After our river adventure, the bus ride back to Guilin was uneventful. We did stop an a museum where we were given a demonstration of Chinese art by a young graduate student from the art department in a local university. He was very good and painted what you see here in about 10 minutes.
We spent some time at a nice little park called Elephant Park. There were lovely paths, and elephant carvings on the beach of a small lake.
This is why the park is called Elephant Park. Using some imagination the hill with the archway in it looks a little like an elephant. The locals picked up on that theme for the park.
Next we went to Kunming and visited the Stone Forest. It was an interesting walk among the large stone towers. I was reminded a little of Bryce Canyon in Utah, except the stones were gray instead of red, and it was much smaller in area.
We did find some interesting sites. We walked quickly under this rock, although it has probably been that way for hundreds, if not thousands, of years.
And, of course, you would never find a pagoda-like structure at Bryce Canyon. We enjoyed our climb up and the view from the top.
This part of China is where the ethnic minorities live and everywhere we went we were treated to surprise performances by local musicians and dancers. This group was at the bottom of Stone Forest. They sang and danced for us. The most interesting thing about them was that they were mostly elderly people. Until this point, all the performers we had seen were young and at least semi-professional. It was fun to see "real" people dancing and singing. They did a wonderful performance for us.
There was also a stage with younger, more professional performers, but I still liked the "old" people better
Now, you are probably wondering what this pictrue is doing in with our China travels. A word about restrooms in China. They mostly have "squat" toilets, never have toilet paper, and take some getting used to. At the Stone Forest we were told there was a 6 star restroom. Since most of the restrooms would struggle to be given 1 or 2 stars we were quite curious about how China could have a 6 STAR restroom. We found out. The restroom was extremely clean, the toilets were western, and there was even toilet paper available. But the crowning achievement was: (ta da, drum roll) There were small television screens in every stall and over every urinal!!! Yes, everyone could watch a travelogue as they did their business. Jim couldn't resist taking a picture. We loved it! 
After the Stone Forest, we went to a park. It was decorated up for Spring Festival (Chinese New Year). The following are some pictures we took in the park.
I am always amazed at how creative the Chinese are. Look at this dragon and its reflection. Everything they do has beauty in its own way.
All through the park there were scenes like this one. We saw lthis kind of scene display again after we returned to Nanjing. I will write about that in a later blog.
In the evening we had "mushroom hot pot." Hot pot is where the food is cooked at the table. There is a pot with boiling broth and various meats and vegetables are added in turn and served to us. We had been to a local hot pot restaurant where we did our own cooking. This night the girls dressed in local costumes cooked the food at our tables. It was delicious, but it was an outside restaurant. As you could see from the above pictures, the weather was cold. We ate with our coats on and were glad the food was cooked at the table so we could eat it hot and not have it get cold between the kitchen and our table. After dinner the girls sang some ethnic songs for us. Of course, we, in turn, sang some songs for them--Popcorn Popping on the Apricot Tree, Give Said the Little Stream and a couple of other simple songs. It was a fun experience to close the day before we moved on to Lijiang and Dali.
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