..and these pictures aren’t even new (though they are to me). Still, they are breathtaking.
I have to get back to Guilin. Is there any place on earth more beautiful?
(Click to enlarge.)
Via…well, I forget, exactly, but I think I got pointed toward the photos startting from this post.
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A peculiar hybrid of personal journal, dilettantish punditry, pseudo-philosophy and much more, from an Accidental Expat who has made his way from Hong Kong to Beijing to Taipei and finally back to Beijing for reasons that are still not entirely clear to him…
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1
By Ivan
Oooohh, just think of how many shopping malls and chintzy high-rise apartment buildings the Communist pigs can build there!
August 2, 2006 @ 3:42 am | Comment
2
By richard
Not gonna happen. Guilin is a huge tourist attraction and a cash cow. It would be like building condos on top of the terra cotta warriors in Xi’An.
Then again, nothing the Chinese government does could really surprise me, so I suppose it’s within the realm of possibility…
August 2, 2006 @ 3:52 am | Comment
3
By michael
Not gonna happen? They already built a large mall and razed a whole block of historic buidlings downtown to create a huge concrete town square. Guilin has never been pretty – away from the river it is an industrial town. Tourists all go to Yangshuo these days, anyway.
August 2, 2006 @ 4:25 am | Comment
4
By Liuzhou Laowai
Not going to happen? It has been happening for years!
Guilin sucks. Full of short term idea rip off merchants. And that’s the local government.
Ever been to Yangshuo and seen that bunch of local drunks screaming and throwing up in Lisa’s then walking out without paying the bill?
That’s the local government.
Notorious in China, never mind abroad.
It doesn’t even have the best scenery in Guangxi.
August 2, 2006 @ 4:29 am | Comment
5
By richard
Yeah, I’ve seen the malls in the town proper…but I was talking about the sites from the pictures – the ride up the Li River. Please don’t tell me they would adulterate the most gorgeous place on God’s earth (and the scenery there is so spectacular it makes an agnostic like me believe in God).
August 2, 2006 @ 4:38 am | Comment
6
By Liuzhou Laowai
get out a bit!
there are more beautiful places (or equally beautiful) where you don’t have to be harrassed by money crazed cretins (or the local entrepreneurs – most of whom are not local!)
August 2, 2006 @ 4:42 am | Comment
7
By Ivan
Well, Richard, at the risk of attracting a scuffle with some smug atheist, let me ask you (rhetorically), if there is no “god” of any kind, then how can anything ever be adulterated?
You can contradict me if you want to, but I say that your love of beauty is an acknowledgement of God. And the name for that transcendent value doesn’t matter, and if anything, naming “God” obscures the reality of God. As James Joyce said: “God is a shout in the street.” 🙂 And Orthodox Jews never write “God’s” name….hmm….
August 2, 2006 @ 6:01 am | Comment
8
By Ivan
Dear Ivan,
What are you, some kind of Jew? HUH? Oh God, did I say that? Oh no, my life is f—ed! Ivan, please punish me!
Sincerely yours,
Mel Gibson
August 2, 2006 @ 6:04 am | Comment
9
By richard
“Adulterated,” as in fucked up with cheesy commercialism…. Must I believe in God to not wish that upon the spectacular beauty of the earth’s landscape? Keats tells us, “Beauty is truth, truth beauty; that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.” Maybe you call it God, and I call it Beauty. Toute la meme…?
And those who haven’ seen the South Park Passion spoof won’t get your “Punish me” joke. Those who have will savor it. (Savior it?)
I’m exhausted; don’t hold me accountable for anything I say tonight.
August 2, 2006 @ 7:31 am | Comment
10
By Ivan
Richard, that line by Keats is exactly what I was thinking about. As Shakespeare said (in one of his best lines in “The Tempest”): “you have spoken truer than you purposed.”
🙂
As for the South Park spoof: Recently I’ve been speculating on how much more material Mel Gibson has given for South Park to work with. I can imagine an episode where Mel Gibson meets Jesus and starts to harangue Jesus with antisemitic vitriol: “You’re a Jew, aren’t you?”
(insert a dozen LOL emoticons here…)
August 2, 2006 @ 7:49 am | Comment
11
By skystreaker
It’s a beautiful picture.
August 2, 2006 @ 11:42 am | Comment
12
By t_co
Soooo using this for a computer background.
August 2, 2006 @ 8:39 pm | Comment