Rongjiang, Zhaoxing and on to Guangxi: Part 6 of China's Far South West

Meeting Two of China's Ethnic Minorities in the Qiandongnan Miao and Dong Autonomous Prefecture

05-Nov-2010

China

We spent the night of the 4th in the county town of Rongjiang County, sometimes called Guzhou City sometimes (and in this blog) Rongjiang. It is a dismal place and we had a poor dinner in a very ordinary hotel.

The next day we set out to meet the Miao and Dong inhabitants of the two southernmost counties of the the Qiandongnan Miao and Dong Autonomous Prefecture. The Prefecture is in the southeast of Guizhou Province in south western China.

This post is about the three most southerly counties of Qiandongnan Prefecture  in Guizhou Province

Leaving Rongjiang

Rongjiang means ‘Banyan River’ and we hoped it might make a better effort at living up to its exotically attractive name in the morning sunshine. It failed. Several industrial sites and the building of a new highway had churned up the chalky soil and deposited a layer of white dust over the streets, the buildings and even the trees. As we left, I tried to imagine how the town might look without the dust – it was still ugly. As our road climbed into the hills, Mr Wu looked back down into the valley and said something to Dylan. ‘He says it looks like Afghanistan’ Dylan translated.

Congjiang County

Tingdong Livestock Market

We were soon in pleasanter countryside and, after crossing the hills, descended into the valley of the Duliu River at Tingdong.

Tingdong livestock market

On a field below the road, Tingdong livestock market was in full swing. Walking down the grassy ramp we passed a huge bull buffalo tethered to a stake away from the other cattle. Miao may no longer dismember chickens in the cause of marital harmony, but bull fighting remains a big entertainment. These huge beasts are not pitted against men, but against each other in what must be a titanic battle for the honour of the owning family.

Young bull, 4500 Yuan, Tingdong livestock market

There were buffalo, humped cattle and a compact but powerful breed of what we would recognise as normal cattle. All looked in fine condition and we were offered a young bull for 4500 Yuan (£420).

Miao Women in Traditional Clothing

A small lorry disgorged a load of bristly yellow piglets. They ran about their pen, swarming all over each other in a squealing pile of pigs. Back by the entrance a women pulled a black piglet out of a basket and held it up by it hind legs. The piglet’s loud complaints gathered a small crowd of potential purchasers.

Miao woman baskets of piglets, Tingdong Livestock market

Like livestock markets everywhere, it was largely a masculine affair, but the piglet woman was not alone; other women, were setting up food stalls or selling chickens and eggs. They were all dressed in traditional costume, short skirts or colourful pinafores worn over a tunic and tight leggings of a navy blue cloth with an unnaturally shiny texture. They were all Miao and wore their long hair oiled and coiled in Maio fashion, though the shiny cloth was originally a speciality of the Dong people, another ethnic minority of eastern Guizhou. Locally the Miao have adopted Dong clothing and there has been some intermarriage, although the two communities live largely parallel lives in separate villages.

Miao women, Tingdong market

ppp

Tingdong to Congjiang

From Tingdong to Congjiang we followed the Duliu River. Although its wooded valley is steep, the river is broad and shallow, sparkling over gentle rapids and swirling into lazy pools where fishing boats congregate. It is a clean, beautiful river, reminiscent of the Loire, except for its bright green colour and lack of chateaux.

Congjiang is a long narrow town jammed between the river and the mountain. The main drag is, of necessity, much narrow than in most Han towns, and we felt as though we were driving down a canyon.

Yintan a Dong settlement

Yintan

We turned up a side valley to visit the Dong settlement of Yintan. Most of the three million Dong live in eastern Guizhou with some communities in neighbouring provinces. Unlike the Miao, they build their houses in the valley bottoms. In Yintan, the ground floors are of brick with wooden overhanging upper floors. Yintan is built around the confluence of two streams, both of them full of rubbish.

An ear, some entrails.... Pork stall, Yintan

Dong Drum Towers

Every Dong village has a Drum Tower; a tapering wooden tower like an open pagoda. Larger villages like Yintan, which is more of a small town, have two or more. Built and maintained by one extended family, an extra storey is added for each new generation; some had fourteen or fifteen levels.

Drum Tower, Yintan

Wind and Rain Bridges

Being in the mountains every village has a stream, and across every stream is a ‘Wind and Rain’ bridge, an elaborately carved wooden structure placed, typically, just outside the town. The bridges have two purposes, apart from joining one river bank to another. Situated between the town and its fields they provide shelter for agricultural workers during inclement weather, and in the evening they are a place where young Dong men and women can meet away from the inhibiting eyes of their elders

Wind and Rain Bridge, Yintan

Yintan seemed a bustling little town particularly after the rural quiet of the Miao villages, but along with that bustle came clutter. Miao villages are unnaturally tidy, but in Yintan the streets were full of building material, discarded agricultural equipment and just plain rubbish.

Lunch in Congjiang

We returned to Congjiang for lunch. In a private dining room on the first floor of a small hotel we ate an excellent fish, fresh from the Duliu, served on a bed of spring onions and chillies. Along with this came a dish of runner beans and aubergines, a bowl of mashed pumpkin, some pork with peanuts and chillies and a plate of quartered ‘thousand year old eggs’. The eggs are not really that old, but have been buried long enough to become completely black. The yolks looked like the dyed yolk of any hardboiled egg, the black ‘white’ was shiny and translucent. At first their taste was simply eggy, then a flavour of the sea emerged, like a fresh oyster, and finally there was an aftertaste where the rot and decay seemed to linger. I liked them – until that aftertaste kicked in.

