Whilst I have previously written that Chinese bullet train (CRH) railway stations tend to have a big funky restaurant area on the 2nd floor (such as Shenzhen and Guangzhou), which by and large contains a McDonald’s and a KFC, as well as Chinese fast food outlets, for some reason in Guangxi province, and in particular, Guilin, and Guilin North, the big guns are not only in town, but instead they have dime store knock off local versions of KFC/McDonald’s, that tend to be of pretty poor quality (this is also the case inside Guilin International Airport although there is a KFC restaurant at the arrival area of the airport as well as departures).
But at Yangshuo train station, which opened in 2014, the situation was even worse. There’s no restaurants once you had gone through ticket inspection. In fact, the only food option was Chinese snacks from a supermarket, which are not good at all! I may write about them though.
Having just had quite the night out at the DMZ Bar, and having got up at 4pm, with a train booked for 6.40 pm I was slightly worried that my culinary choices would thus be limited to the said supermarket, but alas I was wrong. Yangshuo now has a knock-off fast food restaurant! The stunningly titled Ji Bao Gao has the standard expected knock off menu. It includes the always reliable deep-fried chicken burger and the knock-off Zinger burger. There are also “beefburgers” that or may not contain beef and cracking meal offer that includes whole roasted chickens.
My general experience of these kinds of establishments is to avoid the burgers, as they tend to be of low quality. As well as the KFC rip-off fried chicken. But if history had taught me anything, it was that you really couldn’t go wrong with a whole roasted chicken. So I went for the RMB 39 ($6) whole chicken with two cokes (I was hungover).
Roasted chicken is so greasy. They actually served it with gloves to eat from! But overall a fair success, not too dry, and the fountain cola was life-giving. Not exactly a game changer of a restaurant, but now if you do need to travel via Yangshuo train station there is at least a better option that chickens feed, ramen noodles and quail eggs from the dodgy supermarket.
You can now get food at Yangshuo train station!
Gareth Johnson is the founder of Young Pioneer Tours, a published writer, and all round entrepreneur. He enjoys street food, and encourage others to get paid to travel the world.
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