The Ancient Tradition Of Fishing With Cormorants

 

image credit

Sitting quietly on a bamboo raft, with his birds at his side, the man listens to the gentle splashing as water laps at the side of his craft. The light of a flaming lantern illuminates the scene - in Guilin, in the Chinese province of Guangxi.

Cormorant fishing is an age-old art practiced in China and Japan (as well as a few other countries) that is long past its glory days. Today, it exists largely due to the tourism industry, but is no less intriguing for that fact.