Basha and the 'Long-Haired' Miao

Basha Miao village, up the hill from Congjiang, is the home of the ‘Long-haired Miaos’. The women's hair is immensely long, but neatly coiffed. Dylan said it was the men who have the long hair, but they were all out in the fields, we had to take his word for it. Or not.

...dark blue cloth painted with egg white..., Basha Miao vilage

The women, all in traditional costume, were hard at work treating cloth. The dark blue cloth (we saw a brown version elsewhere) was first painted with egg white, then with pig’s blood and hung up to dry. Once dry it was beaten with large wooden mallets, the plonk, plonking sound being audible all over the village. After prolonged beating the cloth becomes shiny and, to some extent, waterproof.

The cloth is laid out to dry....., Basha Miao village

....and beaten with wooden mallets. Basha Miao village

The village was set among trees, high on a valley side, above terraced fields. Following a path lined with wooden frames draped in drying rice we reached a dell set aside for festivals. The local Miao are animists and a tree is planted at a child’s birth with the hope that, in the fullness of time, it will provide their coffin or at least shade for their burial place.

Drying rice, Basha

Liping County

Leaving Basha we returned to the valley and continued downstream to Diping before turning up a side valley. We travelled deeper and deeper into the mountains and the road rose higher and higher. Terraced fields stepped down the valley sides towards the stream far below. The higher we climbed the more vertiginous the terracing became. Down the noses of truncated spurs, the terraces hung one above another like boxes in a theatre.

Terraced fields, Basha

We climbed to the head of the valley and over a pass into the next one. Instead of descending, we turned along this valley side, first contouring and then climbing even higher to another pass.

Zhaoxing

We descended into a lush valley hidden deep in the mountains. Zhaoxiang nestles on the valley floor, a Dong town of richly mature wooden houses lining a main street with more horse drawn vehicles than cars.

Zhaoxing at dusk

We checked into our wooden hotel next door to the wooden police station and opposite a drum tower. Taking a stroll through the town, we found ourselves walking through a China we had thought only existed in photographs from the beginning of last century. If Rongjiang had been China at its ugliest, Zhaoxing was China at its most delightful.

We had a light meal at one of the barbecue stalls lining the main street. The lady of the house sat behind a brazier nursing a child, the food lying on skewers in front of the brazier. Her husband, specialising in fried rice, operated a wok over a gas ring. We chose skewers of beef, pork, heart (we think), tofu, green beans and a long green leaf threaded backwards and forwards like a concertina. We were relieved when it was served by number one son without any barbecued infant parts being included by mistake. My reluctance to eat scorpions is merely squeamishness, my objection to eating children - call me a bleeding heart liberal if you must – is more ethically based.

Hopefully not popping the baby on the barbecue

Returning to the hotel we could still here the sound of wooden mallets falling rhythmically onto cloth.

06-Nov-2010

In the morning Dylan arrived to show us the way across town to breakfast. Zhaoxing had risen early, we passed a silversmith’s where girls were hard at work on the polishing machines, and we could already hear the sound of mallets upon cloth. There are people whose whole waking lives are spent hitting cloth.

Zhaoxing in the morning

In the morning we crossed town to a restaurant for breakfast. Zhaoxing had risen early, we passed a silversmith’s where girls were hard at work on the polishing machines, and we could already hear the sound of mallets upon cloth. There are people whose whole waking lives are spent hitting cloth.

We passed two lads squatting beside a fire in a metal bowl, roasting rats on kebab skewers. We watched the fur sear off and the skin begin to blacken. Dylan reached behind their front door and brought out the rattraps – spring-loaded snares – which they set in the rice paddies every evening. I half hoped they would offer us a taste despite the rats looking supremely unappetizing. I was mostly relieved when no offer came. Presuming that, as no one would eat rat by choice, that must be all they had and they were far too poor to share, we wandered off to a less challenging breakfast of spicy noodle soup and a fried egg. Later Dylan told us later they ate rat because liked it, and in the market their catch would fetch a similar price to chicken.

Rat kebab

Tang'an

After breakfast we drove back to the top of the pass, then turned up towards the mountain top. The village of Tang’an offers magnificent views over the terraces down the valley to distant Zhaoxing.

Tang'an

Built almost on a flat mountain top rather than a valley bottom Tang’an has been maintained in a strictly pre-industrial state in a Chinese/Norwegian collaboration to produce a living eco-museum. Its site is extraordinary, the views breathtaking, but the village itself is, for the moment, unexceptional. As other Dong communities develop, the isolation will help it maintain its deliberately primitive status, but the authorities will need to ensure the continuing cooperation of the villagers themselves.

Zhaoxing at the bottom of the valley

From the valley top we retraced our steps to Diping, the small town where we had left the Duliu River. We stopped for a closer look at the Wind and Rain Bridge, considered one of the finest in eastern Guizhou.

Wind and Rain Bridge, Diping

After Diping we followed the Duliu River downstream as the valley gradually widened, eventually crossing into Guangxi and arriving at the sizable but undistinguished town of Sanjiang. Here we said farewell to Dylan and Mr Wu and met Liu, our Guangxi guide and her nameless driver.

Ham on a motorbike, Diping

China's Far South West (2010)

Part 1: Kunming and The Stone Forest
Part 2: Shilin to Xingyi
Part 3: Xingyi and on to Huangguoshu
Part 4: Qingyan, Guiyang and on to Kaili
Part 5: Kaili, Xijiang and Rongjiang
Part 6: Rongjiang, Zhaoxing and on to Guangxi
Part 7: Chengyang Dong Villages and the Longsheng Rice Terraces
Part 8: Guilin and the Li River
Part 9: Hong Kong
Part 10: Macau