Kaili, Xijiang and Rongjiang: Part 5 of China's Far Southwest

We were woken at five thirty by an artillery barrage which turned out, on closer inspection, to be firecrackers. I was still wrestling with the concept of sleep when there was a repeat performance, this time including rockets. They were impressive fireworks, but at half past six…..?!  Kaili, we discovered later, had been woken in celebration of a forthcoming wedding. I hope the noisy couple have a long and happy marriage – and enjoy it far away from me.

Impressive fireworks - at 6.30 am, Kaili

We left town on a good new road heading southeast, but soon ran into a roadblock. Some people who had worked on the road had not been paid. Promises had been made and repeatedly broken, so they had taken matters into their own hands, hauled a couple of logs across the road and stopped the traffic. There were some very angry people, but they were not interested in us, so they let Mr Wu improvise a way round the roadblock, in the knowledge that buses and lorries would be unable to follow our route.

It takes a brave and/or angry person to demonstrate in China. We can only guess at what might happen when the police arrived, as they surely would, but the most likely scenario involved the demonstrators being beaten and arrested.


A little further on we stopped across the valley from the Miao village of Jidao and walked down the rough road and over the stone bridge towards the wooden buildings. Jidao is a show village, which means the government have concreted the paths and put up a few signs, but otherwise life carries on as normal. Normal meant almost everybody was away working in the fields, but those who were left, largely older women, got the favourite aunty treatment from Dylan and greeted us warmly.

Drying corn, peanuts, chillies & tobbacco, Jidao

Entering one of the wooden houses, we met an old woman sitting beside a bucket of pork, carefully rubbing a mixture of salt and spices into each individual slab. The cured meat would eventually find its way into the smoker nextdoor.

Curing pork, Jidao

Outside was the main square, and in the corner of the building opposite a small shop. The diminutive shopkeeper dashed out and grabbed hold of my arm. She seemed genuinely impressed by my enormous height, which was a novelty as I generally think of myself as being on the stumpy side. However, as she came up to my elbow, and I was a head taller than Dylan, who might also be described as ‘stumpy’, perhaps she had some excuse.

The sign on the ‘hundred year old barn’ possibly underestimated the age of the village’s second largest building. It is now a communal storehouse but was once used as place of retreat in the event of attack. The largest building had started life as a normal sized house but sections had been added generation by generation as the family had grown until it now occupied the whole of one street.

Like Qangmen, the ground floors were for animals, the balconies were decorated with drying vegetables, and the village was built on a hillside. We walked through the village and down the hill to the stream, which was crossed by a plank bridge. We could have returned to the stone bridge, and that was Lynne’s preference, but eventually Dylan persuaded her to walk the plank – provided she could keep a firm hold of him.

Walking the plank, Jidao

Xijiang, the ‘biggest Miao village in the world’, is reached by driving up a side valley near Jidao, climbing over a pass and then dropping down into the deep valley beyond. It is a town rather than a village, several hundred wooden houses perched on a steep slope above a green river. Despite its remote location, it has been commercialised and we had to pay an entrance fee before negotiating a parking space among the tourist buses.



Xijiang

At the entrance to the village, a group of women in ceremonial costume were lined up as if for a procession, shuffling on the spot to recorded music. We watched them for a while but they seemed in no hurry to move off. Dylan looked at his watch. ‘Time to go’ he said, ‘the show will be starting soon.’



Lined up for a procession
Xijiang Miao village

We hurried off to join the crowd in the main square, but the show started late as a party of VIP guests insisted on demonstrating their importance by holding everybody up. I enjoyed the ‘pensioners’ choir’ and some of the folk instruments, but I am not a fan of dance at the best of times, and this was not the best of times. Scenes from Miao life were acted out to music. Girls skipping daintily through imaginary water filled rice paddies prettily plonking down the open-ended barrels used to trap rice paddy fish may have been idealised, but going fishing in full ceremonial dress, complete with silver horns, seemed a ridiculous idea. The final scene, the fantasy wedding of the Miao ‘Prince’ and ‘Princess’ would have graced any production of Aladdin. I turned and caught Dylan’s eye. ‘It’s not like that, it’s just not like that’ he said shaking his head. The show was culture sterilized and packaged for undemanding tourists and did real Miao culture no service at all. It is customary to blame western tourists for this sort of thing, but of the five hundred or so spectators, four hundred and ninety eight were Chinese.

