This article was very nearly called 'Marooned in Yangshuo': the first week of October is a national vacation, where something like 57% of the 1.3 billion population of China go on holiday. As you can imagine this makes travelling around somewhat difficult; normally full trains are now booked up months in advance and prices - including guest houses and restaurants - can as much as triple during the week. So all you can do is get yourselves somewhere nice in time for the festivities and then ride out the crowds.

As places to be marooned go, Yangshuo is a pretty good choice: a village in South East China - population, China-sized: 150,000 - set among an extraordinary limestone karst landscape. Over 3,000 sudden peaks dominate the skyline, jutting out from the paddy fields below. Turning a corner in Yangshuo can reveal stunning limestone trapezoids just beyond the open ended streets.

It is for the countryside that people come to Yangshuo; the village itself is touristy, westernised and unlike anywhere else in China. It feels like a very busy ski resort. Every type of food is available here, including - fortunately - some superb Chinese food: it's worth the walk to find some of the street food on offer away from the bright lights of West Street; it's worth waiting until midnight for the Muslim barbecue trolley to wheel on in.

Cycling and kayaking are beautiful ways to take in the countryside, seeing both aspects of the river and meandering through small (normal sized) villages. The surrounding area is also one of Asia's best rock-climbing venues. So we filled our time exploring the crags, rivers, byways and - on one death-defying cycle ride - highways, as we attempted to find some music to share with you.

Our approach to finding music is fairly low-tech. In some places we have contacts who we can simply get in touch with. In other places, like Yangshuo, it's a case of turning up, speaking to as many people as we can (Rough Guide phrasebook in hand...) and then listening out wherever we go. Of course, these vagaries mean that while sometimes we find great music, other times we don't.

As October week came to an end (on the Friday - a lot of Chinese employers graciously move Thursday and Friday's work to the weekend, allowing their employees' three day vacation to last a week), we found ourselves music-less and planning our journey onwards. And so it was - and so often is - that, stopping for a drink on our way to buy train tickets, we met a lady whose father was an erhu player. We quickly changed our plans, as he agreed to meet up with us the next day.

The erhu is a double stringed instrument, sometimes dubbed the "Chinese violin", which has a long neck with an octagonal sound box at the bottom. The front of the sound box (behind the strings) is covered with python skin (apparently now bought in from South East Asia), which gives the instrument its unusual quality: when played well, it can be extremely haunting and sounds more like a wind instrument than a stringed one.

As well as getting to hear him play, Georgia was treated to an hour's lesson. There are two main difficulties playing the erhu: firstly, like the Mongolian horse-head fiddle, the string is never pressed against the finger board like a violin - instead, you have to exert just the right pressure on the string itself. This is particularly difficult to accomplish, as the qianjin - a piece of string designed to pull the (metal) strings in close to the python sound box - slips if you exert too much pressure, which also affects the tuning.

The second difficulty is in the bowing itself. Again like the horse-head fiddle, the bow is kept taught by the fingers in a kind of underhand grip, but the bow itself runs between the two strings, keeping it attached to the instrument when it's not being played. By moving the bow slightly forwards or backwards, you can play the other string (they are tuned a fifth apart, I think to D4 and A5).

After a fascinating hour learning about the erhu (you can hear snippets of the lesson below), we arranged to go back again the next day, to meet two friends of his, who play the dizi and hulusi. The dizi is the most common type of bamboo flute in China. It's a familiar sound in most cities, although this is usually from people walking around trying to sell them to tourists - this means that you hear "Frere Jacques" and "Auld Lang Syne" more frequently than any Chinese song. Here, however, we got to hear it in its proper context.

The flute is played fairly similarly to a classical Western flute, although without the extra chromatic keys. The one unusual thing about it is the extra hole between the blowing hole and finger holes. This is covered by a very thin bamboo membrane (it looks like a cigarette paper - in fact, I think they're transferrable: our dizi player rolled cigarettes with his too), which lends the instrument a buzzing sound and also makes the harmonics more audible. Text books will tell you that this membrane is attached using some sort of glue, like a jiao or garlic juice. In our experience, it was simply licked and stuck on.

The hulusi is another familiar sound among the street hawkers. This is a reed instrument, made of a gourd with three small bamboo pipes sticking out of the end. The middle pipe has finger holes, and is played like a recorder; the other two pipes act as drones. These can be stopped using a piece of rubber so that only one, or neither, drone is played alongside the melody. It makes a round, pure sound, quite like a clarinet. This was certainly a much easier instrument to learn than the other two, although it has a narrow tonal (and therefore melodic) range. Interestingly, one of the key ornaments on this instrument seems to be a portimento, often over a range of about a fifth. I'm still not quite sure how it's accomplished.

Then, as we were putting the final parts of this article in place, and editing the soundclips below, we happened upon some more music. Again it was in a bar, which will serve as a lesson to both of us from now on. We met a Chinese lady called Monica who was, until marriage and children interrupted three years ago, a professional Chinese singer for 10 years. As quiet is one of the few things in China that are hard to come by, we agreed to meet up early the next morning on the Li river, before the cruise boats began their daily trawl between Guilin and Yangshuo.

We spent a lovely, peaceful hour down by the river and even managed to record a passing marching band before the first boat revved past. Unfortunately, it was at this moment our computer decided to crash, sending all of these beautiful songs down to the murky depths. So we had to try again, in between the roar of manoeuvring boats and the bustle of street stalls opening for business. We managed to re-record two of the songs, although with occasional bits of background noise. Such are the frustrations of field (shore) recording.

Unfortunately, our extra time here has left us with little time left on our visa, so our route is changing: rather than going to Shanghai, we are heading straight to Vietnam. Sad as it is to miss out on such a major world city, we know we'll be back in this marvellous country soon enough and the people we have been fortunate enough to meet and listen to in this past week have more than made up for the diversion.

Music Files

Here is a short selection of the music that we've experienced in Yangshuo. As ever, there are also lots of new photos in the photo album, including all of the musicians featured here.

• "No Need for Talking", sung by Monica.
• Hulusi Song
• Dizi Song
• Erhu Song
• Another Dizi Song
• "Stars", sung by Monica.

Notice

We are pleased (proud/shocked/flattered) to report that we are being featured in the next edition of Songlines, the UK's foremost world music magazine. The edition comes out on the 20th of October, so if you don't usually get it, it is available, as always, in all good newsagents. If you are visiting us for the first time thanks to Songlines, welcome. You can browse previous articles using the links on the right, or sign up for site updates by entering your email address in the box beneath the links.