Lighting Spectacles On Li River

The creative director of the Olympics ceremonies operates an open theatre in Yangshuo by the Li River, which offers daily performances by hundreds of extras. Grace's original intention was to get us tickets to the evening shows. Our local tour guide could get us Y180 tickets at Y138 which sounded reasonable. Then she suggested it would be even cheaper, with transfers included, if we watched the show from the frontyard of a farmer's home in a village across the river from the theatre. Grace fell for that, the allure of watching a lighting spectacle from a farmer home in a farm by the river. The tour guide collected us from the hotel, passed us to another guy who took us 500m down the main street of Yangshuo to a parked tricycle, a two-wheel motorcycle with a covered van on two wheels behind. Reason for the walk was that vehicle was not allowed to enter the city. When we arrived at the river frontage, there were several other people as well. The tourists were generally very quiet. The locals were chatting away in their local dialects that we couldnt understand. The show started on time, and it was a spectacle alright, with strong lights luminating the landscape features by the river in front of the theatre. However, the kids and I got bored rather quickly, and I spent most of the evening entertaining Kristine and Kimberley so they didnt disturb the other tourists beside us. A lady 'hostess' with a small kid on her back and an 8yr old daughter was kind enough to lend Kristine a pair of binoculars which kept kristine occupied rest of the show.
As the show ended, we were ushered by our motorist driver to our transportation. A minute after I took that photo and hopped onto the back van, a young man abruptly stopped his motorcycle in front of our vehicle, slapped our driver on the face and screamed at him in a dialect we could not understand. The driver did not respond physically, but just persuaded that aggressor to calm down. This went on for a while and I started to worry. As the tourists departed in their respective vehicles, a lady tour guide sat on her motorbike and watched the incident. I stepped up to her asking for help in getting us out to the main road. She replied to let the men settle their issues and someone would send us back. It surely didnt seem safe to us. Much later, two motocycles came to pick us up. Kimberley and I sat in one and Kristine and Grace hopped on the other. We were eventually taken back to the edge of the city by the two motorcycles. Too cold a ride but we were happy to get out of the place safely. Apparently the aggressor was a local bully. He claimed the tricycle driver 'scared' hom along the village track and he wanted Y300 as compensation.....

We spent the next morning cycling around Yangshuo. The adventure previous evening was too much for Kimberley and she came down with fever all of the next day. The trip back to Beijing was uneventful. We were happy to have made the trip to Guilin, and we were also happy to return to Beijing.