Aladdin
Xijiang Miao village

Walking from the performance area to the main street, Dylan met a ‘cousin’ from his home village who had recently moved to Xijiang to open a restaurant. There was, he explained, a lot of competition and he was struggling. Dylan loyally led us to his cousin’s little restaurant, but it was immediately obvious that the business was hardly functioning. We sat at a table and drank tea while the cousin chatted with Dylan about what he might cook. The speed with which Chinese restaurants provide food is based on all the chopping being done well in advance, but here nothing seemed to have been prepared. Dylan’s face became increasingly sceptical and we could see the cousin’s self-belief ebbing away as they talked.

Leaving Dylan to solve the problem, we took a stroll through the market that occupied the main street and several side roads. A few stalls were aimed at tourists and sold handicrafts and silver Miao horns, but most provided for local needs. There was little order, a blacksmith selling spade and mattock blades (bring your own handle) stood between an electronic games stall and one hawking cheap clothing. A man with baskets of dripping honeycombs was filling old water bottles and another was selling cheap reading glasses, demonstrating their strength and durability by putting them on the cobbles and smacking them with a mallet.



Honey salesman, Xijaing

While we were walking, Dylan decided his cousin was not up to the job. We would eat with Mr Wu in a nearby restaurant, while Dylan did the decent thing and endured his cousin’s cooking alone.

The restaurant was on the first floor of the building opposite and the planks moved uncomfortably under our feet as we made our way to our table. I wondered for a moment if the constructers had ever considered the possibility of solidly built westerners treading their boards.

The centrepiece of the meal was a firm fleshed, delicately flavoured rice paddy fish, but we also had shredded pork with mushrooms, some green vegetable and a bowl of what looked like thin tree roots with bits of bacon nestling in it. The bacon turned out to be smoked pork, the meat we had seen being cured in Jidao. It was too smoky for my liking – I want to taste what went into the smoker as well as the smoke – but went very well with the roots, called Zhe-er-geng in Mandarin. They had been gently cooked to retain some crunch and had a strong floral, perfume-like flavour, similar to Sichuan pepper, but without the mouth numbing quality. It was an excellent lunch, but every time I shifted on my little wooden stool, I could imagine the three of us plunging through the floor in a shower of rice, fish bones and tree roots.

Zhe-er-geng on sale (in Hong Kong)

The centrepiece of the meal was a firm fleshed, delicately flavoured rice paddy fish, but we also had shredded pork with mushrooms, some green vegetable and a bowl of what looked like thin tree roots with bits of bacon nestling in it. The bacon turned out to be smoked pork, the meat we had seen being cured in Jidao. It was too smoky for my liking – I want to taste what went into the smoker as well as the smoke – but went very well with the roots, called Zhe-er-geng in Mandarin. They had been gently cooked to retain some crunch and had a strong floral, perfume-like flavour, similar to Sichuan pepper, but without the mouth numbing quality. It was an excellent lunch, but every time I shifted on my little wooden stool, I could imagine the three of us plunging through the floor in a shower of rice, fish bones and tree roots.

It took all afternoon to drive over the mountains to Rongjiang where we would spend the night. The distance was modest, but parts of the road were being constructed as we drove over it and twice we had to wait for road building equipment to finish a job before we could move on. Darkness had fallen before we reached our destination.

The road to Rongjiang being constructed as we drove over it

 The Chinese love neon; arrive at any town after dark and you will be greeted by acres of red, purple and lurid green. Any town, that is, except Rongjiang, a dusty, untidy and unloved 40-watt bulb of a town specialising in dimly lit shops and dark vacant lots. Turning off what seemed to be the main street into a courtyard, we found the Dongxiangmi Grand Hotel.  Most of the grandeur was in the name, but our room was clean and comfortable enough.

‘Eat in the hotel’ was Dylan’s advice, ‘there’s nothing else here.’ It was after seven and he was concerned it might close before we got there. As it turned out they went on serving for some hours and the restaurant was a comfortable and apparently sophisticated oasis in the urban desert. Unfortunately, this was only an appearance. Our ‘fragrant chicken’ was dire: tough, lukewarm and in no way fragrant. It was our worst meal of the trip – and among the most expensive.

