Thank you Bill.

May 9, 2006. Guilin, China.

How things have changed. I took Kristie, Joanne and Erik into China for a quick visit to Guilin and Yangshuo. It has been ~13 years since I was last there. While the actual sights have not changed (elephant trunk hill, caves, boat down the Liyang river, etc.), the city of Guilin has blossomed. From a dirty, provincial town with no respect for the environment and the beauty of their own city, Guilin has changed into a city with wide, manicured boulevards and pretty little parks.

Guess who they attributed a big part of this change to.

Bill Clinton.

Yup, our very own Billy visited the city with Chelsea in the late 1990s and gave a speech on environmental protection and preservation. (The podium he used, a big rock, is now a tourist destination.) As a direct or indirect result of the speech, the Guilin government spent the next few years and a lot of money beautifying their city and further opening it up to international tourists.

Thank you Bill.