Yangshuo beer fish

yangshuo beer fish restaurant

Yangshuo is famous for beer fish – a local specialty that is cooked with lots of chillis, garlic, peppers and of course BEER! The fish is called Li River fish (another must-try if you go to Guilin) although I don’t know exactly what type of fish that is.

yangshuo view

I went to a rather touristy place to sample this awesome dish so I can’t vouch for the authenticity of it. The view is great though and we were each given a RMB 50 coupon to dine on. I was the only person traveling alone in that Li River cruise tour and this girl Kiko who was there with her mom and dad was kind enough to wave me over to share their table.

chinese menu

WHY DO THE MENUS ONLY HAVE CHINESE CHARACTERS?

yangshuo tofu

I left the ordering to them since I can’t read anything but I managed to order beer fish and beer to go along with it (it’s the perfect combo). It is obvious I didn’t do the ordering coz here you have tofu. REAL TOFU. As in the kind that comes without anything to somewhat mask the inherent tastelessness of tofu.

yangshuo shoots chicken

This is a vegetable dish cooked with chicken. It consists primarily of shoots and it’s not too bad but I’m not a huge fan of vegetables.

yangshuo local fern

Now this is an interesting one – it’s a local fern gathered in Yangshuo by the locals. It tasted bitter but I found it quite interesting and ate quite a bit of this. I think the fact that it’s indigenous to Yangshuo made me go against my vegetable principals.

kiko

This is Kiko. She’s with an MNC and was based in Malaysia for a bit.

yangshuo beer fish

I always leave the best for the last so here I present to you the famous Yangshuo Beer Fish!

yangshuo tea

You can actually taste the malt and hops from the beer fish and it surprisingly adds a lot to the taste of the tender and succulent Li River fish. The gravy was so good I drizzled it over my rice, which apparently is not compliant with the etiquette of Chinese dining, along with my propensity for sticking my chopsticks into the rice bowl. smirk

beer fish

I can’t remember how much the bill was but we had to top up about RMB 100 (about RM 50). I offered to pay since I was the only one who ordered beer (although Kiko and her dad drank it too) but they won’t have anything to do with that. I had to literally force my Yuan into the hands of the waitress, to the protests of the family and a lot of back and forth before I escorted the waitress away with my Yuan.

yangshuo beer fish end

That’s Chinese culture for you. Heh! Anyway, the family is not from around here too – they’re visiting from Guangzhou and their family was kind enough to ask me to visit anytime and they’ll be my tour guide (and a place to stay). w00t! I’ll be going after my Melbourne trip. πŸ™‚

Li River RMB Yuan 20 scene

guilin li river 20 yuan

The famous Li River boat trip takes you down amazing limestone formations, one of which is depicted at the back of the RMB 20 (RM 10) bank note.

gui lin li river 20 yuan

It is exactly the same scene, minus the quaint little boat of course, which probably decided to stop plying the route after the influx of larger cruise ships filled with camera toting tourists. πŸ˜‰

guilin li river rmb 20

Unfortunately, I set my ISO at 400, overexposing and ruining most of the Li Jiang photos. The ones that weren’t didn’t have the entire scene due to people unfamiliar with dSLRs adjusting the lens. *cries river of tears* Okay, that was an extremely bad pun even by my own standards. πŸ˜‰

yuan 20 point

I have another backup cam which I used to take a proper photo but by that time we have passed the Yuan 20 place. I also look constipated in this picture.

The place is actually at Xingping, the Li River boat cruise takes you from Guilin to Yangshou. The limestone formations are called Karst formations, a very atas word which I had to Google to understand.

I got a mint copy of the RMB Yuan 20 bank note just for this trip and after my pose, a couple of domestic tourists asked to borrow mine to pose in the same way. Heh! Here’s what the RMB 20 note looks like at the back:

rmb 20

Compare it to the RMB Yuan 20 point on Li River!

rmb 20 guilin

It’s a good thing I paid RMB 10 (RM 5) for a laminated copy of the photo taken by the ship or I wouldn’t have a proper camwhore moment.
smirk

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