Later, we walked along the dusty main street to see if there had been an alternative place to eat. There were few people about and the town looked closed, but we did find another restaurant – and it was on fire. A knot of people, presumably the proprietor and family, stood outside in a state of shock, while the residents of adjacent buildings milled about anxiously. Very soon, a fire engine arrived, the flaming wok was quenched and the excitement subsided. There would be cleaning up to do, but there was no real damage.

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 did not. Various 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.

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

Qingyan, Guiyang and on to Kaili Part 4 of China's Far Southwest

A Preserved Town, Guizhou's Modern Capital and Lunch in a Miao Village

03-Nov-2010

China

The Artfully Pickled Qing Dynasty Town of Qingyan

In the morning Mr Wu drove the two of us and local guide, 'Dylan' northeast from near Anshun towards the provincial capital of Guiyang. The mountains, now, were gentler and the largely empty motorway ran past newly harvested paddy fields. At Guiyang we turned south off the ring road, through Huaxi and on to the walled town of Qingyan.

Guizhou Province.South West China
This post is about the region around Guiyang and Kaili in central Guizhou

Chairman Mao hated Chinese architecture and had little respect for history. A 1958 survey listed 8,000 historic monuments in Beijing: Mao decided to retain 78. Today’s regime has more respect for Chinese history - and recognises how effectively such monuments separate tourists from dollars, so the greatest danger is now over-enthusiastic restoration. For a long time the same could not be said for vernacular architecture; China has many people to house and tower blocks are being thrown up in every town and city. The bulldozing of cities’ older quarters was indiscriminate, but the provision of clean, new, draught-proof apartments with running water and electricity meant there are few protests – and, anyway, it takes a brave person to protest in China. But now, several old towns are being preserved (or sometimes rebuilt) as a reminder of how life was, and as a sop to tourists.

Qingyan walled town

Qingyan, a complete Qing dynasty town, is, then, a rare survival. It may have been tarted up and turned into a tourist trap, but that is the price it has to pay.

Stone flagged streets between single storey houses

Once through the impressive town wall, we found ourselves in stone flagged streets between solidly built single storey houses with projecting eaves. If visiting Anchi had been like stepping back in time, this was like stepping into a museum gift shop. The town still has a thriving resident population, as was obvious during the school lunch hour, but most citizens make their living by selling things to tourists

School lunch hour in Qingyan

We visited a large and active Taoist temple,...

Taoist Temple, Qingyan

...peered into the fortune-teller’s offices outside......

Fortune teller, Qingyan

..... and a smaller, quieter Buddhist temple; the two Christian churches were locked.

Buddhist Temple, Qingyan

Several large houses sat in grounds beside the road. We paused in the doorway of a house once, reputedly, the home of Zhou Enlai’s father, though I have been unable to find any reference linking the family to this area.

Maybe the house of Zhou Enlai's father, maybe not

Many shops sold tourist trinkets, and those that did not sold food. The Chinese do not generally have a sweet tooth, so it was unusual to see confectionary being prepared and sold. A melange of sugar and nuts was being boiled up, poured onto tables and beaten with large wooden mallets. After cooling, the sticky, chewy slabs were perfect for removing filings from teeth.

Sugar and nuts being beaten with large wooden mallets, Qingyan

Elsewhere, smoked pork hung from frames, pigs trotters, stewed and glazed, were heaped in vats and piles of spices were laid out on tables.

Smoked pork, spices and more, Qingyan

We might have lunched at one of the many restaurants, but Dylan had other ideas.

Lunch in Huaxi

Huaxi, just far enough south of Guiyang to be considered a separate town rather than a suburb, is the home of Guizhou University, Dylan’s alma mater. Whether the restaurant he chose still doubles as a garden centre was unclear, but tables were laid out in a huge greenhouse amid trees, shrubs and gurgling water features. Despite a higher standard of cleanliness and comfort than we had become used to, the food was not special. The spicy green tofu was good, as was the bowl of bamboo served in its own steamer, but the fried pork and potatoes with a dip of what tasted remarkably like tomato ketchup was less exciting.

The Creatures we did not Eat

After eating, we wandered down to look at the seafood. The array of tanks, with price labels attached, blurred the distinction between aquarium and menu. There were fish, eels, lobsters and many crabs, including a tank full of the rather sinister Horseshoe Crabs that I had seen before only on wildlife programmes. The largest tank, too small for its occupant, held a substantial turtle. ‘For show,’ said Dylan, ‘he’s too big and old to eat’. The same did not apply to the various species of terrapin.

