A periodical trawl through my photo archives, focusing on a different theme each time. Visit www.timbirdphotography.com for more.

Yangshuo is on the Li River and close to the city of Guilin, famous for its classic Chinese scenery of limestone karst mountains and rice terraces. It’s the venue for a spectacular light show on the river against the backdrop of the mountains and some equally spectacular caves. It’s a handy base for exploring the region. I stayed at the highly recommended The Li River Retreat on the edge of town, which is closed this year for renovations, but the friendly Australian manager Alf has alternative accommodation at Alf’s Place in the town itself until it reopens.

I spent some days here in 2010 during a break from visiting Shanghai for Expo 2010. I rented a bike and cycled to small market towns and followed the waterways upstream, loading the bike on bamboo rafts to make the return journeys downstream. I haven’t done a blog of photos from China for a while so I thought a return was long overdue. But rather than repeat the familiar scenes of those limestone mountains (perhaps I’ll return to those later; they are beautiful), I’ve selected six captivating characters encountered on my trip. Here goes:

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