Cormorant Fisherman

Yangshuo County (simplified Chinese: 阳朔县; traditional Chinese: 陽朔縣; pinyin: Yángshuò Xiàn) is a county in Guilin, Guangxi Province, China. Its seat is located in Yangshuo Town. Surrounded by karst peaks and bordered on one side by the Li River (漓江) it is easily accessible by bus or by boat from nearby Guilin. In the 1980s, the town became popular with foreign backpackers, and by the late 1990s packaged tourists began arriving in greater numbers. At that time, domestic tourism represented only a small fraction of the tourists but by 2005 domestic tourists outnumbered foreign tourists by a great margin. Today, the town has become a resort destination for both domestic and foreign travelers.

The Yulong River (Chinese: 遇龙河; pinyin: Yùlóng Hé) is a small tributary of the larger Li River in Southeastern Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region that runs through the major city of Guilin to Yangshuo. The Yulong starts in Northern Yangshuo County near Litang and runs for over 35 kilometres (22 mi) through small villages of the Yulong River Valley, including Putao, Litang, Chaolong, Yima and Gaotian town, before emptying into the Li around the town of Ping Le. The Yulong is a shallow river of around 5 metres (16 ft) maximum depth and an average of 25 metres (82 ft) across. As it is not located near any industrial areas, it is clean enough for swimming, though some brownish surface foam is visible in eddys, probably the result of phosphate runoff from local villages.

Unlike the busy Li River, it has no motorized boat traffic and relies completely on bamboo rafts to ferry passengers downriver. This has become a popular tourist activity, with passengers beginning their journey that the Yulong Bridge, a 400-year-old stone bridge. As the local government has improved local roads through the Yulong River Valley, biking has also become a popular tourist activity, as there are many quaint villages along the river, some offering bed ad breakfast accommodation.

The Yulong is prone to sudden flooding which is one of the reasons why there are not more places to stay close by. Local people have built breakwaters (weirs) every kilometer or so to allow their animals to cross the river, though many have fallen into disrepair. It is possible during the dry season (November–March) for people to walk across some of these weirs, otherwise it is necessary to hire local people to ferry passengers across for about RMB 10 per person.

A fisherman or fisher is someone who captures fish and other animals from a body of water, or gathers shellfish.

Worldwide, there are about 38 million commercial and subsistence fishermen and fish farmers. The term can also be applied to recreational fishermen and may be used to describe both men and women. Fishing has existed as a means of obtaining food since the Mesolithic period.

The conical Asian hat, sedge hat, rice hat, paddy hat, and sometimes known by the term coolie hat, although many people consider this term to be offensive, is a simple style of conical hat originating in East, South Asia and Southeast Asia, particularly China, Cambodia, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Philippines, India and Vietnam. It is kept on the head by a cloth (often silk) chin strap; an internal band of the same material keeps the hat itself from resting on the wearer's head. This style of hat is used primarily as protection from the sun and rain. When made of straw or matting, it can be dipped in water and worn as an impromptu evaporative-cooling device.

Human-powered watercraft are watercraft propelled by human power. The three main methods of collecting human power are directly from the hands or feet, through the hands with oars, paddles, or poles or through the feet with pedals and a crank or treadle. While most human-powered watercraft use buoyancy to maintain their position relative to the surface of the water, a few, such as human-powered hydrofoils and human-powered submarines use hydrofoils, either alone or in addition to buoyancy.

Guìlín (Chinese: 桂林; Zhuang: Gveilinz) is a prefecture-level city in the northeast of the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, People's Republic of China, sitting on the west bank of the Li River. Its name means "forest of Sweet Osmanthus", owing to the large number of fragrant Sweet Osmanthus trees located in the city. The city has long been renowned for its unique scenery of Karst topography and is one of China's most popular tourist destinations.

Cormorant fishing is a traditional fishing method in which fishermen use trained cormorants to fish in rivers. Historically, cormorant fishing has taken place in Japan and China since about 960 AD. This technique has also been used in other countries but is currently under threat in China.

To control the birds, the fishermen tie a snare near the base of the bird's throat. This prevents the birds from swallowing larger fish, which are held in their throat, but the birds can swallow smaller fish. When a cormorant has caught a fish in its throat, the fisherman brings the bird back to the boat and has the bird spit the fish up. Though cormorant fishing once was a successful industry, its primary use today is to serve the tourism industry.

The types of cormorants used differ based on the location. In Gifu, Japan, the Japanese Cormorant (P. capillatus) is used; Chinese fishermen often employ Great Cormorants (P. carbo). Darters (Anhinga), which are very close relatives of cormorants, are also used for this fishing technique on occasion.