Several species of terrapin

One tank contained not sea creatures, but several hundred scorpions. A few scuttled about the floor, but most lay in a heap, waving their nasty little tails.

Scorpion is on the menu

Lynne and I believe that if other people think something is food, then it is arrogant to turn your nose up at it and stupid to refuse to even try it. We brought our daughter up with the same attitude, and this is her photograph of a bowl of scorpion soup, taken a couple of years ago. She sucked up the broth but when her Cantonese dining companions picked up the scorpions, broke them open and sucked out the insides, she could not bring herself to follow suit. It may go against my philosophy, but I strongly suspect I too would have quailed. I find it difficult to understand the thinking of the first person who looked at a scorpion and shouted ‘lunch’ instead of the much more sensible ‘run away’. Maybe it was desperation, but the price made it clear this is no longer food for the desperate. So why?

Scorpion soup

Guiyang, Capital of Guizhou Province

Guiyang has been described as the obscure capital of one of China’s poorest provinces. It does not feel like that when you are there. Fifty years ago it was a conglomerate of tumbledown houses, now it has enough towering buildings and complicated road systems to qualify as a thoroughly modern city with a quietly confident, almost metropolitan, air. Surrounded by mountains it is a compact and tidy city, though the mountains are reputed to concentrate the pollution. That was not a problem the day we were there.

Modern Guiyang

Mr Wu parked beside the Nanming River. Since Huanhgguoshu we had crossed a watershed; the Nanming was the first river we had encountered flowing north towards the Yangzi basin instead of south towards the South China Sea. The old centre sits beside the river and consists of two Ming pavilions and a small park. It is pleasant enough and the view of modern Guiyang upstream is impressive, but the city has little else to offer the casual visitor. Fortunately, we were only staying one night.

Old Guiyang (and young me)

That evening we walked around the block looking for somewhere to eat. Finding a restaurant in China is rarely difficult, but the usual tatty little places looked unfrequented and unappealing. Eventually we spotted a larger establishment across the road, which seemed to be bustling. Inside, we were quickly ushered to the only remaining table and were seated before we realised it was a hotpot restaurant.

Hotpot is popular in many parts of China, but remains virtually unknown in Chinese restaurants in England. The tables have a hole in the top with a gas burner beneath. A wok arrives containing stock, a few vegetables and some lumps of tofu, and is placed over the burner. There are regional variations; in Sichuan a few chillies are added (‘a few chillies’ in Sichuan means forty of fifty’) and elsewhere the pot is divided ying and yang style with spicy stock in one side and plain the other. In Guiyang it was just plain, but we were given a spicy dip if that became too boring. Choosing other ingredients from the long list presented a problem, but a young woman at the next table kindly lent us her linguistic expertise. Selecting from those items she knew the English for, we ended up with potatoes, a variety of sliced meats and some offal based meatballs. We had a good meal, but I can never entirely still the little voice telling me that it is perverse to go to a restaurant and then cook your own food.

04-Nov-2010

The Miao Village of Qangmen

Guiyang was the most northerly point of our journey, and next morning we turned southeast, heading, ultimately for Guilin in Guangxi Province.

It was a dull, cold morning and we drove along a deserted motorway through misty hills. We left the motorway at Kaili, heading away from the town before taking a narrow road into the mountains towards the Miao village of Qangmen.

On the way, we passed three people harvesting sweet potatoes in a tiny field. A man was mattocking the vegetables out of the ground, a women was cutting off the tops and stacking them for use as animal feed, and another man squatted in the mud cleaning up the potatoes and putting them in a sack. They were Miao so, naturally Dylan stopped to talk. They came, they told us, not from nearby Qangmen put from a village on the other side of the valley. When they had finished they would walk home, the heavy sacks hanging from carry poles.

Harvesting sweet potatoes

Qangmen is a 'Long-Horn' Miao village of some 1500 people. The wooden houses have animal sheds on the ground floor, with the human accommodation above being approached by a balcony. Along the balcony vegetables are hung out to dry, corncobs, chillies, rice and peanuts all twisted into decorative shapes. Like most Miao villages, Qangmen is built on a hillside, so every living room looks out over the neighbour’s roof towards the communal fields below.

...along the balcony vegetables are hung out to dry...

More than a hundred people were gathered in the central square, squatting in groups or sitting on tiny wooden stools. There had been a funeral and the mourners had gathered for a communal meal. Most of the women wore a working version of traditional dress, but all had their long hair carefully oiled and elaborately coiled, with a comb stuck in the back to keep everything in place.

