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| Daxu Town |
20 kilometers southeast to Guilin city located a little town called Daxu which means a big market. On both both sides of the old street of the town live 200 households which still follow their easygoing way of life. The 2.5km-long old street was paved with dark green quadrate limestones that have been ground and washed smooth by shoes, carts and rain.
It was a busy trading center in the old times. The town came into being in around 200 B.C.. Since the Emperor Qin Shi Huang built the Ling Dyke which linked Xiang River of the Yangtze River water system with Li River of the Pearl River water system, this lucrative water route played a more and more important role in transportation and Daxu, the town lying by Li River, became a place and a port of collecting and distributing goods. There are still 13 docks along the old street from which you can imagine its prosperity in former days. The town was getting quiet since 1930s when railways and highroads replaced river shipping.
But many local residents still keep their traditional handcraft and business, such as in-home workshops of rice wine, carpenters, bamboo baskets and in-home traditional Chinese medical clinics. There are about 20 clinics gathered along the street, some of which specialize in gynecology and some in paediatrics. Coming into the clinic, you can smell the scent of medical herbs and timeworn medicine chests tell the history of the clinic. The rice wine workshop remains the old way of brewing wines by using old barrels, baskets and distillery. |
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