Yesterday the 4th Guilin reading month started in the Guilin’s Central Square. This years theme is: “The most beautiful landscape, the most enjoyable reading”. From now until May 2011 there will be 13 themed activities.

The festivals activities include: “Books Drifting”(whatever that means), “Browsing through Guilin’s Culture”, Speech Competitions, Youth Animation Competitions, Youth Scientific Knowledge Competition, Good Books Recommendations, Book Collectors Advice, National Book Donation Drive, Intangible Cultural Heritage Exhibition and so on.

After the official opening ceremony, Guilin Central Square will hold more activities such as book and video exhibitions, promotion of intangible cultural heritage, philatelic exhibitions and author book signings.

Source: Guilin Evening Newspaper, 24th June, p.2

According to the Bureau of Parks, Guilin will build four new free park, called Jingpingshan Park, Maoershan Garden Park, Lidong Park and Guilin Garden and Plants Park. The project is already in progress and planned to be finished in 2012. They are build to improve the ecological environment in the Wayao Area, Qintan Area, West of Putuo Area and in the north of Guilin city. They are also planned to be leisure places for residents.

Each of these four parks have their own characteristics. They are different from the other parks in Guilin. The Jingpingshan Park will be made an island park including Douji Mountain, Jingping Mountain, Dazhou and 10 small islands. The park will be located in the Wayao Area in the south of Guilin.

Maoershan Garden Park will be a future flower park. With the Maoer Mountain as the center, it divides into an Orchid viewing area, an Orchid historical and cultural district, a Green Mountain Recreation Area and an Orchid cultivation and breeding area.

Lidong Park will include the Dongjing Nursery and some of the land of the Garden Construction Company. As there are a lot of universities close by it is planned to be a “sports park”. It will include many fitness equipments for the youth.

Guilin Garden and Plants Park will be build as a exotic and friendly “Garden City Style”.

These four free park and another 17 new roads will frame the outer city from all four directions. They are also believed to increase the value of land at the outskirts of the city for possible development.

source: http://news.guilinlife.com/news/2010/06-19/116079.html

With the ending of Gaokao school examination and summer holidays coming, the summer peak air-travel time will start. China Southern Airlines plans to add a connection from Guilin over Zhengzhou to Qingdao starting on the 1st July to remove pressure from other airline routes.

The flight number will be China Southern CZ6307 and the scheduled departure time 08:05am to12:10am on every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. The return flight is CZ6307 from 1:00pm to 5:00pm.

The airline expects that the opening ceremony of Qingdao beer festival at the end July will become another hot travel destination after the Shanghai World Expo.

original chinese article: http://news.guilinlife.com/news/2010/06-20/116224.html

Thanks to Ed for this hilarious photo of an housing area advertisement:

Living in China and witnessing the break-neck speed in which it is changing into a better newer modern different place, it is good to see nearly forgotten things pop-up to remind us how it has been not too long ago:

When coming home from shopping today, an old man put up is little knife-sharpening business in front of our compound. There were many people around, including many families but only a very few brought knifes to sharpen. The rest just pointed and explained their young ones: “Look, this is how it has been in the past”.

While sharpening our knifes we talked to him and while he didn’t tell us his age he said he is doing this business for over 50 years. Originally coming from Anhui Province he told us with pride that  he sharpened “many 10.000″ knifes in his life.  But nowadays business is not good for him anymore. People have their own electric sharpeners or buy cheap new knifes instead of giving him the business.

So, when you see him in front of your house, or you hear him calling out for business, don’t be cheap and let this old guy sharpen your kitchen knifes (for RMB 2 a piece). Maybe it makes an old profession survive a few years longer.

With Google playing Russian Roulette on the Chinese market, and Facebook, Twitter et all being “harmonized”, it is perhaps time to think about ways to get the content you want.

*AD ALERT*

We are using Secure Tunnel for about a year now. It is one of the few providers that is also running smoothly on Ubuntu Linux. They are offering different kinds of services, but if you just want to get your fill of youtube, the cheapest, US$10 per month SSL Tunnel should be fine.

This is just a short announcement for all who do not get the Guilin Expat Newsletter. If you want to get informed about whats going on please subscribe.

We will have a small “After-work Party” this Friday, march 19th in Shangri-la’s shiny new U-bar. Please feel free to pop in and bring your friends.

For the long version, please click here

Originally we wanted to go to Gurong Watertown last Sunday (see newsletter), but the evening before our tour-organizer informed us (surprise, surprise) that the town has closed its doors.

As it was too late to inform everyone we decided to start the tour as planned but make a little hike a little further down the original destination and visit the house of the family of a sunny hiking club member:

The first rays of sunshine are peaking through the clouds and temperatures are finally back in the double digits. What better way to celebrate than go pick some of the first strawberries of the season?

Those of you that subscribed to our newsletter (hint, hint) had the chance of joining us and the Sunny Hiker Group last Saturday to the strawberry fields in Daxu. If you missed the tour or had to work, here are some photos:

Last monday we took a car to Huangyao, which is about 200km away from Guilin. We started early in the morning so we were lucky enough to arrive before the hordes of tourists.

Huangyao is a well preserved, around 1000 years old settlement. As many others it has already been blessed with being discovered by mass tourism which lead to a rather hefty entrance fee of RMB70 per person. Still, I would say it was worth the money.

Inside the compound, Huangyao is way better than other places like Yangshuo or Daxu. Of course there are little stalls selling fake antiques and Mao-Bibles, but it is much more laid back. Nobody tries to pull you into their shops. I bought a traditional dress for my little daugther and paid only RMB 20 without much bargaining.

Should you go there, remember to bring some snacks. While you can get pickled veggies and cooked eggs easily, there are not many restaurants. (Actually, we saw only one).  To finish this rather short report, here are some photos: (For more photos please visit our Huangyao Photo Gallery)