...more than a hundred people gathered in the central square...

We had lunch in one of the newer wooden houses by the main road. We were greeted by two women in full ceremonial dress, long horns included, who sang a welcome and offered us a cup of rice wine.

We were greeted by two women in full ceremonial dress...

Tradition dictates that the host holds the cup while the guest leans forward and has the wine poured down their throat. Commercial rice wines can be glutinous with some not altogether wholesome flavours but this home-brew was light and clean with a pleasant balance of acidity. It was fortunate that we liked it, because once one cup had been poured down us, the rules demanded that a second went the same way.

a cup of rice wine

A wooden plaque informed us the owners were permitted to operate a tourist restaurant, albeit a restaurant with one table. There was also only one wok, but it was huge. One of them fed wood into the fire while the second poured in some oil and set about cooking our lunch. We watched her stir-fry some strips of pork before returning to the table to await our meal.

Preparing our lunch

Once the ingredients are prepared, Chinese meals are quickly cooked. Soon the table was covered with dishes; soup with tofu, spring onions with white radishes, green beans with pork, red radish strips with chillies and pork, potato strips cooked in stock, an omelette, bamboo with meat and bowls of the Miao’s favourite sticky rice.

It was a fine and filling meal

It was a fine and filling meal, briefly interrupted by more singing and more pouring of rice wine down our throats. Too often, tourists are served up a pre-packaged version of a culture on the verge of extinction. Just occasionally, in places where mass tourism has not reached, you meet people who are proud of their still living culture and are pleased to share it with you. This was one of those times and it was a thrilling and humbling experience.

We reluctantly said our goodbyes to the villagers of Qangmen...

Farewell to Qangmen

Paper Making at Shiqaio

... and a kilometre or so down the road Mr Wu stopped beside a small track heading into a valley. Dylan watered the bushes while Lynne and I walked down the track wondering what we could possibly find. Rounding a bend we came across a forest of fine meshed frames on which newly-made paper was drying. Inside the large cave beyond, three people were busy dipping more frames into vats of watery pulp. We knew we were going to see a papermaking factory, but had not expected it to be in a cave.

A forest of fine meshed frames

We watched the highly skilled, if rather repetitive, work for a while...

Paper making in a cave

....before driving on to Shiqaio, the papermaker’s village.

Main street of Shiqaio 

Along a single street of wooden houses we saw old women picking over shredded bark, an old man beating pulp with a venerable mechanical hammer, a woman painstakingly separating the wads of damp paper brought up from the cave and sticking the single sheets onto a wall to dry, and a group of women counting and smoothing out sheet after sheet of finished paper. Apart from one man threshing rice in the street and another sitting on a sofa drinking beer, everyone in Shiqaio seemed to be busy papermaking.

..beating pulp with a venerable mechanical hammer..

With no distinction between home and factory, life went on as it has for the last century or two - apart from the addition of electric lights and an outbreak of satellite dishes. At the end of the street, stuck on a wall, was the plan of new Shiqaio. It seems the government intend to demolish the village and move it to a site across the river, where it can be opened up as a tourist attraction. A pity no one had asked the locals if that was what they wanted.

new Shiqaio

Kaili

We returned to Kaili with mixed feelings. The Heaven Sent Hotel, right on the central roundabout, represented an emphatic return to the twenty first century. We checked in early enough to visit the post office - a waste of time, as they had no stamps for ‘abroad’ – and to take a stroll round the central shopping mall.

The centre of Kaili

Later, we dined at a small restaurant where they boiled up individual meals in cast iron pots over a gas brazier. It was largely noodles in tomato sauce with a couple of pieces of sausage and a meatball or two, but we had enjoyed a large lunch and 45 pence each represented a cheap diner by any standard.

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

Xingyi and on to Huangguoshu: Part 3 of China's Far Southwest

Despite its strange shape, Xingyi is a typical Chinese city with wide streets laid out on as precise a grid as topography allows.

Minorities Museum, Xingyi



So many of these old wooden houses have been
destroyed in the rush to modernise

Without Dylan and our driver, the estimable Mr Wu, we would never have found the Minorities Museum of Marriage. Tucked away in the few remaining back streets on the southeastern edge of the city, it occupies a beautiful old wooden house constructed round two courtyards. Many of these houses, once the homes of the despised bourgeoisie, have been destroyed in the rush to modernise and build upwards, but I hope this one has a secure future.

