Study Bagua Zhang at Wudang

　　While students back home look forward to the upcoming summer break, in Wudang we took our vacation early. Four months into our year of practice Master Yuan decided the time was right for a quick school trip. Our destination: Guilin.

For those of you who have not heard of Guilin, it is situated in Guangxi province in south-central China. Its wide rivers and lush mountains made an appearance in the most recent Star Wars movie and one particular Guilin vista graces the back of the 20 Yuan note. Guilin certainly lived up to its reputation. The food was good too.

Sixteen of us boarded the train Sunday and snacked our way to Wuhan caught a connecting train and stepped into the humidity of Guilin the following morning. It was immediately clear how green and tropical Guilin was, how different from Wudang. Even in the city center the Li River constantly popped into view. The streets were bustling with cars and carts full of enormous green mangos and purple mangosteens and the mountains provided an epic backdrop.

After checking into our rooms, we had a quick communal, and rather spicy, meal and began seeing the sights. Simply walking around the city was a treat. Paved walkways snaked alongside the river and there were ample opportunities to shop through walking streets lined with vendors. Over the next day-and-a-half we got out to some limestone caves, blasted through a nearby stretch of river on motor boats, and encountered monkeys and some elevated views of the city from Seven Star Park. Fresh coconuts and copious amounts of western food were also consumed.

From Guilin we arranged to travel downriver to the smaller city of Yangshuo. Some traveled by bus and others chose to take bamboo rafts and floated south, but by either route the greenery, deep red soil, and densely green mountains along the river were astoundingly beautiful. We stayed in the energetic center of Yangshuo packed with Chinese and foreign tourists. From the rooftop bar of our hostel we could see the river and the sharp peaks of the surrounding mountains. Slightly farther out, endless rice paddies and groves of oranges and pomellos were scattered between isolated hills spiking out of the flat countryside.

. 　Feeling very settled our group split up and fanned out. Master Yuan and several students rented electric scooters and sped through the smaller villages around the city. Others relaxed and enjoyed mudbaths and hotsprings in the Buddha Water Cave. We kayaked through a length of the Li River and got an up-close look at some of the birds and water buffalo that live along its banks. Very comfortable in Yangshuo, we ended up extending our time there from one day to three as we continued to take in the city, coming and going, getting together for meals, taking meandering walks.
Though May is typically the wettest month of the year in Guilin we were lucky to get rained in only during the final day of our stay, after we had left Yangshuo and bussed back into Guilin city. As the trip wound down we caught “The Avengers” at a local movie theater and a small group found their way to the Guilin Museum which highlighted the city’s millennia-long history of inhabitation and had a fascinating section devoted to the diverse minority groups still living in Guangxi province.

In all we were out for ten days. They were a great break from practice and a much appreciated chance to refresh ourselves before what is sure to be a busy summer at school. We returned looking forward to the remainder of what has so far been a fruitful year: new forms, a multi-day meditation intensive, and an upcoming competition. Happy summer.