Things I ate in Yangshuo

Dan and I had a long vacation weekend at the beginning of May, so we went to Yangshuo in Guangxi Province. This was my first time traveling to a different province - or even city - in China. Guangxi and Guangdong province share a border ("xi" means west and "dong" means east) and we took a 12 hour overnight bus to get there. Of course, I was very excited about trying some new different food.

Check out the slideshow, plus some extra details below.


Guilin mi fen (Guilin rice noodles)
The local dish is Guilin mifen. Guilin is a larger city in Guangxi province, an hour or two from Yangshuo. Every time we were at the bus station, someone would run up to us yelling "Guilin!" and try to sell us a ticket. The noodles, though, are great. Rice noodles in broth with garlic, green onion, vegetables, spice, and maybe meat or pickled bamboo shoots - they're a little bit different everywhere you go. They make a great breakfast or lunch and give you lots of energy for biking through the countryside. They're also cheap. We ate them daily and never paid more than 5-8 RMB a bowl (about $1 US).
The photo is probably the best bowl I had, at a tiny roadside restaurant in Baisha town. They gave you the noodles in a metal bowl and you added your own flavoring and broth. Carrying a metal bowl full of boiling soup across a restaurant is harder than it looks.

Pijiu yu (Beer fish)
This is another Yangshuo specialty. The fish is cooked in beer, tomatoes, green onions, garlic, and chili peppers. The beer gives it a sour acidic taste, similar to using lemon when you cook fish. We accompanied our beer fish with the local LiQuan beer. You can get boneless beer fish if you pay extra, but Dan and I have been in China long enough to stop caring about fish bones.