Although there are exhibits of musical instruments, embroidery, jewellery and elaborate ceremonial headgear, it is more a collection of photographs than a museum.

The Miao are the main minority represented. Descended not from cats, but from a group that migrated from northern China a couple of thousand years ago. There are some 10 million of them, mostly in Guizhou, but also in the neighbouring provinces and in Laos and Viet Nam. Dylan, we learned, was himself a Miao, the first from his village in eastern Guizhou to go to university. 

With a degree in Chinese Ethnic Minorities, Dylan’s interpretation of the pictures gave both an overview of Miao life and the inside story. There are some sixty sub-groups of Miao speaking mutually intelligible dialects of the Hmong-Mien language family. The Han identify the groups by the colour or design of their traditional costumes: there are Red Miaos, Black Miaos, Small Flowery Miaos, Short-horn Miaos and Long-horn Miaos (Dylan’s group), to name but a few.

The horns, long or short, and colourful clothing were well represented in the wedding pictures, but courtship was also covered. Once, marriage among first cousins was the Miao norm, but long, long ago it became usual for a young man to marry a girl from a neighbouring village. This may be genetically healthier but it does raise obvious logistical problems. It has also led to the tradition of uncles receiving payments from bridegrooms as compensation for not marrying their daughter. There were more traditions of bucolic charm, but others were less pleasant. In one picture, a smiling young couple each held one wing of a live chicken. They were then supposed to run in opposite directions allowing the shaman to deduce the advisability of their marriage from the twitching and bloody remains of the unfortunate bird. This seems an inefficient way of foretelling the future, and a bit hard on the chicken. Dylan assured us the practice had long been discontinued.

Wanfengling (Forest of Ten Thousand Peaks)

Next morning we drove beyond the city’s western edge to the head of a valley that drops, almost imperceptibly, from the plateau. A slope rises steeply to the south of the valley, while to the north a phalanx of heavily wooded, weirdly pointy karst mountains march off into the distance. This is Wanfengling, ‘The Forest of Ten Thousand Peaks.’ I cannot vouch for their being ten thousand, I made no attempt to count them, but there are considerably more than several.

 

This one is Hu Jintao.....

 Ignoring the car park and ticket office, we first ventured along the flat valley bottom to the nearest village. Hu Jintao, no less, had paid a visit some years ago and was very impressed with the scenery. The restaurant where he dined displays a picture of him sitting in the courtyard surrounded by local dignitaries. I sat in the same place. He has fruit and companions, I am alone and the red outlines on the wall behind had faded, but otherwise, as you can see, you could hardly tell us apart. Drivers are normally phlegmatic seen-it-all-before types who rarely venture out of the car park, but Mr Wu not only walked with us, he became quite animated, took many photographs and even phoned his wife to tell her where he was.


...and this one's me

 Chairman Hu’s visit resulted in many of the houses being improved, but agriculture remains basic. One or two farmers were using rotovators, another was ploughing with a buffalo, while a woman was attacking a harvested rice paddy with a mattock - a job that would keep her occupied all day. The village fields are divided into small irregularly shaped plots and each farmer is allocated several separate plots, so everybody has a share of the best and worst land – exactly as in medieval England.

‘I want my father to buy a rotovator,’ Dylan said, surveying the scene, ‘but he says he understands buffalo and he’s too old to change.’



Wanfengling

We returned to the car park and its waiting fleet of ten-seater buggies. The area geared up for tourism after the Chairman's visit but only one buggy was required to transport the four of us and the two waiting Chinese tourists. We climbed the valley side where viewpoints allowed us to look down on the villages clustered below, and across to the hundreds, maybe thousands, of mountains beyond. The views were dramatic, despite the slight haze. Mr Wu, sat behind us, taking photographs and being just as excited as we were.




A Taoist Monastery sits atop this Karst lump

The road descended to the valley floor. Instead of returning to the start, we left the buggy and walked into the next valley, heading towards a Taoist temple atop one of the smaller Karst lumps. It was a pleasant downhill stroll in warm morning sunshine. An amazing range of butterflies fluttered alongside us, though none would pose long enough for a photograph.

