Along the River Li

(Great Cormorant)

As Becky and I steamed up the River Li, time seemed to slip backward like pages from a book flipped from one to the one before. From contemporary Guilin, China, the scene gradually morphed to villages where homes were made of sticks and mud; where small clearings yielded to tiny vegetable gardens; where children drove ducks along dirt roads with long reeds or rode their yoked water buffalos home from fields to corrals.

Around one bend, in the shadow of the region’s peculiar mountains, we found a gathering of long and narrow bamboo rafts—each occupied by a single fisherman and one or more Great Cormorants. Tamed over years, the birds were trained to dive and capture fish, to yield their catch to the man in their boat, to accept only an occasional fish in exchange for the largess they provided to the fisherman.

Both birds and men seemed content with their fate, both caught in an eddy where change is merely illusion. How far back in time this scene might take us is anybody’s guess.