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On November 5th, 2017 I woke up in a wonderful little boutique hotel in Guilin, China called the Zen Tea House. Enjoying the complimentary breakfast I looked wistfully at the “free beer” sign in the lobby, a legitimate offer that I had taken liberal liberty with the night before, and one I would do again and again until we checked out, and all under the smiling gaze of the hotel’s proprietor.
Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Give a man a beer and you have a friend for life.
Guilin is a rather beautiful city, with a sprawling pedestrian mall leading to the centrepiece of the metropolis, a very photogenic pair of pagodas that rise out of a picturesque lake. By this time I had already taken in all of the most obvious, most available sites in town except for the most obvious and most available attraction of them all, the Seven Star Park, where I spent this day.
The small but mountainous greenspace* near my hotel was most conspicuous at night, when it is brilliantly lit up for the entire city to notice. However, during the daylight hours I quickly discovered that there was a lot more to the park than the handful of squat, pretty mountains that light up the nights.
There are sculptures both modern and antique everywhere one cares to look, there’s a zoo in there (a sad-looking one that I refused to patronize), a forest full of monkeys, caves, countless kiosks offering food, drinks and carnival games, and of course lots of paths traversing those picturesque mountains.
There was also a nearly-empty bandstand with nothing set up on it aside form a drum kit. People were taking turns getting up and giving the kit a try (okay, not people: children). I got up there and showed them a thing or four (slash four)!
All in all a visit to Seven Star Park was a pleasant way to spend the day. Of course the free beer back at the hotel was all right for the night.
*I was shocked to discover vast green spaces everywhere I went in China, a country that appeared (to my limited travel at least) much, much more environmentally friendly than I was ever led to believe.
Todd Man Out 