We reached the hill, but Dylan looked at the many steps, shook his head and led us to a Buddhist shrine in the cliff behind. This too involved plenty of climbing and our thighs were aching long before we reached the shrine. The cave has been sacred since ancient times, but the statues of the Buddha are relatively new, the originals being destroyed in the Cultural Revolution. Graffiti from that time had been scrubbed out but was still visible on the cave wall.



A man approached us and asked, in English, if two of his students could be photographed with us. Then it was two more, then another three. I lost count of how many photographs we eventually posed for, but I decided not to let being a celebrity go to my head.

As at many Buddhist shrines, there was a vegetarian restaurant attached. Meat is not eaten in great quantity in this part of China, but it appears as a minor component in almost every dish, creating problems for vegetarians. For them, the Buddhist restaurant would have been a blessed relief, for us it was an opportunity to explore another facet of the extraordinarily varied local cuisine.



Four well dressed ladies playing mah-jong

We sat at one of the outside tables, the other being occupied by four well-dressed ladies playing mah-jong. I understand the game – at least in its simplified form - but I could not follow it at the speed they played. A flurry of small denomination notes changed hands after each game.

Lunch consisted of soup and a series of dishes based on mushrooms, cauliflower, aubergine and smoked tofu. This only begins to describe the food, each dish being skilfully garnished and flavoured. The centrepiece was a ‘fish’ of tofu, pressed into shape and roasted. Soya protein processed as minced beef has been available at home for years, but is, I believe, best avoided. That the inventive Chinese have done far more with this versatile material is hardly surprising. They have also done it far better.


Lunch over, we joined the mah-jong ladies in a shuttle buggy up to the head of the little valley. As it dropped us off, the local bus arrived and we hopped on that rather than wait for the tourist transport. We enjoyed a white-knuckle ride back to the car park, the driver keeping his foot hard down as he charged along the valley and bucketed through the villages, scattering livestock and children with loud blasts of his horn.


The start of a white-knuckle ride

 Having survived that, Mr Wu drove us round Xingyi before suddenly turning off the ring road into a car park. There were a few stalls, a ticket office and turnstiles labelled ‘entrance’ and ‘export’.

Maling Gorge

The flat land had given no indication of what was to come, but once past ‘entrance’ and through the tunnel beyond, we found ourselves standing on the lip of a deep, narrow gorge. The Maling Gorge is a 15-kilometre gash across the land, and this was its deepest part. We set off down the steps, stopping at various viewing platforms to peer at the river far below.



Waterfalls tumbled over the edge of the gorge

We thought we had endured more than enough steps in the morning, but quickly realised that had only been a taster. Half way down we came upon an exhausted looking man sitting on a stone bench and breathing heavily. ‘Stupid to go that way round,’ Dylan observed, ‘it’s much easier to go down the steps and up the lift.’ Maybe I had not been listening, but only then did I realise there would be a lift back up. My heart was lighter as we pressed on with the descent.

We eventually reached the river, 200 metres below our starting point. Walking beside the fast flowing stream we came across a succession of waterfalls tumbling over the edge of the gorge. This is limestone country and dissolved salts produced the same calcification process we had once seen at Mother Shipton’s Cave in Knaresborough. Here it was not teddies and toys being turned to stone, but the vegetation below the falls. The water splattered down onto a petrified forest canopy, the stone boughs jutting out like the eaves of a Ming hall.



We stood midstream on a swinging suspension bridge

 Given the narrowness of the gorge, the sunshine above and the deep shadow below, it was difficult to photograph, and we stood midstream on a swinging suspension bridge to find the best light. The path wound on past the remains of an old stone bridge and under the Yellow Dragon Falls before we finally reached the lift. This was no longer the deepest part of the gorge, so at the top there was a kilometre of uphill walking and yet more steps before we reached the car park.

Tofu and Pigs' Trotters, Xingyi

That evening, we dined in a small restaurant a short walk from the hotel. We had also been there the day before; they had smiled and been helpful, so we visited again. Yesterday we had picked the flesh from a sizeable but unrecognised fish. Today, sitting under a giant poster of Chairman Mao (a rarity these days) we scanned the picture menu and chose a dish of fried tofu balls and another of what looked like ribs.

We were learning to appreciate the range of flavours that can be painted on to the essentially blank canvas that is tofu. The ribs had plenty of bones, but rather less meat than expected. In fact, there was a little softly melting fat and hardly any meat at all. We eventually realised we had ordered pig’s trotters. Sucking the bones was unproductive, but dunking the tofu into the trotter’s rich brown broth was wonderful. The warm day had become a very cool evening and the restaurant was, as usual, unheated. Plates of vegetables had been perfect in the midday sun, but rib-sticking stew was just what the evening demanded.


