Baishou Ancient Town 百寿古镇, Yongfu County, Guilin, Guangxi 广西桂林

 I joined my hostess to take the speed train to Yongfu, had famous 桂林米粉， then visited her husband’s hometown:

Baishou Ancient Town 百寿古镇, Yongfu County, Guilin, Guangxi  广西桂林. This is a town of longevity, with beautiful mountains and clear waters, pleasant climate, simple folk customs, and long life. It has the best-preserved Yongningzhou Ancient City 永宁州古城 in Jiangnan, the world-famous Baishoutu Stone Carving 百寿图石刻, the magical water well Dansha Well 丹砂井, the Sui and Tang Dynasty Ancient Road, and the ancient folk houses in northern Guangxi. Beautiful ancient charm can be seen everywhere. There is a local proverb: "What a good Yongningzhou, with rivers flowing on both sides. Five horses run by the river, and three stars float on the water." We stay in a farmhouse with acres of land, and ate organic food produced from the farm.

Guilin rice noodles are a traditional snack in Guilin City and belong to the Guilin cuisine. It uses early indica rice and brine as raw materials, and the rice noodles made are sour, fragrant, smooth and delicious. The history of Guilin rice noodles can be traced back to two thousand years ago, which is related to Qin Shihuang's expedition to Lingnan. It is said that during Qin Shihuang's expedition to Lingnan, the staple food of the northern soldiers changed from noodles to rice after they came to the south, and they missed the food from their hometown very much. Since there was no wheat in the south at that time, only rice, the cooks in the army used local materials, ground the rice into pulp, drained the water, kneaded it into dough, and pressed it into round roots or flakes, thus giving birth to the prototype of rice noodles. In addition, there is also a story about the birth of brine. It is said that when the Qin army was building the Lingqu Canal, due to the rampant miasma in Lingnan and the rampant epidemic in the army, someone suddenly had the idea of ​​mixing rice noodles with medicinal soup, which not only tasted excellent, but also had the effect of treating acclimatization.

The next day, we toured the famous Yongningzhou Ancient City 永宁州古城 in Baishou Ancient Town is located at the northern end of Baishou Town, across the river from Baishou Rock. Yongningzhou Ancient City was built in the 13th year of Chenghua in the Ming Dynasty (1477) and has experienced more than 500 years of wind and rain. Yongningzhou Ancient City is located in a dangerous section from Guilin to Rong'an, with only one ancient road passing through the Grand Canyon here. The ancient city is built on the must-pass place of the ancient road, with natural rivers on both sides as moats, and dozens of kilometers around it are high mountains and ridges. 6 kilometers to the north is a dangerous pass that stretches for more than ten kilometers-Santai Ridge (formerly known as San'e Ridge), which has the momentum of one man guarding the pass and ten thousand men unable to open it.

We then visited the nearby Song Dynasty "Hundred Longevity Picture" “百寿图” rock carvings that are famous in South Asia. In the year of Jichou in Shaoding of the Song Dynasty, Shi Wei, the magistrate of Gutian, wrote a large "Shou" character in official script on his birthday, and asked a hundred longevity people to write and offer a small longevity character each, which was carved on both sides of the rock wall by famous craftsmen to form "Hundred Longevity Picture". The unique design is that 100 small "Shou" characters are embedded in the strokes of the big "Shou" character, and no two characters are the same. 

 

As it was not the season for sea lettuce 海菜花, we couldn’t take a photo of sea lettuce in the river. My host family then dropped me at the local bus station to ride a bus to Guilin 桂林.