Products Name-------------- LIFE IN FISHING OVER THE LI RIVER

Production Country--------- Mainland China

Fishermen living along the Li River have blended in well with Guilin’s poetic and picturesque scenery for over recent twenty years. As performers of local tourist resorts, showing their old life in fishing is their major source of income.

Dry days in the summer and autumn of 2005 stopped cruise over the Li River. Without visitors, fishermen of New Yuye Village in Yangshuo County could no longer earn money by performing their most welcomed show, ‘Fishing with Cormorant’. The whole village picked up their traditional fishing business under the organization of the senior in the village. People went fishing together, and returned home with a lot of fish. Fishermen came back to their old ways of making a living, busying with making bamboo rafts, fishing nets and feeding their cormorants.

Spring of 2006 saw fast swelling of Li River followed by the early coming of summer floods. Fishing became very difficult, and fishermen’s income dropped significantly. They had to buy fish from market to feed cormorants, which were considered as burden of family. Two young lads started a fishing competition for the title of ‘Fishing King’.

Li River was navigable again when the season changed to summer in 2006. Groups of tourists swamped into Yangshuo. The youth in village managed to persuade the seniors of giving up fishing. Surplus cormorants were either traded out or killed.

Finally, fishermen in New Yuye Village continued their business to perform their fishing to tourists.