Anchi Village, Visiting the Black Miao

In the morning, we drove a couple of hours northeast before pausing at the Black Miao village of Anchi.

Dylan greeted them like favourite aunts

. The village is right by the main road and in sight of the modern town of Zhenfeng, but a lane between two wooden houses took as back a hundred years. Two old women wearing the eponymous black turbans were sitting in the sun. Dylan greeted them like favourite aunts and they exchanged news in Miao. Mandarin has four tones, which is four more than I can cope with, Miao has eight, which makes it oddly rhythmic, even musical in a Birtwhistle-y sort of way. Dylan greeted every Miao we met as though they were long lost friends or relatives: such is the Miao way.



Forecourts covered with drying rice

Wooden houses with buffalo sheds, chickens scrabbling in the yard and forecourts covered with drying rice stood beside fields worked entirely by hand. Only children charging round on plastic ride-on toys reminded us we had not actually stepped back in time.

Lynne was fascinated by the gravestones. Graves can be anywhere, between houses, on the edge of fields or wherever the shaman decrees is auspicious. What she particularly liked was the way they carry an extended genealogy, being regularly updated to include every new grandchild and great grandchild of the deceased.

The 2.5 million Buyei (Bouyei, Buyi or Puyi) mostly live in Guizhou, Yunnan and Sichuan. Although we encountered no Buyei villages, we did lunch in a Buyei restaurant in the small, predominantly Han, town of Zhenfeng.



A Buyei Lunch in Zhenfeng

The restaurant consisted of a series of private dining rooms and a lobby containing a Buyei cultural display. While Dylan ordered, we read the information boards. There is a long and ignoble tradition of finding humour in foreigner’s attempts to speak English, and I have no wish to add to that. I admit I speak five words of Mandarin and less Buyei, so I acknowledge my linguistic inferiority to the translator of ‘Buyei Cuisine’ board.  It remains, however, a fine example of what can be done with a dictionary and an almost complete ignorance of the target language.

 

Anyone for dog pump bowel?

Our meal did not involve forget, politics, triangle politics, self-control or even dog pump bowel, but was excellent nonetheless. We ate soft tofu with pickle, an unidentified green vegetable cut into strips and steamed with chilli and garlic, black potato (black but not a potato) with ham and sweet peppers, and sticky rice cakes. The centrepiece was shredded pork made into a pudding by a covered of fat bacon, and then steamed for several hours. The Buyei, we concluded, eat well.


Huangguoshu Waterfall


The road through the mountains to Huangguoshu was too new to appear on my map. Impressively engineered, it burrowed through hillsidess and swept over deep gorges. Leaving the car, we walked over the Beipingjiang Bridge. Buffeted by wind and with passing lorries shaking the suspended roadway, we gazed into the huge gorge and at the dark green Beiping River far below, and marvelled at both the works of nature and the works of man.

The Beiping River



Huangguoshu is a series of small villages trying to build themselves into a riverside resort. At the falls, we strolled through an impressive garden of bonsai trees before encountering yet more steps. We could hear the water, but had to walk some way before we could see it. The Huangguoshu Falls are the biggest in China, but would not, I think, rank high in world terms, despite some local misinformation. We visited the Jog Falls in India in March, which is the highest single drop waterfall in Asia, but it was the dry season and the dam upstream was closed so there was hardly enough water for a decent shower. Huangguosho may not have been in spate, but there was plenty of water, the sunshine producing a shimmering rainbow in the spray. We could have walked all the way down to the river and taken a damp path behind the cascade, but we had already seen more than enough steps.

The Huangguoshu Falls

 The hotel at Hangguoshu was grim. The designer of the sprawling single storey building on multiple levels had thought little about disabled access. For us, three steps here and four steps there may have been trivial after all the stairs we had climbed, but when lugging suitcases they were undoubtedly irritating. The list of hotel facilities was lengthy, but all were closed except the vast outdoor pool, which it was far too cold to use. It felt like a resort hotel out of season, except that October is very much in season and we shared the hotel with several Chinese tour groups. Fortunately, Mr Wu was on hand to give us a lift down to village where a small unheated restaurant fed us well enough – though why they needed to keep the doors wide open was a mystery.

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