the viewpoint instead, since it had just rained and the stairs were slippery. Plus we had already walked up and down a few hundred steps in the cave. It was still a very good look at the arch though.

Our driver stopped at a few places for us to get good pictures of the Karst formations. One of the stops was by a river in the foreground, and the other was a field of rapeseed. Both places had lots of tourists around, not surprising, but it still was beautiful, especially with the yellow blooms against the Karst formations in the background.

We got back around 2 and spent the afternoon catching up on blog posts, editing pictures and getting other necessary stuff done. Montana needed to wash her hair, so she went to take a shower, turns out the temperature of the water was pretty much like jumping in snow naked. It was the shortest shower she had ever taken. Right after, they went to dinner. Montana was happy to find hot chocolate on the menu. LuRue got chicken fried rice and Montana got a bacon egg “burger”.

At around 7 we went to Impression Sanjie Liu evening show. The getting to our seats was “wonderfully chaotic” as a woman from UK we met said.  First our driver led us to the ticket area, to an Asian woman in a white jacket. We got a piece of paper that said 2 on it. The driver motioned for us to follow the lady. We followed her through security and picked up the woman from the UK on the way. The Asian lady motioned us in the direction of gate 2. We followed a big group of people for about a quarter of a mile until we finally found gate 2. We walked in and a man, then a young woman showed us where our seats were. Before the show started, there was a recording in both English and Chinese that told us to not take pictures or record. However, when the show started millions of people were taking pictures and videos, so Montana took pictures anyways.

The show was indescribably beautiful. It was like a human lightshow. There were about 600 people in the cast and the director of the 2008 Beijing Olympics opening ceremony directed it. The show was set outside on the Li River with some Karst formations lit up as the backdrop. There were lots of singing, dancing and lights of different shapes, colors and sizes. There was a story to the performance, but it was all in Chinese, so we didn’t really understand the story, but that didn’t matter, because the choreography, music and lighting was jaw dropping in itself.

The show lasted about 70 minutes, but most everyone had left while credits were showing on a projector screen and the actors were doing their final dance. We thought that was rude, but maybe it is typical in China. Who knows? To say the least, China is quite different from all the other places we have been to on this trip.