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'Impression Liu Sanji', an outdoor folk festival at Yangshuo, is a spectacular climax to a trip down the Li

By Jack Souther The landscape around Guilin, where we began our trip down the Li River, has been described as "the best scenery under heaven.

By Jack Souther

The landscape around Guilin, where we began our trip down the Li River, has been described as "the best scenery under heaven." But travelling south into the heart of China's renowned karst mountains the scenery becomes, if not better, then certainly more dramatic around every bend of the river. In places our boat drifts close to cliffs overhung by fronds of feathery bamboo. We pass simple fishing villages, lush paddies, and fields full of grazing water buffalo. And towering above the fields and villages the surreal mountains of karst rise abruptly from the earth. With their steep sides and gently rounded tops the clusters of limestone pinnacles resemble gigantic stumps from a primordial forest.

The massive limestone that forms the karst was lifted from the sea by tectonic forces about 200 million years ago. Because limestone is soluble in slightly acidic fresh water the exposed rock was etched into its present bizarre forest of stone pillars by millions of years of rain and mist. The "solution weathering" that sculpted the landscape also produced myriad caves and channel-ways below the surface. Over the millennia, while surface water slowly shaped the hills and valleys, water flowing below the surface enlarged tiny cracks into vast stalactite-hung caverns.

Half way through our trip down the Li River from Guilin to Yangshuo we docked near the small town of Coping for a tour of Crown Cave. As we descended a long series of corridors into the semi-darkness of the galleries our local guide announced proudly that Crown Cave was in the Guinness Book of World Records. With a length of 12 km it is far from being the longest, nor is it the deepest, or darkest. What sets Crown Cave apart is the number of ways the Chinese have devised to tour the underworld. While most of our three kilometre underground trek was spent walking we were also trundled through a long connecting tunnel on a small, open-topped railway car, and taken by rowboat along an underground river. Narrow passageways lead into cavernous galleries adorned with spectacular pillars and hung with great clusters of stalactites. The lighting is subtle, just enough to bring out the natural colour of the rock without destroying the slightly claustrophobic sense of being deep underground. At the end of our cave tour an elevator whisked us from the depths of a lower gallery back to the "peach and plum garden" high above the Li River where our boat was waiting.

Between Coping and our final destination of Yangshuo the number of villages and farms increases. Kids splash in the shallows and water buffalo cool themselves in the river between shifts in the rice paddies. Most of the people living and farming along the Li River are Zhuang, China's largest ethnic minority. A Tai-related people who emigrated from Vietnam into southern China at least 2,000 years ago, the Zhuang now form about 80 per cent of the rural population in Guanaxi Province. They have retained their own language and customs and are renowned for their folk songs, which are deeply rooted in oral tradition. "Do you know the story of Liu Sanjie?" one of the boat crew asked me.

"Liu Sanjie (third sister Liu) was born in a small village along the Li River during the Tang Dynasty. She was very beautiful and had a clear singing voice. At the age of 17 she fell in love with a handsome young folk singer and the two vowed never to part. But one day they were attacked by a gang of hoodlums and, with no way to escape, they jumped into the river and were drowned. Even now, centuries later, the Zhuang people gather along the river to sing folk songs and mourn the death of Liu Sanjie."

It is after five when our boat pulls into the wharf at Yangshuo but the streets are still buzzing with activity. Tricycle-shops piled high with merchandise are parked in every available space while their owners grab a bowl of noodles from a sidewalk vendor. Other merchants gather for a lively game of mah jong on a makeshift table between the vegetable stalls. We make our way through the bustling street market to the New Century Hotel where Hanson gives us some background on the evening performance he has arranged for us to see. "The `Impression Liu Sanjie’ show," he tells us, "is a folk musical that premiered in 2004. It features the music of the legendary folk singer and the customs and culture of the Zhuang people but," he adds, "it is no ordinary stage show."

The stage, half a kilometre wide and two kilometres deep, is a spot where the Li River swells into a tranquil lake surrounded by 12 limestone hills. The audience sits in a natural amphitheatre on the riverbank and the performers, more than 600 of them, are local farmers and fisherman directed by world-renowned Chinese filmmaker Zhang Yimou.

At dusk we joined the throng of people streaming from the parking lot, past an assortment of fast food kiosks, to the rows of neatly numbered seats overlooking the water. There was reserved seating for 2,000 spectators and by the time it was dark every seat was taken. The silence is broken and the show begins with the gentle swell of music. As hidden lights come up on the 12 hills a traditional folk song in the clear, ephemeral voice of Liu Sanji seems to come from the dark surface of the river. A spotlight picks up a small rowboat and as it fades into the distance an armada of at least 50 bamboo rafts, each trailing a broad red banner, glides across the lake. In an instant the dark surface of the water becomes a shimmering carpet of crimson silk. It is a spectacular start to a show that just keeps getting better.

For the next hour as the lighting fades from the hills to the lake to the fields and back to the lake, the show shifts seamlessly through seven distinct chapters. From the opening "Red Impression", which symbolizes the labours of the local people, each change of scene features another aspect of the Zhuang people's lives and legends. In the "Green Impression", which symbolizes the vitality of nature, a light picks up the smoke from cooking fires as farmers return from the fields with their water buffalo and fishermen pole their rafts home to where their women are waiting. In one scene hundreds of fishermen rock their bamboo rafts to send reflections of their lanterns dancing across the surface; in another, groups of young women in bright costumes stand on low rafts and sing traditional love songs while a fairy on a crescent moon drifts across the water. From beginning to end the show is a spellbinding display of professional showmanship on a grand scale — precision choreography, superb lighting, and haunting music — and it's all done in a sublimely beautiful natural setting.

The next morning as our bus wound its way through the countryside from Yangshuo back to Guilin the farmers and their water buffalo were already at work in the paddies. It could have been another scene from the show. In fact these same men and beasts were probably among last night's performers. Here along the Li River, nestled among the surreal mountains of karst it's sometimes hard to distinguish reality from fantasy. And if I'm lucky enough to return to China this is where I'll come.